Day 17: The Road to Baby Part 3 {IVF}
| October 17, 2012 | Posted by Jessie under 31 Days to an Imperfect Family and Home, Baby, Fertility |
Hi everyone! Soooo I totally left you hanging last week with our road to baby story, but I’m here to deliver today. If you missed last week’s post, you can catch up on part 1 here and part 2 here.
We met with our fertility doctor for our initial appointment and he started by asking us to tell our story. We went through the basics of what treatments and testing we had done and then let him talk. He then started telling us what he saw on his side, after having gone over all the paperwork sent from my doctor. He felt like I actually had been ovulating the whole time. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but let’s say my regular ob/gyn was looking for an 8 to show ovulation {this number is probably way off, by the way, but let’s just go with it}. The fertility doctor felt if it was above a 5 that I had ovulated at some point during my cycle because that shows some sort of increase in hormones. He didn’t think the number needed to be as high as the regular ob/gyn did. He said this was totally normal and that fertility specialists look at numbers much more in-depth and are looking for different things. Long {and inaccurate} story short, we were shocked to find out that ovulation may not have been the issue at all. What we thought was our problem {and were hoping he could fix} was not a problem after all. Once again, good news and bad news. If ovulation isn’t the problem, what is?
After going over all of our test results, the doctor saw a few numbers that were borderline problems, but nothing that was glaringly obvious as to why we weren’t pregnant yet. He did an ultrasound and everything looked great there also so we sat down to talk about our options. He went through a few different things we could try, gave us a statistical outcome, and then gave us some time to talk it over. We had already tried clomid unsuccessfully, IUI was another option {with a low percent chance of working-I think it was around 11%}, and then there was IVF. Invitro could give us about an 85% chance to get pregnant. When you compare stats like 9%, 11%, and 85%, it’s pretty much a no-brainer.
I’m not saying deciding to go through IVF is an easy decision for anyone. It’s heartbreaking to hear that the odds of us getting pregnant on our own are pretty slim. The cost makes you absolutely cringe. The thought of all those shots is a little frightening and no part of it sounds fun. Except that fact that you have an 85% chance of getting pregnant. Music to our tired, frustrated, and now hopeful ears. So before we left the doctor’s office that day, we had a July IVF procedure scheduled.
We had to wait a month for the cysts that had formed from the clomid to disappear and run a few more tests before we could start. We ordered a pharmacy full of medication to take up counter space and stock up our fridge…
And got mentally and physically ready to {very unromantically} make a baby. The actually IVF process takes about a month. We started medication on July 3rd and finished the whole shebang on July 30th. We started with I think around 5 pills per day {aspirin, vitamins, antibiotic, etc.} and 1 shot per day for the first week. Then it bumped up to three shots per day and some of the pills went down. We had to draw a chart on the fridge where we marked off each time we took medication {Mike had some pills to take but no shots} so we could keep track of it all. Some are AM, some are PM, and some are both so it was a good thing I was off of work so I could concentrate on everything! All of the shots up to this point were in the belly {side note-starting the night before the retrieval, the shots switch over to shots in the booty. Super painful, like ice and lay on a heating pad to relieve it. These continue through the first 10 weeks of pregnancy to help maintain the pregnancy. Once again, not fun, but totally worth it}. Not too painful, but it started to get difficult to find new places to administer the shots on your stomach because you have to keep it below the belly button. After a few weeks of this, my stomach was covered it lots of little bruises, but I just kept telling myself that it would all be worth it in the end. And also kept hoping no one would call in those couple of weeks to lay out because my bikini days were over:)
July 25th we were scheduled to go in for the egg retrieval. This was the day after our 3rd anniversary. We tried to just enjoy our romantic dinner, but our thoughts and conversations kept leading back to the IVF and baby talk. We were excited, nervous, fearful, anxious. Everything I”m sure everyone who has been through this has felt, but soooo ready to get it and fast forward to the results. The retrieval is a procedure where they put me out to take out as many “good” eggs as they can. I was praying my little heart out that we would have a good handful of eggs to work with and, thankfully, we ended up with 6, which was wonderful. There wasn’t much pain after the procedure, I was just tired, so I lounged around and prayed a lot:) The day of the retrieval they fertilized all 6 eggs, and they all took! We were excited about that. Our embryologist, who did the fertilization and kept track of our embryos, called each morning around 8 am to give us an update on how they were all doing. I loved that:) Even though it was summer and I was off of work, I found myself waking up before 8 just to hear how our little babies {as we refer to them} were doing. We had 4 viable embryos by the time of the transfer-5 days later.
We had the retrieval on a Wednesday and went back in the following Monday for the transfer. Warning-unattractive hospital photo ahead. I figured since I’m sharing everything, might as well through in a nasty pic of myself, right?
Mike and I had discussed our plan over and over again. If we had two viable embryos, we would implant both. If we got twins, fantastic. Heck, we had been trying long enough to get pregnant twice, so why not? I felt like there was more comfort in knowing two were going to be implanted-it would give us a better chance of at least one taking and leading to a pregnancy. Best laid plans….you would think I would have learned my lesson by now. We got there and the doctor came in to talk to us before the procedure and told us we had two that were picture-perfect to implant. I was very excited, until he continued. He really urged us to only implant one. He was confident the one would take and felt the risks of carrying multiples {blood pressure issues, chance of losing one or both, early delivery, etc.} outweighed the risk of only putting one in and it not taking. I was so lost. Our perfect plan was sort of falling apart. He left and gave us time to decide and I was in tears. We had invested so much time, energy, money, and emotion into this and I just didn’t want to make the wrong decision. There were risks either way so we just had to finally bite the bullet and make a decision. Mike really started to lean towards one after hearing the risks for me and our possible babies so I finally turned a corner and went with their choice and we implanted one.
Thank goodness we did, because 10 days later I received the best phone call of my life:) Yes, it seemed like years by the way waiting for that call but it was worth every minute. As soon as the nurse said the words “you are pregnant” I was sobbing my eyes out. Poor Pudge didn’t know what to do with himself. Mike was at work {texting every 20 minutes to see if I had heard yet} and as soon as I pulled myself together enough to let the nurse finish giving me follow-up orders, I grabbed Pudge, jumped in the car, and raced to Mike’s work. I’m sure that was quite a scene. Mike and I jumping up and down, crying in the parking lot, and Pudge running around like a fool. Pure 100% joy. I truly don’t think I’ve ever felt so much happiness in my life. After all the heartbreak, negative tests, medications, surgeries, shots, every second of it was worth it. Happy doesn’t come near to describing how we felt. Our hearts were so full.
Next week I’ll wrap up our little “road to baby” journey with some lessons learned and final thoughts on the whole process. Let me just say, once again, that if you or anyone you know is in the middle of this struggle right now, hang in there, because that moment of pure joy is worth every ounce of pain you feel. It will come!
Congratulations!
Thanks, Jennifer!
Thank you for writting this. I feel like you just described our whole story. OPKs, Doctor Appointments, Medications, Undiagnosed IF and IVF. We just got our BFP this week from our firstt IVF and are very excited that it is all finally coming together.
Thank you for bringing this subject to life. I found that I hesitated telling people, even our families because people had so many misconceptions…and then said things that were hurtful/not helpful.
Aw, well I wish you the best, Robin. Hopefully this works for you as well! I agree that some people can say hurtful things and it is hard to share, but I’m glad that my story has been positive for you to hear. Good luck with everything!!!
I think you look pretty in your hospital gown
Love you much!!!
Haha oh yeahhhh. Hot hospital gowns;)
Oh my… I was on the edge of my seat while reading this! I couldn’t read fast enough!! Congrats on the pgnancy.
what a journey!
Haha it’s quite the saga! Thanks so much, Kerry!