As a way to observe National Infertility Week, I have decided to share our story of infertility in hopes it may help at least one person. This story is extremely personal to me and has taken tremendous effort to live through and now write about. I understand firsthand how taboo the topic of infertility can be. Please keep in mind how vulnerable I am making myself when reading and commenting.
I shared the first part of our story, the birth of our daughter, here. She was conceived naturally without any issues. The next step was trying to get a diagnosis for our infertility and I shared that here. Then we tried 3 unsuccessful IUIs in Part 3 of our story here. Our next step was to try IVF and I discussed that and the results in Part 4 here. Now I’d like to share what we have been going through since our loss in December.
My first baseline after the miscarriage still had high numbers (over 1000), so I was told to wait until after my first cycle started. In late December I went in again and my numbers were negative. Now we had to decide at what point we would like to try again.
I had a lot of mixed emotions about this. Was I not respecting our little baby by proceeding forward or was I honoring her? After a lot of thought and tears, I felt that little embryo had really tried to beat the odds. It was slower developing yet still managed to attach and try to grow. It fought for life. And with all the sadness I need to feel like I was actively trying to do something to get pregnant again. I needed something good desperately. So we decided to proceed with a second IVF cycle as soon as we could. We had to go through some of the same tests and wait at least one more cycle before scheduling. Again the hysteroscopy was normal and we were finally able to be scheduled for a February cycle.
I was placed on the same antagonist protocol as last time since it was considered to be ‘successful’. I’d like to debate that, but I’ll move on. Back in December I had asked if the cause of our infertility was egg quality, was there anything I could do to help with that? She recommended going on CoQ10 and DHEA. After reading about both and looking through some studies, I started both supplements in addition to my prenatal vitamin and Vitamin D in December. Typically these supplements take about 2 months before the effect is seen so they would be in my system just long enough to have an effect on our February IVF cycle.
They also opted not to do any ovarian suppression this time was no time on a birth control pill. One of the things that really impressed me about this clinic was their scheduling. They opened at 6:30am for monitoring and had weekend appointments. It really made all those appointments easier. Once I started stimulation injections, the clinic added in a steroid to help with ovarian response as well (Dexamethasone). I was once again on low dose HCG, Follistim, and then towards the end of the cycle, Ganirelix. I was also on low dose aspirin. This time the amounts I was injecting were much higher. My stomach started to resemble a pin cushion.
Our egg retrieval surgery was scheduled for Saturday February 18. Luckily my parents were able to take our daughter for the weekend so I could recover. It’s an outpatient surgery, but due to the anesthesia, you are pretty much out for the rest of the day. The next day is a little uncomfortable, you still feel a bit tired, a little sore, and pretty bloated. The nurses told me they were estimating between 4-9 eggs based on the number and size of follicles I had. After all the extra drugs, supplements, and steroid, I was crushed. I was really hoping for at least 10 (they had gotten 9 before). Double digits seem like so much more, mentally. After the surgery we were shocked to hear the doctor had actually been able to retrieve 13!! This seems to be a theme with me, but I started bawling. I couldn’t believe it! I just knew having 4 more eggs this time could make all the difference. Even the nurse congratulated us. She said once she found out she knew how excited I would be (seriously the nurses are SO nice). We had to wait until Sunday to see how many were mature and how many fertilized.
Early afternoon (after obsessively checking my phone and being sure it wasn’t working since I hadn’t gotten a call), I finally got a call with the fertilization results. Once again we decided to use ICSI for fertilization. Of the 13 eggs, all of them were mature (!) and 10 of them fertilized! Yep, I cried again. Last time we had 6 fertilized at this point. They set the transfer for 5 days later on Thursday February 23. I didn’t get a call about how our embryos were doing that day and I started to panic. What if we got there and there were no blastocysts and we just had to go home?! I called and was told there was no update. We finally got into the room and the doctor told us there were 2 great blastocysts we could transfer. There were a remaining 6 embryos still alive she said they would let grow a little longer and see if they could get to a good blastocyst stage. There was a good chance we would have some frozen at the end of this, too! She said there was about a 50% chance of pregnancy by transferring 1, and a 65% chance by transferring 2. My husband said it was up to me. I chose to do 2 embryos again. I was on bedrest again that day and had acupuncture that evening. One day after our transfer I found out that of the 6 embryos we still had, 5 of them made it to freeze. We had 5 embryos left and 2 (hopefully) trying to implant inside of me. It was such a change from our last cycle, I had to pinch myself at times.
There are lots of websites about diets and food you are supposed to eat to help implantation that I had somewhat followed in the past. A well-known one is pineapple core (yes, the hard part). So the 5 days following our transfer I ate a few pieces of pineapple core a day and drank lots of water. I also had to start estrogen patches and progesterone in oil shots.
The next Tuesday, 5dp5dt (that is infertility speak for 5 days post 5 day transfer, the rough equivalent to 10 days after ovulation, 4 days before a missed period), I was feeling some symptoms and decided to use my 1 home pregnancy test. I wondered if one of those embryos (or both) would actually implant. Could I be that lucky? (Which is ridiculous to ask yourself after you’ve been through all that we have.) It was faint, but positive! I kept testing. It could easily be a chemical pregnancy or similar to my last IVF experience. But the lines kept getting darker. I even went to the dollar store to get a test that isn’t that sensitive and it was positive, too. Saturday March 4 was my first blood test (9dp5dt). My progesterone and estrogen were really good, but mostly importantly my HCG was 94 this time, much higher than last time. My next beta on March 8 (12dp) and was over 350. My 3rd and final beta showed my progesterone and estrogen continuing to rise (even though I had stopped the patches at the direction of the doctor) and my HCG was over 3000. We scheduled the first ultrasound for Monday March 20. Even though my numbers were much higher, I was starting to feel the effects of exhaustion, and other symptoms stronger than last time, I was still so nervous. At that point I was 6 weeks and 2 days. Thankfully the doctor came right in. And there was a little baby in there this time! We were even able to see the heartbeat on the ultrasound screen. In the midst of all the joyful tears and congratulations, we were told we ‘graduated’ and I needed to start making appointments with my regular OB. I had my 8 week check up Thursday April 6 with everything looking good and had another ultrasound to check growth on Thursday April 20. When it came up on the screen I believe my first words were something like, “It’s still in there! Thank God!” I, of course, proceeded to cry. The baby is all measuring on track with a strong heartbeat of 160.
This past Saturday, I marked my 12th week of pregnancy. We are due November 11 and finally feel comfortable sharing our news with others. Apart from a lot of tiredness and a little nauseousness I’ve been feeling pretty good so far. After all we’ve been through I don’t regret a single decision we made. I am so grateful there is this technology available, we had a choice of clinics and hospitals to go to, and have success with it. So many people are limited depending on their finances, insurance, location, and time to go through with something as intense as IVF, not once but twice. I am thankful I have a supportive husband and support system in place in my life to help me through it all. I am not sure how we could have managed otherwise. I hope and pray every day our infertility story truly ends with the birth of our beautiful second child in November. Then we can really begin to heal from this and start our new story being parents of 2!
