Thursday, July 21, 2011

Our First IVF Attempt

As you know Josh and I did our first IVF attempt in June, here is what happened. I was on meds for about two weeks to get my ovary to produce as many follicles (they hold the eggs) as possible, because I only have one ovary we were pretty nervous about this! My retrieval was on June 29th, and when I woke up from the egg retrieval they told us that we had 17 eggs! Mind you I have heard of women with BOTH ovaries who only had 7 eggs retrieved so this was awesome! The next day we got a call from the embryologist (they fertilize the eggs and watch the development) she said that out of 17 eggs 13 were mature and 9 fertilized and we were thrilled everything seemed to be going great! The day of the egg transfer will be depends on how the embryos are developing, usually they do the transfer either 3 days after fertilization when the embryo has developed into 8 cells or on day 5 when the embryos become what is called a blastocyst, this is what most people want to happen because when the embryo gets to the point of becoming a blastocyst it will be hatching within a day or two so the chances of implantation to take place is higher with a day 5 transfer. Unfortunately for us they had us do a 3 day transfer because the embryo quality was not that great and felt that the embryos would do better inside of the womb so after some talking we transferred 2 embryos, as for the rest of the embryos 3 made it to day 5 but the cell quality was not good enough to be frozen so we didn't have any to freeze. Then the two week wait began! This is the longest 2 weeks of our lives!!!! 
I started cramping from the day of our transfer which is good because it could be implantation cramping but because of my history of infections they wanted me to come in for some blood work to make sure everything was ok. I asked the nurse how my levels were doing and she said “they are a little low to be pregnant, but it’s still early.” Needless to say I was freaking out I cried for 2 days, I convinced myself that it didn’t work and I still had 6 days left until my pregnancy test. So July 13th finally came and I was not very positive about what was going to happen, I told Josh to go to work because it was going to be negative so there was no point in being home. Finally the nurse called, she said “I am calling with some unfortunate but good news, your HCG (pregnancy hormone) is 8.4 which means you are pregnant BUT at this point we want to see your HCG at 50 or higher and all your levels are VERY low.” She wanted me to come back in 2 days for more blood work and hopefully my levels would go up.  Josh and I were so excited because we knew this had happened to many women before and they went on to have a normal pregnancy. We figured out when our baby would be due which it would have been March 21st and when we would find out the sex, we felt as if we won the lottery. Sadly our excitement ended in tears when then next day I started bleeding very badly and ended up passing tissue. I still had to go to the doctor for more blood work and by then my HCG levels were at 1. So now we are left to figure out what to do next, unfortunately we cannot get pregnant on own because my only fallopian tube is blocked and the only way to treat it is to remove it.
 My doctor is left being very confused because he said it should have worked, everything went perfectly.  So again Josh and I are left with heartache, we have had such a horrible year and we thought this was going to be it for us, but we were wrong. I still pray and have faith that we will become pregnant we just don’t know how and when.