Wednesday, November 7, 2012

3rd IVF Cycle


Josh and started our 3rd IVF cycle at the beginning of October and just like the last two cycles everything started off perfectly! I responded very well to my meds and on October 10th they were able to retrieve 31 eggs, because of how many eggs they were able to get I woke up in a TON of pain (the more eggs the more times you get stabbed with a needle) everyone was so great and my doctor was very happy with the outcome.

 Out of the 31 eggs 15 were mature and 10 fertilized which was great and we had 1 good blastocyst and one good morula (the stage before becoming a blastocyst) and there were a few that were still a little behind, we transferred 2 of them which was an amazing experience because at this clinic Josh was able to be in the room with me during the transfer and they had a huge TV where we watched them put our embryos in the catheter and then it switched over to the ultrasound and we got to watch them place them.  They called us the next day and told us that none of our embryos made it to freezing. Then 2 days after my transfer they ran some labs and my progesterone and estrogen levels were super high (this is good; you need high levels to be able to hold a pregnancy). Of course like any woman going through fertility treatments I was paying attention to every little change that was happing to my body knowing that it could very well be from the meds that I was taking, but I told Josh something is just different this time I can feel it.

 We went in on the 24th for my pregnancy test and was told that they would call us in a couple of hours………well 6 HOURS LATER (they were having a problem with their phones) we get the call saying that we are pregnant but my levels were only at 13 and normally they want to see them above 70 but she assured us that this sometimes happens and women go on to have perfectly healthy babies. Two days later we went in to have our second level check (they want to make sure the pregnancy hormone is doubling every 48 hours) and our nurse called and said that my levels had dropped to 11 but she said sense there wasn’t a significant drop they were still cautiously optimistic, she also said that my thyroid levels are elevated and they need to put me on meds for it right away and it being elevated was strictly fertility induced and can cause problems getting pregnant and staying pregnant. We were super scared but we were trying to be positive.
I had taken a at home pregnancy test after my first lab test because I had never seen a positive on one before, needless to say I was so happy that a second line showed up, and even the day after my levels dropped I took another test and this time the second line was even darker so I thought my levels must be going up if it’s getting darker. The morning of my next lab test I took another home test and there wasn’t even close to being a second line, I went in for my test and my nurse called and said my levels were at 0. Even though we knew it was coming, it still felt like a knife just went straight into our hearts, it made it all too real and now we were left to figure out what happened and what we are going to do next.

Today is especially hard because it was supposed to be my 6 week ultrasound where we would get to hear the baby’s heartbeat.  I cannot tell you all the different emotions that we are feeling; it makes me feel insane sometimes!  We thought this was it because everything preventing us from getting pregnant was taken care of but now my body decided to throw in another wrench and elevate my thyroid preventing me from staying pregnant. We meet with our doctor next week and we will see what she says, I refuse to move forward with any plans to do another IVF cycle until I have had every test possible to see what could have caused this.

We have been more open about using a gestational carrier but we are still not completely ready for it and probably won’t be for a couple of years, I still very much want to carry my own baby and feel that I have been cheated out of so much that most woman get to experience, I will never be able to get pregnant without IVF and that still hurts my heart and I don’t want to miss out on feeling my child grow inside me.

I was really hoping that this would have been the end of our infertility journey so we could move on with our lives and finally be able to have a child together. But I have to suck it up get ready for more tests and start saving for our 4th IVF cycle, if you don’t see me on facebook for a while it’s probably because I ended up having to be committed ;)