Change In Plans

Josh and I have done some research and have talked to some adoption agencies and it turns out adoption is WAY more expensive then we ever expected. For now we are putting adoption on the back burner and we will continue to see a fertility doctor and try to get pregnant.

I met with my new fertility doctor last week and she seems very nice. She believes that the reason why we are not getting pregnant is because of the fluid in my fallopian tube because it is toxic to embryos, making implantation very hard to achieve and it increases my chance of miscarriage. The only way to treat this is to close the tube or to remove the tube. Now surgery is not ideal because how much scar tissue I have and how bad my endometriosis is BUT it's our best option, once this surgery is done it will double our chances of getting pregnant with IVF because my uterus is fine and I am young. I am having a hard time with this because this will make it final that Josh and I will NEVER get pregnant on our own, even though we have a very slim chance of that happening now we still have that small percentage so to have my only tube closed is a big deal. I have decided to go ahead with the surgery because I have faith that our next IVF will work without that fluid compromising it. My doctor seems very positive, she knows my fears about having surgery but she has assured me that if she gets in there and there is too much damage she will back out and then place a device called Essure, they will go in vaginally and place the Essure in the fallopian tube which will pretty much plug it up so that the fluid will not leak into the uterus making it a safe place for a baby to grow.

IVF in Michigan is not cheap, it is a lot more expensive here than in New York. My new doctor does a multi cycle plan where you pay a certain amount (a little more than 1 IVF cycle) and you will have 3 fresh cycles and 3 frozen cycles, (fresh cycles means that they go in and retrieve the eggs, frozen means if you have embryos from your fresh cycle to freeze they will thaw them and then place them in the uterus) this will give us technically 6 chances (if we have embryos to freeze) at IVF.

This is obviously more than we can afford but because of my age it is the perfect time for us to continue with IVF (the older you get the slimmer your chances of conception are). My parents decided to host a BBQ in August for friends and family to help raise money for this treatment.

I appreciate all of the support that Josh and I get, this is very hard for the both of us but we have faith that 3 times a charm. Thanks again everyone!

Feeling Discouraged

I am feeling so very overwhelmed, adoption cost so much more than we thought. I feel like every time we finally find the strength to move forward we get set back even further then before. I have so many emotions running through me it's not even funny, I feel angry that we even have to go through this and that I have to "pay" to have a child, I feel sad that it's coming up on 3 years since we started trying and we have nothing to show for it, and I feel jealous of people with kids. I just feel like Josh and I will never have a child together and that hurts me more than anything. Okay I am done with my rant.

Surrogacy

I have to address this because it is driving me crazy. Josh and I are not ready to do or even talk about using a surrogate, I had a hard enough time thinking about adoption let alone something that we are not wanting to do. I appreciate all the offers I get and believe me I get offers almost every day BUT we are just not wanting to do it. This may change in the future but as of right now I have not had a doctor say "you are just never going to be able to carry a baby," so until this happens we are closed off to the idea of using a surrogate. Again we appreciate the offers we are getting but I don't think a lot of people realize what goes into this. When you do surrogacy I still have to go through everything as if I was to do IVF and while I am doing that you would have to take hormone injections to prepare your body for a pregnancy and then they would transfer the embryo (hoping there is a good enough embryo to transfer) then it's a matter of if the embryo implanted or not, and just because you don't have fertility problems does NOT mean you will get pregnant, even if you have carried a child before there is still a chance that it won't work and most fertility doctors say to expect the first IVF cycle not to work (even for surrogacy), most of the time it takes 2 or 3 times. It's very emotional and time consuming for all people involved.

 I want to carry my own child and feel them kick and have my husband touch my belly to feel the baby move and until I am told that this is not ever going to happen then I will continue going through all the injections, blood work, ultrasounds, retrievals, transfers, heartbreak and tears to make my dream of being able to carry mine and Josh's child come true. If the time ever comes (which I hope it doesn't) where we have no other option but to use a surrogate I already know who I am going to use. Until this all happens we are going to continue with looking into adoption and looking for a new fertility doctor to help us get pregnant.
 Thanks everyone for the support :)

Our Next Step

Josh and I have decided that once we are all settled in our place that we are going to put in for adoption. We are still going to continue our fertility journey and find another doctor who will hopefully be able to help us get pregnant, we figure worse comes to worse we will end up with 2 babies and I don’t feel like that is a bad thing. We are going to adopt in the states and will hopefully have our adoption closed in a couple of years. I am VERY excited but also nervous because it is still an emotional roller coaster. I am still having a hard time excepting that we are not pregnant from our last IVF cycle but as time goes on I have been able to heal little by little. I can’t wait to finally be able to hold my own baby even if they are not biologically mine.  It will probably be a couple of months before my next update but wish us luck on our new journey as well as our continued fertility journey.

2nd IVF Attempt

Josh and I were lucky enough to be converted to IVF at the end of October. Everything started off great; they were able to collect 17 eggs like last time and 13 fertilized on their own! Our embryos made it to day 5 and we had 1 perfect blastocyst and one that was good, Josh and I decided that we didn’t want to take any chances so we asked to transfer both of them instead of just one like they recommend. They were so positive and thought it would work because how perfect the quality was.

This time Josh and I knew it worked, we could just feel it! Everything went too great for it NOT to work. We went on Nov. 10^th for my pregnancy test and I told the nurse “I know it worked, I have no doubt in my mind” she said “I sure hope so; everyone in the office is hoping this is it for you!” We got home and we talked about when we were going to tell people and when we were going to tell Kaedence, we were so excited! Then I got the call from my nurse, she said “It’s not good news”  she got chocked up and said “it was negative, I am so sorry”  I was staring at Josh and my heart dropped, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing  I was waiting for her to say JUST KIDDING. After I hung up the phone Josh and I both hugged each other and cried, we just don’t understand what went wrong. 

People keep telling me to pray and put it in God’s hands but that’s what I have been doing for the past 2 ½ years. I can’t just stop trying and not see a fertility doctor; we have no choice but to do IVF because getting pregnant on our own WILL NOT WORK FOR US! I stress this because so many people keep telling me to “stop trying” even though I have explained to them before that we can’t. I put my faith in God and pray that he hears me and in the mean time we have to spend thousands of dollars on something that isn’t working, and frankly I am angry with God and I know most of you will say that I shouldn’t be but that’s how I feel right now, I am tired of having good things dangled in front of us and then in a blink of an eye it’s gone. We are good people who get crapped on and I am just tired of praying and pleading with God. I know this feeling of anger will go away but right now I am grieving.

 I also can’t stand when people say “it will happen” I have been hearing that for way to long and it gets under my skin, please tell me how you “know” that it will happen? It doesn’t make me feel better when you say it so please stop saying it to me.  I know it’s hard for people to come up with things to say and I don’t expect anyone to say anything to me that will cheer me up, but even just a simple “I hope you are feeling well” works. I really am not trying to be mean or sound rude, but you need to understand that after hearing certain things all the time for 2 years it becomes annoying.

Josh and I have decided to take a break for now and get ready for our move and get settled and then we will start interviewing new doctors. I am sorry if this blog comes off a little angry, I am just not in a good place right now.

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and prayers, we truly appreciate them.

Grrr....

August we decided to do a round of timed intercourse with injectable meds, even though our chances of getting pregnant without IVF are very, very slim we figured what the hell a chance is a chance. I started my shots and everything seemed to be going pretty well. I went every couple of days for labs and ultra sounds to see how I was doing and they said that I had a ton of follicles which we were happy about. Since everything was going well they talked to us about converting to IVF instead of timed intercourse, we agreed since my body was again responding well that we could give IVF another shot…….I swear my body heard IVF and basically said F YOU! When I went back to my doctor they found that my levels weren’t going up the way they should, these levels are for the hormones that make the eggs grow so they are pretty important. Dr. Horvath talked to us and said that I have a ton of follicles but they are not the size they need to be in order for him to collect them (I feel like a chicken sometimes lol) so after I had a total melt down in his office he said he would increase my meds and see how they are in a couple of days. Well because my body hates me, my hormone levels dropped leaving me with only 3 good follicles and just because they look good doesn’t mean it holds a mature egg. After talking to the nurse she said that Dr. Horvath would do the retrieval if I insisted but he strongly suggested that I don’t go through with it, they didn’t want me to go through such a traumatic thing and not even have eggs to fertilize, so in the end we cancelled our cycle and we are left again saying WTF!

For those of you who don’t know we are moving in November and moving back to Michigan to be with our family and my step daughter Kaedence. Although I am super excited I am so sad to be leaving Dr. Horvath and his staff. It may sound dumb but I think of them as family, they have been my support team for the past 2 ½ years. No matter how bad my situation was they never gave up hope, and to be honest I don’t know if I will ever find a doctor or nurses that care about me as much as they do. I always thought that the reason I would be discharged from his practice was because I was pregnant, boy was I wrong. So if you are or know anyone who is in the New York area and is having a hard time getting pregnant I strongly suggest AlbanyIVF. Don’t let the fact that I didn’t get pregnant from them change your thoughts on them, I’m a freak of nature ;) I was watching the Rachael Ray show yesterday and they had a women on there who ironically named Christina and is 27 (which I am 26) and has been dealing with fertility problems, she is a patient of Dr. Horvath’s and is pregnant with TRIPLETS! Not going to lie I though “UHG, B*TCH…..that is supposed to be me!” haha. Me? Bitter? Nooo. I would have be 15 weeks along as of Wednesday and I think she was around the same. Oh well, at least that means that maybe there will be hope for me. I may complain and say why me!? Blah, blah, blah, BUT I will never give up that’s for damn sure. I have come too far to throw in the towel. Anyway that’s my update/ rant. Wish us luck on our move!

Bad Day!

I hate days like today, all I can think about is having babies and it breaks my heart that it still hasn’t happened for us. I literally know 13 pregnant women………….that’s a lot! It gets frustrating for me because most of these women are on their 2^nd child and started having babies when Josh and I started trying. I had to block all the pregnant women status’s on my Facebook because it just became too much for me, I don’t blame anyone for posting things about their pregnancy, that’s not the case at all because I know damn well if I were pregnant every post would be about being pregnant but what I am going through is so hard that it’s just best that I don’t see those post for now and it seems the more time that passes the more people I have to block lol. I know this is hard to understand for some people and I don’t expect everyone to get it because in reality unless you have been through infertility you DON’T know what it’s like or how it feels to deal with this every day. Yes I could put a smile on my face and bare through the pregnancy announcements but that’s being fake and it makes it hurt even worse, crying and letting it all out helps me deal with it. And people say “it will happen for you, just be patient,” and “just stay positive.” Bitch please I have been patient I have gone through hell and back trying to conceive my FIRST child and still have NOTHING to show for it, and you try going through what I have gone through, all the test and surgeries, shots and fertility treatments all the while putting that damn smile on my face saying “this will be worth it” and “it will work,” but yet nothing seems to help. So yes I will cry and say it’s not fair and why me!? Frankly I think I have that right, I would like to see anyone go through this and not feel what I am feeling. And yes I know there are women who have gone through this but what people don’t understand is EVERY story is different and comparing what I am going through to what someone else is going through just doesn’t work, so in other words just because so and so got pregnant on their own after a failed IVF cycle does not mean I will get pregnant too, so please just stop saying that to me.

I have been reading a book called “The Infertility Survival Handbook” and the first paragraph had me in tears because she described EXACTLY what I am feeling and even though our stories are different all the women who go deal with infertility have all the same emotions run through them. This is the first paragraph of this book.

            “There isn’t any getting around it: having trouble getting pregnant sucks. Watching your friends conceive almost the minute they start trying when you’ve been trying for what feels like forever (and may very well have been forever), hurts. Your friends with newborns talk about nursing, diaper rash, nannies, balancing work and baby, and sleepless nights. You sit mute and jealous. If you offer any advice, your friends look at you with that “you just don’t understand because you don’t have a baby” expression. Friends with babies can’t go out with you and your husband. In fact, forget about seeing them, unless it’s Saturday afternoon Gymboree.

            Your pregnant friend (who all seem to be on baby number two or three by now) complain about how fat they are, how much the baby is kicking, how insensitive their husbands are, and how awful it is to be pregnant  -or- worse pregnant again. You want to scream! Why can’t they shut up and realize how lucky they are? You would give your left arm and right leg to be pregnant.”

            I love this book so far! Anyway, I am not trying to bash all pregnant women and what not, but don’t be offended if I don’t feel like talking about you being pregnant or if I just don’t feel up to going to a kids play date, try to understand that sometimes I am just not up to doing or talking about these things. I know that people don’t know what to say in these situations so my advice is, if you don’t know what to say then don’t say anything and if I come to you crying or whatever I am really just looking for someone to cry on their shoulder so it’s okay that you sit there silent, I won’t be mad I actually prefer it. ;)