My husband and I have been dealing with infertility now for almost 3 years. After seeing the title of this posting, I guess it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Round 1 did not work out quite as we had hoped. Plus, if you live anywhere close to the Philadelphia tri-state area, I’d be willing to bet that you could play the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game with your friends and meet someone who knows us and knows that Round 1 was not successful… which brings me to the reason for my blog debut!
You’ll have to forgive me, but I really have no idea how to blog and I don’t have much experience with creative writing, even though my husband is a high school English teacher and if he put his mind to it, could probably bust out a best-selling novel in the time it takes us to get through Round 2 (for those of you new to IVF, that’s about 6 weeks from now). I, on the other hand, have never even written an article for a school newspaper back in high school/college, or submitted a letter to the editor for the local newspaper. In fact, I’ve never even posted a reply to someone else’s blog. But, the time has come and I have decided that it’s time to put pen to paper (or since it’s the 21st century, fingers to keyboard) and take a stab at writing as freely and openly as I possibly can to help get through the craziness that I know Round 2 will bring. So, what exactly has pushed me into this unfamiliar world of blogging? Well, I can sum it up in one word: Anonymity!
You see, during Round 1, we were wildly optimistic (and also wildly naive) about our chances. Trying IVF was NOT a no-brainer for me. It took me a while just to get to the point where I could even utter the words IVF. I felt like I was in secret world of IVF doctor’s appointments and research. Not even my husband, D, really grasped my inner struggles with deciding when and if to give it a try. Once I came to terms with everything and made the decision to give it a shot, that secret IVF world instantly disappeared into thin air and it felt like everyone, literally everyone, knew what we were doing.
At first, just my mom, my 2 best friends (K&S), and 2 friends from work (N&S) were chosen as the “lucky ones” who would join us on the IVF journey. We also shared the news with a couple more “select few” friends but, as I should have guessed, things quickly spiraled out of control. News travels quickly, and before we knew it, just about everyone we’ve ever met knew what was going on. It was almost as if I had a big tattoo - “We’re trying IVF” - stamped on my forehead. By everyone, I mean everyone… parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces/nephews, friends, work friends, even random strangers. Somehow, though, despite all of the moral considerations that go along with IVF, to our pleasant surprise, everyone was supportive; everyone was pulling for us. (Even D’s parents who are classic old school, Catholic parents, who were not likely to be supportive of any type of assisted reproductive techniques, were amazing and wonderful.).
Anyway, as for telling everyone about Round 1, I’ll chalk it up to a classic rookie mistake! While we were eternally grateful for everyone's love, prayers and support, giving everyone the play-by-play became very overwhelming… repeating the same stories, sharing the same information and providing daily updates with each and every person, every single day became too much to handle. Talk about stress-overload!
So here we are now at the beginning of Round 2, smarter and wiser, and this time around, only our new anonymous blog friends know that it has officially begun. Hopefully, blogging will help me to resist the temptation to start telling people again. (Wish me luck on that one!). The hardest part will be NOT telling my mom. My mom has a heart of gold and wants for nothing more than for us to have a baby. I honestly think that if a genie suddenly appeared one day and offered her 3 wishes, she would use up all 3 wishes on us. I’m serious… no wish for world peace, no wish for millions of $$, no wish for the cure for cancer, aids or terminal diseases. All 3 wishes would be happily and unselfishly sent our way. In the meantime, since it’s highly unlikely that a genie will magically appear, she spends her time searching for head’s up pennies, four-leaf clovers and shooting stars, hoping, dreaming and praying for us and our someday baby-to be, God-willing!! You just have to love her!! I do. She's my best friend. So, you can imagine how upset she is going to be when she finds out that Round 2 is underway and she is out of the loop (at least for today). She was so heartbroken when it didn't work the first time, so hopefully I can spare her of this roller-coaster for at least a few weeks. It’s going to be nearly impossible to keep it from her all-together, but if all goes well, it sure would be a GREAT surprise to share some amazing news with her (and my dad, family, friends) around Thanksgiving. We sure would have a lot to be thankful for!
I supposed that like a lot of couples, when we decided to do IVF, we told ourselves we would “try it once.” Strangely enough, I am still sort of in denial when it comes to accepting that we have infertility problems. I’m sure that must sound really bizarre. I mean, really, we’ve been married and trying for 3 years (on October 27th), I had a heart-shaped uterus (which is now fixed) and my husband has been diagnosed with male infertility (everything low including count, motility, etc…). Luckily, D was born to be a dad and was willing to try anything to help our chances. What a trooper! He even had surgery on his “family jewels” last December, which we now affectionately refer to as “The Christmas Ball Surgery,” since the operation was performed on Christmas Eve. It’s been almost a year and despite his willingness to go under the knife in the most intimate of areas, there has been no improvement so far. Since we are not good candidates for IUI, we decided to give IVF-ICSI a try, and while we transferred 2 beautiful, high quality embryos during Round 1, overall, it was unsuccessful. Since we didn’t have any embryos to freeze, here we are at the starting line again, holding out the highest hopes and trying to be optimistic. I am hopeful that it will work this time (even though in the back of my mind, I still don’t think it’s out of the question for me get, affectionately, knocked-up the old fashion way someday! “Ya Gotta Believe” right?!?!
So, here’s a brief summary of our story so far:
- 7/23/09: Round1 begins after lots of tests, procedures, pokes, prods, drama…
- 8/16/09: Day of retrieval, 15 eggs, 7 mature, 2 fertilized using ICSI
- 8/19/09: Day of transfer (somehow those 2 little fighter-embies made it!)
- 8/31/09: Bloodwork – came back really low at 15 – which technically signaled a pregnancy, but use HIGH CAUTION with any optimism
- 9/2/09: Bloodwork – came back at 8 – levels decreasing meaning not pregnant (anymore)
- 9/4/09: Bloodwork – came back at 4 – officially not pregnant
Here’s a look at where we are going from here… think happy thoughts!
- October 1st: Ultrasound and blood work, start pill
- October 10th: Start Lupron (never took this before, so I’m a little nervous)
- October 18th: Stop pill
- October 23rd: Next ultrasound and blood work, receive additional instructions/possibly start stims
- November 3rd: Tentative retrieval
- November 6th: Tentative transfer
Hopefully we’ll have the best Thanksgiving ever!
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