IVF - Quite the Whirlwind

Still Rocking & Rolling!

2009-11-06T09:10:00.000-08:00

November 6th

Amazing news! Our embryos are all still rocking and rolling… all 9 of them!!!

As of this AM, we had one 4-cell, one 3-cell and seven 2-cell embryos and they are all doing great! I'm still hopeful. Of course, I am nervous and cautious as well, but I'm so happy and proud that they are making it. Such strong little buggers!

I won't know until tomorrow whether the transfer will be tomorrow (Saturday) or Monday. Basically, they will check them again really early tomorrow morning to determine if there are any front-runners - highest quality. If they can choose 2 that stand out from the rest, they will do the transfer tomorrow. Otherwise, if I still have 5 high quality embies and they are all doing well, they may make the decision to wait until Monday. We'll see...

Can't wait to bring my little embies "home!"

Fingers still crossed!!!

Lucky #9

2009-11-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

November 5th

I’m working from home today so I can take it easy. My firm is great! Just waiting, on the edge of my seat, for the embryologist to call now with an update. Ring phone, ring!!!

Wait! They just called… here’s an update! During yesterday’s procedure, they retrieved 15 eggs retrieved. I just found out that 13 were mature and 9 fertilized!!! 9!!! I’m so relieved and for the first time, feeling a little more hopeful. Fingers crossed! If everything works out, the transfer will take place either on Saturday or Monday, depending on how successfully they grow over the next few days! Wow, I’m in total shock!! Speechless! WOW!! 9 fertilized, compared to only 2 last time. This has to be a good sign!!

By the way, I finally caved and told my mom yesterday. She’s so excited and loves being in the loop so I’m glad I told her. It was so hard holding out during the past month, but I’m happy that she will be a part of everything now. Hopefully, she will try to keep it on the down-low from the rest of my family for a while (except my dad).

Of course she promised to keep it quiet, but we'll see about that, especially since she's going to see all of my aunts and uncles on Saturday night for a party. I know it will be hard for her to resist. I tried to stress the "surprise" part of it to her... that I would really like the opportunity to surprise everyone with some good news if it works out. She seemed to get it, but she's so excited that I know it will be hard. Geez, it’s hard for me! Either way, if she tells some people, it won’t be the end of the world. We’ll take all of the love, support and prayers we can get over the next few weeks, so I’ll just look at it that way.

Come on, little embies, grow, grow, grow!!! I love them all so much already!

Heating Up

2009-11-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

November 4, 2009

It’s been a while since my last posting, but things are starting to heat up with IVF #2.
I had my egg retrieval today, Wednesday, November 4th. Everything went really well and they were able to retrieve 15 eggs! I am in total shock! They actually got 15 eggs last time too, but my medicine protocol was totally different this time so I was expecting half of that. The protocol called for a "slow and steady" path to retrieval, so I'm really happy with the outcome. Of course cautiously optimistic for now, but starting with 15 good eggs gives me hope!

After the retrieval, I actually had a pretty rough time with pain (much worse than last time), so I was all looped up on pain killers for most of the day. Haha! Started feeling much, much better by mid-afternoon, thank God!

Now, the waiting begins! Hoping for good maturity and fertilization report tomorrow AM. Fingers crossed!!!!!

Signs!

2009-10-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

So, I’ve been chatting with some new IVF friends on an IVF discussion board over the past few weeks and one thing that really jumped out at me is that a lot of IVF’ers look for signs that they are doing the right thing. I guess it's normal after all to second-guess everything. Funny because I thought I was the only one!!

For my first IVF, my husband bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers, which included 2 lilies. Since we transferred 2 embryos, I started watching them every day to see if they were blooming. One bloomed right away, which had me convinced that one embryo stuck and of course that was a sure sign that I was pregnant. Wish it was that simple, huh?

This time around, I’m feeling more nervous than excited, so I’m still looking for those signs and I think I just got one! What do you think? In my first blog post, I said the following: “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.”

My mom has no idea that I started a blog (she doesn’t even have a computer) or that round 2 has begun for us. BUT… just yesterday, she gave me a card that had the following line: “If only I could get my hands on a magic lamp and rub it until a genie appeared, I would ask for an end to all your cares and the beginning of great happiness for you.”

Weird, right? I’m taking it as the PERFECT SIGN that starting round 2 is the right thing to do and the timing is right! Good thing, as I just started Lupron this morning.

And we're off....

IVF Round 2 - Here We Go Again

2009-10-02T16:41:00.001-07:00

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!