FET #2

March 2013

     March 11, 2013 we started seeing our RE for the ultrasounds / lining checks again. The Embryo Transfer was scheduled for April 2, 2013. From March to April it was the usual shots in the morning and at night, I was also on medication to lower my prolactin. I was doing everything I needed to do to make sure this pregnancy worked. I seemed to be in a better mood about it all this time too. I had a really good feeling that this one was going to work for us. Now I had one successful cycle down I knew that it could happen, so I had a good feeling. I wasn't to stressed about it and the shots were getting easier to bare. We decided that we were going to transfer our last two frozen embryos, so at this point we were just praying that both of the embryos would make it through the thaw so we could have a better success rate.

April 2013

    Our second FET was scheduled for April 2, 2013. When we showed up our RE came out and said that both our embryos thawed beautifully.

Our two embryos we transferred on April 2, 2013. 

   We were extremely happy to hear that because that meant we could transfer them both and have a higher chance of success. We again went through the embryo transfer process. It went smoothly just as the rest of them did. I was sent home for another set of princess days. We scheduled our first Beta test for April 12, 2013. Here we go again with the dreadful 10 day waiting period. 

    My anxiety level was through the roof this time. I wanted it to work so badly. Especially because these were the last two embryos we had. It was kind of like a last try for us. I searched for stories on the web about successful pregnancies after a failed IVF and a miscarriage. There are a lot of stories out there that give you hope. During the wait I also searched for when a pregnancy can be read on a pregnancy test after an embryo transfer. I read some stories that said they had a positive pregnancy test around day five after the transfer, but the majority of them said around day eight. I couldn't wait those two extra days so I went and bought a box of pregnancy tests. I POAS (peed on a stick) the morning of day eight after the transfer and low and behold I received my faint but very first positive POAS test. 

Very faint but positive pregnancy test!!!

Again I was super excited. I went and told Jake and he was excited too. We tried not to go overboard because we knew what happened last time, but it's hard not to be excited when you have been trying so hard an you see that little plus sign. 

    Day 10 after our transfer finally came and I went to the RE for our first Beta test. Even though the POAS test that I took that morning showed positive I was still a little nervous. Once the blood test came back and confirmed that we were indeed pregnant again and the numbers looked good I felt a little better. We didn't go all out this time telling people because of what happened last time. We did tell our parents, and I believe our parents told our siblings, but that's all we told. It was so hard last time to tell everybody that I had a miscarriage, we just felt it was better to make sure we could get past the first trimester before telling everybody. 

    Now that I knew our pregnancy would show up on a POAS test I couldn't keep myself from taking them. Because our miscarriage happened shortly after our first Beta last time, I wanted to make sure that the positive sign was getting darker. I took another POAS test on day 12 after our transfer and there was no vertical line to create a positive. I took another POAS test and still nothing. At that point I knew I had lost our babies once again. I had another miscarriage. I went down stairs and laid down our bed. Jake was still home from work. I told him that the pregnancy test showed negative. We just laid there and didn't really know what to do. I had cried so much before I couldn't even cry. It was all so surreal. One minute your the happiest person in the world, and the next your heart is ripped right out of your chest and everything you have ever been looking for disappears without explanation. I decided to call our RE even though our second Beta appointment wasn't until April 16, 2013. She had us come in so they could run a blood test to make sure. They ran a blood test and it's was crystal clear by the numbers that I had lost once again another pregnancy. We talked to our RE and she told us she don't know what is going on. She said they treated everything they could think that might have caused the first miscarriage. She told us that 50% of the time there is no explanation for reoccurring miscarriages. She recommended Jake and I do a bunch of blood tests to rule out some blood clotting disorders, etc and she was going to take our case to some other RE's in the office to see if they might have an idea of what is going on. She told us to come back in the office in about 4 weeks to discuss the blood test results and the information she received from the other RE's. She wrote us up an order to get the blood tests and we walked out of the office. 

      We were clearly devastated. All of the questions of why us had now become frustrations and it's not fair.  I was struggling in every aspect of emotions. Jake was also struggling. He was able to keep his head high and think of the best until now, but after being let down so much it's hard to see anything positive out of it all. We once again tried to start the healing process of our loss. Day by day it became easier, but I will never fully recover from the loss of our four beautiful Angels. It tore me up inside that I didn't get to at lease hold them, or name them, or see what gender they were going to be. I mean I know it was early in the pregnancy but it just felt wrong to go to the bathroom one day and flush it all down the toilet. It was devastating! Everything that we had been through, all the shots, medication, emotions, pushing ourselves to move on from our devastating past to just have to go through another devastation. It is all so hard to take.

 The two at the top are the shots that are injected in your hips after the 

Embryo Transfer. The other two are the ones that are injected

into your abdomen before the Embryo retrieval.

We are up to 3 containers full of needles / syringes.

These are all the shots / needles that I have had to take so far.

       I wanted to have a place to go to mourn so I decided to create a memorial garden. It's just a small flower garden in the back of my home where I can go to sit and think about them. Even though I didn't get to hear a heartbeat I still felt them in my heart and will always cherish the couple days I got with them. I will always be a Mother and Jake will always be a Father to four beautiful Angels, even though we didn't actually get to see them or hold them, and we will always be grateful for that. 

Our sweet little Memorial Garden for our Four Baby Angels

May 2013

      A few weeks after our loss we went into the RE to have the blood tests recommended by our RE. They took over 10 vials of blood from me. So much blood that one of my veins stopped producing so I had to wait a little bit before they could finish. They were running any and every test they could possibly think of to try to figure out what was going on. After we left the RE's office and the days after I did a lot of research on my own. I found something that I thought might be the answer. I found some information about a blood clotting disorder. If you have this particular disorder it can stop the embryo from getting the blood necessary to survive. I found that taking the birth control Yazmin could cause this type of blood clotting disorder. Well it just so happens that when I was on birth control, the birth control I was taking was Yazmin. I called my RE and she said that it could be possible, but the blood test that we just took would let us know for sure. It eased my mind that I found this information thinking that this might be the issue. It also scared me a little because if this was what was going on then I would have to take medication the rest of my life to help the blood clotting disorder. Basically all we could do was wait so I tried to put it in the back of my mind until our test results came back.
     Finally it was four weeks after our appointment and our RE received all our test results. We scheduled an appointment to meet with her once again. When we got there she told us that absolutely every test came back normal. She said I really don't know what is going on. Everything that we can do has been done and all the information we have says that you should be able to carry a baby without any problems. We asked her what our options were. She didn't recommend finding a gestational surrogate yet, and she didn't recommend we find someone to donate their embryos or sperm because all of the information they had showed that our embryos were perfect. She did say after speaking to her fellow RE's in the office that they would like to try another round of IVF and do it a different way with some different medication than the last time. She said that the last time they may have overstimulated my ovaries causing the embryos to not be the best quality. Also she suggested that we start eating healthy and take lots of vitamins. We spoke to the financial adviser again about our options financially and she gave us a few. Our RE then gave us a list of vitamins she wanted Jake and I to start taking and told us to get in touch with her when we have figured out what we would like to do.
    Jake and I discussed our options. We both want to have a baby of our own with both of our genes extremely bad and it makes it that much harder to accept that it might not happen when there are no answers to why this isn't working for us. We discussed Adoption, as well as finding a gestational surrogate to carry our baby. We also discussed another round of IVF. We came to a conclusion that we were going to start taking the vitamins, go on a diet, do a cleanse and prepare ourselves for another round of IVF. We decided that this is going to be our last round of IVF. Whatever embryos we are able to get out of this round we will definitely use, however when we are out of embryos, we have made the decision to take other options if we need too.

(To read about our steps to prepare for our next IVF round go to the next tab)