September 2012
The time has come to begin our first IVF cycle. I was excited but nervous. Our first appointment we went over our IVF calendar. There is a lot of time prep involved getting your body just right for IVF. We then went over the medications we were going to need with our RE. This is also the appointment that I about passed out when they showed me the needles I was going to have to inject medicine into my belly with. If anyone knows me, you know I am extremely terrified of needles. I couldn't even imagine administering a shot myself into my stomach, but I guess when you want something bad enough you will do anything for it, so I put my big girl panties on for a minute and dealt with it. Basically the first appointment was an informative appointment to tell you what was going to happen and what to expect. During this appointment Jake also produced his little swimmers we would use to fertilize with my eggs when the time came.
We walked out of our first appointment and called the fertility pharmacy to order our medications. We were aware they were going to be expensive so we were not that surprised when our total just for medication came to a little under $4,000.00. Our RE put me on birth control to control my cycle. Weird huh... Let's put you on birth control to try and get you pregnant. Now of course it all makes sense, but at first I though she was crazy. So here I am thinking I just had a surgery to basically "fix" a women, and now their putting me on birth control. All the things I'm doing are usually to prevent a pregnancy, not to prepare for one. This is another one of the many many things I have learned about a women's reproductive system. I started taking prenatal vitamins at this time as well. I was on prenatal vitamins and birth control for about a month and a half before moving forward.
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| The medication for our first round of IVF |
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| We labeled our medication per day so we wouldn't forget anything. This was all for one shot. We had to mix the medication together then put it in the syringe. |
October 2012
October 31, 2012. The day of my first ultrasound, the shot class, and the day of my first shot. I was terrified. I used to love Halloween, but lets just say, this year's Halloween sucked! The ultrasound went well, no cysts on my ovaries, everything looked great. That was a good sign right!? Now came the shot class. There was no way I could administer the shot to myself, so Jake had to practice on a rubber square shaped bubble looking thing so he knew what he was doing. The nurse showed us how to mix the medication and when to take the medication. After that we were sent on our marry way to enjoy the rest of our evening (NOT)! All I did the whole way home was stress about these stupid shots. Now I look back and I think, it really wasn't that bad, but since my very first shot I have had thousands of needles in my skin so it doesn't effect me as bad as it used to. But seriously... take your worst fear and picture yourself having to do that fear twice a day every day, would you be excited about it? It was brutal. It is now the evening of Halloween and shot time has come. Here I am laying on our bed with my belly button pointing to Jake waiting for him to stick the needle into me. It's was the worst waiting period of my life. I wanted it to be over, so I would tell him hurry and get it over with, then when he would get close I would start screaming, wait, wait, wait!!! You are probably laughing right now thinking of this scene. I mean now I'm actually putting it into words, I'm chuckling at myself as well. We were finally able to get it over with and when he actually stuck me with the needle it wasn't that bad. It felt like a little bee sting. A whole lot of fuss for a whole lot of nothing... lol.
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| The needles used to inject medication |
November 2012
It's now November and November brings a whole bunch of Dr's appointments. Because I'm now taking medication to create lots of little eggs, my ovaries are growing every day. I had an appointment almost every day to check how things were going. Matter of fact I had an appointment on 11/3, 11/6, 11/7, 11/8, 11/9, 11/10, and 11/11. Every appointment I would have an Ultrasound and they would measure my ovaries and count the follicles. The follicles gave the Dr's a good idea of how many eggs they were going to be able to retrieve on egg retrieval day, which was scheduled for 11/12. They also measured them so they knew when they were ready to retrieve. At every appointment I also had to have my blood drawn to test my hormone levels.
To step back a little bit, my veins are incredibly hard to get blood out of. Every single Dr. / Nurse that has tried to take my blood has the hardest time. They say that my veins are very little and they shrivel up when the needle hits them. I have also had one Nurse tell me they run a different way than normal veins. Because of this it usually takes most Dr's and Nurses three to four tries to get my blood. Usually within those three to four tries they blow a vein and I about pass out. Let's just say as simple as a blood draw should be, it becomes quite the process with me. But I am in luck because I found my goddess. She is amazing!!!!! She is able to get it the first time every time. Every time I schedule an appointment I make sure she is going to be there because it's such a nightmare when everyone else tries. It's even to the point where the nurses make sure she is going to be there because they all know that they are not able to do it for me.
Anyway....So between ultrasounds, blood draws, shots, and feeling like your ovaries are going to explode, I was so ready for my egg retrieval day. It was the night before egg retrieval day and we were instructed to administer the trigger shot at midnight that night. The trigger shot is what releases all the eggs. They don't want the eggs to release to early so you have to make sure you do the shot right when your told. At midnight we did the final stomach injection.
November 12, 2012 was my egg retrieval day. Many of you might wonder what egg retrieval is. A women usually releases one egg around ovulation time each month, when the sperm and the egg meet, the sperm fertilizes the egg and creates an embryo, which then eventually grows into a baby. When you do IVF the RE is making your body release several eggs at once. Egg retrieval is when they put you to sleep and take a needle through your vagina into your ovaries and remove the eggs by sucking them out through a small hole in the needle into a tube. When I first got to the appointment the anesthesiologist came out and met with me. He explained that he was going to put me under light anesthesia and the procedure would last about 15-20 minutes. They then took me back into the room. Once again the anesthesiologist couldn't get the IV in to administer the anesthesia. He tried three times before he was finally able to get it in. Let me remind you that before he tried to put the needle in two of the times, he also numbed it. So I would have to have a shot to numb it and then a poke from the needle for anesthesia. He tried it twice in my arm, then he looked at my wrists, nothing was looking good there, so he even looked at my feet. At this point I was kind of freaking out. A needle is bad enough let alone a needle in my foot!! Finally I told him just to do it in my wrist. He tried it without numbing it first because he had poked me so much before, but I couldn't handle it so he numbed it and finally got it in. After he got it in things went very smoothly. I drifted off to sleep. A little while later I woke up and they were just finishing up. They took me into a recovery room and let me lay in bed for a little bit. They let Jake come in and they told us that they were able to get 12 eggs. They said that was a really good number and they had high hopes.
After about 30 minutes the nurse came in to ask how I was doing. I was feeling great until she told us what our next step was... She pulled out the shots of all shots. She explained that now I was going to have to take shots in my hips. These shots are intramuscular shots that you have to put deep into your hips. The medication is progesterone and estrogen. These two medications are actually produced in a normal women's pregnancy when they become pregnant and they help prepare the body for the pregnancy, but because we are doing this the "not normal" way we had to administer this medication into my body ourselves. Unlucky for me the Progesterone that was describes is actually oil, so it's extremely hard to inject. So not only does it hurt putting the needle in, they have to push it extremely hard and it takes twice as long as it should to get the stupid stuff out. She had me turn over and showed Jake how and where to stick it. "Ouch!" She gave us a couple shots to get us by a couple days and told us that they had ordered some at the pharmacy and we had to call to pay for it and they would ship it to us (yet another bill we weren't expecting).
Finally after seven shots / pokes with a needle they let me go home. They scheduled our Embryo Transfer for November 17, 2012, five days after the Egg Retrieval. Throughout the week the doctor's would call us to let us know the status of our embryos. They said things were going great.
It's not November 17, 2012, the day of Embryo Transfer. They schedule this appointment for a half hour before they actually take you in. When you get there they give you a valume to relax your muscles. Also during this appointment you have to have your bladder full so you drink lots of water. The RE came and got Jake and I and we went back into a room. She told us that they were able to get six really good embryos. She said one of those embryos was perfect. She said that this particular embryo could be published in a text book, that's how good it was. Now came the time to decide if we wanted to transfer one or two embryos. Because we had such a good embryo our RE recommended we only transfer one. She said that she had an excellent success percentage with couples like us and embryos like we had. She said that she actually had never had an unsuccessful procedure with couples like us. Even though she was so positive I still didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't want to take the risk of having multiples because of the high risk pregnancy, but I knew we couldn't afford to do this over and over if it didn't work, so I was torn. Finally our RE said " I am so confident this is going to work that I will do a Frozen Embryo Transfer free of charge if it does not work, and you guys will only have to purchase the medication again." We felt that this was a fair offer and because of her confidence we started to feel good about it as well, so we chose to transfer one embryo.
To do an embryo transfer they put a catheter in and simply inject the embryos into your lining. They take back the tube that they had the embryos in and look through a microscope to make sure they were injected. They take the catheter out and you lay on the bed for about 15 minutes, with little to no movement. After 15 minutes you go home and basically have to be on bed rest for the rest of that day and two following days. My RE calls these days princess days. I am very lucky to have such a good husband to take care of me, because he truly treat me like a princess. He made me some of the best dinners and cleaned our house, etc. It was fantastic! He was a little bossy whenever I would get up to go to the bathroom or something. He kept saying "don't move around to much", "you just need to hold still so our baby will stick". It was actually kind of cute! The beginning day of the princess day was also the beginning of the dreadful 10 day waiting period. The 10 day waiting period is the wait after the transfer to take your first blood pregnancy test to see if the procedure was successful. This is the longest 10 days of your life!! This was also the most painful 10 days of my life as far as my hips go. Let's just say the intramuscular shots are a killer. They don't only hurt going in, they make your hips so sore and bruised. They leave knots in your hips, it's just miserable! Also keep in mind that still to this point nobody knew that we had done this procedure except for Jake and I so we couldn't even talk about any of it to our friends or family.
November 26, 2012 was the date of our first beta test (pregnancy test). We had an appointment bright and early at 8:00 a.m. They drew my blood and then we had to wait, and wait, and wait. Aside from the 10 day waiting period, I think this day beats the longest day of your life. I did go to work after the blood test to see if it would help my mind stay occupied so I didn't think about it as much, but I don't think it helped to much. Jake was also at work. It was close to 5:00 p.m. and I still had not received a call, so I called them. They transferred me to my RE, and the whole time I was on hold I was shaking. All I could think about was how we could tell our parents. I had waited for this day for 2 1/2 years, and it was finally going to happen. I was a little scared, but our RE was so positive so I thought we had it made. Our RE finally got on the phone and the first words out of her mouth was, I'm so sorry Shala, we didn't get a positive pregnancy test. At first I didn't quite understand what she was saying. She was so positive about it, how could it not work? I was asking all kinds of questions and she was trying to explain the best she could about why she thought it might not have worked. I just broke. I got off the phone with her and I called Jake. I walked out of work and went straight home. All the way home I was crying. When I got home I just fell into Jake's arms and we cried together. We talked about it a bit, but really the only thing we could do was cry. I kept thinking, we went through all of this for nothing. I was so sad, angry, and frustrated. I had so many emotions on that day that I couldn't control what I was feeling. Jake and I decided that it was time to tell our parents that we had tried IVF and it failed so everyone knew what was going on. Jake called his parents and I called mine. Luckily they were very supportive and very sympathetic.
A couple days after our dreadful news we scheduled an appointment with our RE to go over every thing and discuss moving forward. When we got to the RE's office she came out to get us. She was very sympathetic and apologized to us. She reminded us that we still had five embryos that we had froze. She said I told you guys I would do a frozen embryo transfer free of charge if this didn't work and I am going to live up to my word. She said that she was still very optimistic that we would have a successful pregnancy. She said with our history and the way things are looking she thinks we were just unlucky, but she was very optimistic that this was going to work for us.
To step back a little bit, my veins are incredibly hard to get blood out of. Every single Dr. / Nurse that has tried to take my blood has the hardest time. They say that my veins are very little and they shrivel up when the needle hits them. I have also had one Nurse tell me they run a different way than normal veins. Because of this it usually takes most Dr's and Nurses three to four tries to get my blood. Usually within those three to four tries they blow a vein and I about pass out. Let's just say as simple as a blood draw should be, it becomes quite the process with me. But I am in luck because I found my goddess. She is amazing!!!!! She is able to get it the first time every time. Every time I schedule an appointment I make sure she is going to be there because it's such a nightmare when everyone else tries. It's even to the point where the nurses make sure she is going to be there because they all know that they are not able to do it for me.
Anyway....So between ultrasounds, blood draws, shots, and feeling like your ovaries are going to explode, I was so ready for my egg retrieval day. It was the night before egg retrieval day and we were instructed to administer the trigger shot at midnight that night. The trigger shot is what releases all the eggs. They don't want the eggs to release to early so you have to make sure you do the shot right when your told. At midnight we did the final stomach injection.
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| Trigger Shot |
After about 30 minutes the nurse came in to ask how I was doing. I was feeling great until she told us what our next step was... She pulled out the shots of all shots. She explained that now I was going to have to take shots in my hips. These shots are intramuscular shots that you have to put deep into your hips. The medication is progesterone and estrogen. These two medications are actually produced in a normal women's pregnancy when they become pregnant and they help prepare the body for the pregnancy, but because we are doing this the "not normal" way we had to administer this medication into my body ourselves. Unlucky for me the Progesterone that was describes is actually oil, so it's extremely hard to inject. So not only does it hurt putting the needle in, they have to push it extremely hard and it takes twice as long as it should to get the stupid stuff out. She had me turn over and showed Jake how and where to stick it. "Ouch!" She gave us a couple shots to get us by a couple days and told us that they had ordered some at the pharmacy and we had to call to pay for it and they would ship it to us (yet another bill we weren't expecting).
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| Intramuscular Shots "Ouch" |
It's not November 17, 2012, the day of Embryo Transfer. They schedule this appointment for a half hour before they actually take you in. When you get there they give you a valume to relax your muscles. Also during this appointment you have to have your bladder full so you drink lots of water. The RE came and got Jake and I and we went back into a room. She told us that they were able to get six really good embryos. She said one of those embryos was perfect. She said that this particular embryo could be published in a text book, that's how good it was. Now came the time to decide if we wanted to transfer one or two embryos. Because we had such a good embryo our RE recommended we only transfer one. She said that she had an excellent success percentage with couples like us and embryos like we had. She said that she actually had never had an unsuccessful procedure with couples like us. Even though she was so positive I still didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't want to take the risk of having multiples because of the high risk pregnancy, but I knew we couldn't afford to do this over and over if it didn't work, so I was torn. Finally our RE said " I am so confident this is going to work that I will do a Frozen Embryo Transfer free of charge if it does not work, and you guys will only have to purchase the medication again." We felt that this was a fair offer and because of her confidence we started to feel good about it as well, so we chose to transfer one embryo.
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| Our first embryo we transferred. |
November 26, 2012 was the date of our first beta test (pregnancy test). We had an appointment bright and early at 8:00 a.m. They drew my blood and then we had to wait, and wait, and wait. Aside from the 10 day waiting period, I think this day beats the longest day of your life. I did go to work after the blood test to see if it would help my mind stay occupied so I didn't think about it as much, but I don't think it helped to much. Jake was also at work. It was close to 5:00 p.m. and I still had not received a call, so I called them. They transferred me to my RE, and the whole time I was on hold I was shaking. All I could think about was how we could tell our parents. I had waited for this day for 2 1/2 years, and it was finally going to happen. I was a little scared, but our RE was so positive so I thought we had it made. Our RE finally got on the phone and the first words out of her mouth was, I'm so sorry Shala, we didn't get a positive pregnancy test. At first I didn't quite understand what she was saying. She was so positive about it, how could it not work? I was asking all kinds of questions and she was trying to explain the best she could about why she thought it might not have worked. I just broke. I got off the phone with her and I called Jake. I walked out of work and went straight home. All the way home I was crying. When I got home I just fell into Jake's arms and we cried together. We talked about it a bit, but really the only thing we could do was cry. I kept thinking, we went through all of this for nothing. I was so sad, angry, and frustrated. I had so many emotions on that day that I couldn't control what I was feeling. Jake and I decided that it was time to tell our parents that we had tried IVF and it failed so everyone knew what was going on. Jake called his parents and I called mine. Luckily they were very supportive and very sympathetic.
A couple days after our dreadful news we scheduled an appointment with our RE to go over every thing and discuss moving forward. When we got to the RE's office she came out to get us. She was very sympathetic and apologized to us. She reminded us that we still had five embryos that we had froze. She said I told you guys I would do a frozen embryo transfer free of charge if this didn't work and I am going to live up to my word. She said that she was still very optimistic that we would have a successful pregnancy. She said with our history and the way things are looking she thinks we were just unlucky, but she was very optimistic that this was going to work for us.
(to read about our FET (frozen embryo transfer) experience go to the next tab)
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