Not a good couple of days

Tuesday

I know I try to be all brave and prepared for the possibility of being done with my attempts to get pregnant, but I was not prepared for today's phone call. Out of the 9 that fertilized, none are growing at the proper pace. They are going to wait one more day to see if any of them move past morula phase. But I at least got the embryologist to tell me that only 4 seem likely to possibly get there. I just really believed that with 9 I'd have at least 5, and now I'm hoping for all 4, but I know there's a chance I might not even get 4. And this is after being told I make beautiful embryos. I just don't get it. 

I'm trying to keep my hopes up for tomorrow. I know I have 7 frosties from the last cycle but we did things this time to help the eggs, since the 1st 5 we transferred didn't catch at all, and I had really high hopes that my kid was in this batch. I just hope I get good news tomorrow and that more than the 4 or at least all 4 start moving!!! 


Wednesday

So the news sucks. I emailed my RE last night and asked him to check the fertility report today so that we could talk if the worst happened. When I didn't hear anything by 2 I knew it was bad. I called the embryologist because I needed to know. She told me nothing grew. To put it mildly I'm devasted. I know I have 7 left from the last cycle but I was really counting on these new ones, with the Growth Hormone and co-culture I had such high hopes. So about an hour later my RE called. Turns out 1 made it. But its graded CC. My RE agreed with me to freeze it and add it to the others. It will be one of the last ones we try since I have much better graded ones already. This was my last retrieval though. 

Next week (I hope) I'll be going in for a hysteroscopy to see what's happening in my uterus, to see if there's scar tissue or something else stopping implanting since last summer. I'm truly hoping we find something, so that my hopes can rise again with the remaining 8 frosties waiting for me. 

I'm also going to check with the fos-adopt center I plan on using if necessary to see when the next session of classes start, as I had planned on waiting until January to start that, as I thought I would have at least 5 FET cycles ahead of me, but now really only have 2 or 3. 


This really is the first time my body and ovaries failed me in this whole process. I've always had remarkable response to everything so I was completely unprepared for this.

A bit of a Rant!

Great news... 16 retrieved, 11 mature and 9 Fertilized!!!! 

Not so great news. 1st the embryologist told me she was scheduling me for a day 5, then I had to tell her no no I'm an all-freeze. Then she asked me why and I told her to check out my uterus. Ok, here's the not so great part of the call, and you all might think I'm weird, but after all these IUIs and the 1st IVF and 1st FET, I'm tired of hearing it. She said that I make beautiful embryos, that she even looked at my report from my 1st IVF and couldn't understand why I wasn't pregnant yet. So here's my issue...since I started down this road of single-motherhood (in other words all medically supervised) and its been 19 months, I've been told this will be easy. "you're so fertile", "your numbers are amazing" "your ovaries have no clue that you are forty" So I was cocky for the first 1/2 a year, especially when I got pregnant with the 1st and 2nd IUIs once I moved to my RE. But its been exactly a year yesterday(lovely timing right) since my D&C for my last pregnancy/miscarriage. And I haven't been pregnant since. 

So I'm tired of hearing how great my ovaries are, how amazing my embryos look, how fertile I am. 

Just get me pregnant already!!!! 

Ok done with my rant. 

I'm truly happy that I potentially have 9 new embryos to freeze. That gives me (maybe) 16 to work with doing FETs, before I move on. And I truly believe that somewhere in these beautiful embryos is my child!

Summer 2014

So I've done the math and this is what I know.  By July 2014 I will either be a mom, be pregnant or be on the list waiting for a call from the Westside Children's Center about a child needing a home.  So that means I could be a mom by next July!!!  I want to say I will but not knowing how I'm going to get there is kinda of an obstacle.

So how do I know this.  Well I just started my last cycle of IVF.  Meaning this is the last cycle of stims I will be doing and the last time I will be retrieving eggs for transfer.  Oh and the last time I had to pick up the canister of my Sperm Donor.  If my ovaries respond as well this time as they did the last time then the most frozen embryos I will have moving forward is 19 (7 leftover from my last cycle and 12 new ones from this one).  If I were to transfer 3 at a time then the most transfers I can do is 4 ( 3/3 and the final one I would transfer all 4).  Therefore by the Spring if I'm not pregnant that I'm officially moving onto foster to adopt!!!!  I had a meeting last week with the head of foster to adopt at Westside Children's Center and it went great.  The guy was extremely helpful and supportive.  I've decided that I will start taking the training class in January regardless of where I am in my FET process.  I just keep moving this train forward.

I do still believe that this will work.  That I will get pregnant!!!!  But I wanted to learn about the process whether its for baby #1 or baby #2 or even both.  It helps me get through the bad months thinking about what I can do instead of the bad.  Not sure if that makes sense, but it does make sense to me.

So night 2 of stims in the books, blood test tomorrow and then we will see.

Here I go again...and again...and again

Yup, I'm back and still not pregnant.  But I feel good, well almost good.  My Dr. and I have a new protocol in the works for this IVF (which will be my last).  I will still have FETs to do, as I have 7 frozen embryos at the moment and will hopefully add to that number with the current cycle.  Our goal with this cycle is to improve the quality of my eggs even if this means lowering the amount of eggs we retrieve.  So a slower cycle of meds and adding Growth Hormone as well.  I feel like even though my body and ovaries have acting younger then their years, both in response to hormones and recovery times, the truth is I'm 40, yup 40, almost 41, so maybe we need to do a few things that get done for that older crowd I'm a part of.
So Growth Hormone, and yes same thing A-Rod is getting, oh wait nothing's happening to him yet. Anyway, the idea behind the GH is to help the cells in my eggs do what they are supposed to do throughout the retrieval and growth process.  Also we are going to do co-culture, what that means is that normally the egg is removed from the follicle it grows in and placed in a petrie dish with sperm.  In the case of co-culture, the egg is kept with the cells that surround it while in the follicle throughout the fertilization process.  Also adding in assisted Hatching (AH).  After my first IVF, my embryologist called to tell my how well my embryos looked and mentioned because I was over 40 they would do AH, but then she called me back 5 minutes later to say, oops, no AH.  Why?  Because they only do AH, when there are 10 or less embryos and of course I had 12.  Well shit, I'm still over 40, but that was the rule.  So this time I asked my RE about AH and said I'm still over 40 and he smiled and said yes, we will do AH this time!!!!!!!

So I've ordered all my meds and I'm back on BCP till next weekend.  I have my next u/s on Monday to make sure we are ready to go for next weekend.  Egg retrieval is tentatively scheduled for August 28th, one day before the 1 year anniversary of my miscarriage.  Not sure how I feel about that, but I guess I'll find out.  This cycle might be a freeze all, to allow my body to snap back and relax after the stims, but we will see.

That's it for now.

Thanks for reading.

#2

Here I go again.  Transfer tomorrow of 3 embryos.  Yup, 3!  Based on my past numbers my doctors and I feel pretty confident that the possibility of all the 3 embryos catching and being good enough quality to become babies is slim, slim, slim.  But as I may have mentioned here before, I am ok with twins.  Yup, I know crazy right!  Single mom with twins.  But with crazy supportive parents and my sister, I know I can do it.  So one or two I'm good.  THREE, that's a whole 'nother question and I'm not worried about it in the least (famous last words)  My dad is going with me, which I'm happy about because it means he's back on board, so to speak.  I know after my miscarriage last summer he needed to separate himself a bit from the process and I totally understood.  But I'm extremely happy he wanted to go with me tomorrow.  Thanks dad!


So 1:30pm is the transfer and my Beta is on the 28th.  Here I come 2WW

WHEN!!!!

Okay.  So I took a break.  Not a long one, but just long enough.  I didn't care if I took my prenatal, I didn't care if I drank my fresh juice in the morning.  I didn't care if I did my visualizations or took my dose of Royal Jelly or Verdant Vitex.  Nothing.  And it felt good.  And now I'm back.  And coming back was so easy.  The day I knew my cycle was starting that was it. It was like a switch went on.  I just started up and didn't mind.  So here we go...AGAIN!

CD5, and 5th day on estrogen patches.  My numbers on day 3 weren't high enough so I've got 4 1 inch stickers on my belly trying to build up my lining.  The stickers are estrogen patches :)  Then a week from Monday I go in for an ultrasound and another blood test to check my lining and my levels, and then 6 days later we transfer.  3 embryos this time.  I know scary but given my track record I just feel like 2 is not enough.  So 3 it is.  Lets be honest I'm not looking for triplets, but I think I've said this before, Twins are ok by me.  I want my children to have siblings, so twins makes that really easy.  Although anything with twins is not easy, I know that too.

So, its onward and upward!

Oh and the biggest update is that I stopped using the word "IF".  I would always say if/when I get pregnant, if/when I move in with my sister.  Now its only WHEN!!!!!

Now!

Waiting...again...I know that's what this is all about.  The inability to control the elements involved with trying to become a mom.  Whether its going about the good ole natural way, and waiting for things to happen at the right time with the right egg and the right swimmer, or seeking medical assistant through IUI, IVF or FET.  Or even going the adoption route.  Nothing is in our control.  For those that get pregnant quick and easy, there is nothing to learn as far as patience in this world of fertility and motherhood, but for the rest of us... As a TYPE A personality, this is very difficult to accept.  One would think that after a year of this I'd be used to it, accepting of it.  HA!   I am learning it just seems to take time.  I've got help.  My acupuncturist, my RE, my therapist, and now I have someone new in my corner.

During NIAW, National Infertility Awareness Week, I became aware of a woman who helps women find direction and support during this process.  She has already helped me out by recording a visualization for me.  She's trying to help me see the future and get past my mental obstacles and fears.  She has a program that is going to start sometime in the next few weeks that will offer me and other women weekly support in our quest.  I'm so looking forward to it.  Once it begins I'll try to write updates about it.


Its amazing how much better I feel once I take the time to add an entry to this blog.    Thanks for reading.


-Debra