Family WE’RE PREGNANT & It Wasn’t Easy: My Journey With IVF If this post is public, it means I’m absolutely ecstatic to be announcing that I’m pregnant!! This has been a journey that started over three years ago and has been extremely heartbreaking and painful (physically and emotionally). I have the utmost respect to all women who have gone through a fertility journey. One thing I’ve learned is that every journey is completely different and nobody’s is the same. However, here is mine. I hope it can bring a little comfort to anyone out there, you’re not alone! 2016 As a backstory, Peter and I got married in 2013 when we were pretty young (25), so we definitely enjoyed married life before deciding it was time to bring children into our family. In 2016, we decided to start trying for a baby. I had irregular cycles and I wasn’t tracking my ovulation at first, and we knew it would happen when the time was right. 2017 Fast forward ~6 months, I talked to my OBGYN about my irregular cycles, and she gave me Clomid, which is a super common drug to help with ovulation. She said to call back each month until I had a 28 day cycle, and until then she would keep upping my dosage. Therefore, I was on a max dose of Clomid for about a year- THIS IS NOT HEALTHY! This doctor was not tracking my bloodwork or performing any sonograms, but I had no idea that this wasn’t normal. I obviously started learning more and found a new OBGYN. I consider 2017 the year of (failed) Clomid. 2018 By 2018, I knew this really wasn’t working and started seeing Dr. Chantillis at DFW Fertility. I had a few friends who had successful pregnancies with Dr. Chantillis, and I felt at complete ease once we met. He looked through my chart, did tons of blood work, tested Peter, etc. It appears that I have a mild case of PCOS, however I think we are more on the spectrum of unexplained fertility. We finally came up with a plan to try IUI. IUI is when they monitor your ovulation and follicles (what eggs are in), and when your body is ready they insert a catheter with sperm. This gets it next to the egg, so it makes it much easier for them to connect! In the scheme of things, IUI is pretty simple. I took Femera (it’s a competitor drug to Clomid) and a trigger shot of Ovidrel. Month after month it didn’t work, I think we tried four times (January-April) and were very disappointed. I was confused and needed a break. I knew IVF was a completely different animal, emotionally and financially, and I was intimidated for this step. In August 2018, I decided to do IUI again. Remember, at this point I had done it multiple times, so it was a walk in the park. I decided I wanted to really increase all the medicine and add in injectables (Gonal F- my favorite shot by far). I had a lot of hope that IUI was going to be our answer. I was on all the medicine and went in for a sonogram to monitor my follicles and there were multiple that were large, I think in the 16-18mm range. They said this meant I would likely turn into octo-mom, and that we had to cancel the procedure or convert to “mini IVF”. Mini-IVF essentially means you go through all the steps of IVF but you aren’t on as much medicine as you would be with a regular IVF. Since we decided to convert to mini-IVF, I still needed to really increase my medicine from the IUI protocol and within about 2 hours, I had ordered tons of new shots, had a new schedule, surgery lined up, and we were all ready for a retrieval. The medicine got overnighted from a pharmacy in Nashville on dry ice – it’s not quite as easy as the normal CVS run. I think this was the best way for me to jump into IVF, because my only option was to quit which wasn’t an option to me. Within about 2 weeks we were going in for the retrieval and things looked great!! We retrieved 9 eggs, 4 fertilized, and we ended up with 1 blastocyst and one other that may not make it to be able to freeze, so we basically inserted 1.5 embryos with a fresh transfer. Then, the dreaded two week wait! To get my mind off of it, we went to Fredericksburg, TX for Labor Day. As sweet as Peter was, I would never recommend going to TX wine country during a pregnancy waiting! I obviously couldn’t drink and I had to do a progesterone shot nightly, so it was somewhat hard to enjoy vacation and my mind was racing. Take my advice and just stay home for those weeks and binge watch a comedy show. Then, the worst day of 2018, I got the call that it was negative. I had a lot of symptoms of cramping, bloating, and generally didn’t feel well so I really thought it was going to be positive. This is shockingly terrible news. Since I did a fresh transfer I now believe I was somewhat hyper-stimulated from all the drugs and not letting my body rest between transfers, but I’ll never really know. So I balled crying at work, pulled myself together and kept on with my meeting that day. If I could have a do-over, I would have gone immediately home and escaped real life for the rest of the afternoon. #selfcare Again, there isn’t anything blatantly wrong with Peter or me, so I decided maybe all the medicine was messing with me and if we stopped medicine, went the natural route, and relaxed it would happen! From September to December we took a complete break from medicine and doctors appointments, which was nice and I prayed that it would be our time, but if not we would hit it hard again in 2019. 2019 Then, around Christmas we started our full blown IVF. We were excited for this chapter!! For anyone that isn’t familiar with IVF, it is HARD. First, it takes at least 3 months before you know if you’re pregnant. The first month I took birth control pills to regulate my hormones (I think). Then, I went in for a baseline sonogram where I ordered tons of medicine, got tutorials, and got a calendar of all the medicine, what time to take it, and appointments for each day. Oh, and this isn’t just normal medicine. Peter and I felt like a chemist. Pretty much all the shots (except Gonal F- my favorite shot, super easy!) require a lot of mixing and changing needles. Peter was incredible and did all of my shots. He would wake up before me to prepare the shots and was the best doctor I could imagine. The guy’s involvement in this incredible process is pretty quick, so it was important to Peter to help in all the ways he could. I needed this support, plus with all the emotions, I would have grown to resent him. It wasn’t his fault that 99.9% of the process involves my body, and is was important to him to help every way possible, including never missing a doctor’s appointment. The retrieval went very smoothly and this includes full anesthesia surgery while in stirrups in a very sterile operating room. I think the air circulates and cleans 9 times per minute, or something so it’s a very sterile environment since the eggs are precious. You are in a hospital robe and aren’t able to wear any scented items, so I showered with water but didn’t use soap or deodorant for the day. I think I was only asleep for about an hour, so when I woke up my first question immediately was “how many eggs did you get?”. I think I also asked Peter if we could go get a cinnamon roll, haha I was very loopy and happy. We got 17 eggs which I was very happy with and 10 fertilized! We had gone back and forth about doing ICSI or not. ICSI is when they combine the sperm and eggs in a dish versus letting the sperm and eggs connect naturally by swimming together. When it’s done naturally, they think the strongest sperm reaches the eggs to fertilize. However, with ICSI you know the eggs are fertilizing because the embryologist combines the two and picks out a specific sperm and egg. Our doctor prefers the natural route, which we did the first IVF, but some doctors only do ICSI and I was conflicted, so we decided to do half and half. For ICSI, we had 9 eggs, 7 fertilized, and 2 turned into embryos. For natural, we had 8 eggs, 3 fertilized, and 2 turned into embryos. We were shocked that in the end the results were exactly the same! Then our embryos got frozen and we had a little break. Genetic testing is only an option with a frozen embryo transfer (FET), so we didn’t genetically test with our first IVF round when we did a fresh transfer. We got 4 embryos with our 2nd IVF and chose to genetically test them. To our surprise (and the doctors), all four embryos came back inconclusive meaning the cells weren’t able to generate any results, positive or negative. We had worked VERY HARD to get four embryos, and we didn’t like the idea of unfreezing and re-testing since that could cause more trauma on the embryos. Also, due to being 31 years old (somewhat young in the fertility world) and generally healthy, the doctor advised against re-testing. If you have the option, I highly suggest testing because you should learn a lot about the embryos and it could help find the root cause. This is also when you can find out the gender, but I was afraid that would make me even more emotionally connected to my embryos, so we asked the doctor to simply tell us if they were healthy. However, with our inconclusive results, we never learned anything. Transfer month! March 2019, on day 3 of my cycle, I started taking 2 pills of estrogen a day for 2 weeks. I went in for a sonogram and my lining was only a 6 and they wanted it to be an 8-12. We decided to now do 3 estrogen pills a day and a patch, but my lining only got up to a 6.9 the following week so we cancelled. I was very ready to get to transfer an embryo and was very upset. This was yet another time I cried at work. April 2019, with my new cycle we started 3 pills of estrogen and a patch (changed every 3 days) and this time we monitored every week. After the first week I went in and my lining was a 5.9, not great but we kept the medicine as-is. On the 2nd week we were only at a 6.9, but based on all the historical data through my IUI’s, it appears that I always have a thin lining and this may be my normal. They said people in the 3-4mm range would need a surrogate, but this was not anything I needed to consider. It was trilaminar so they said it looked good and there is research showing linings below an 8 can still implant an embryo, so Dr. C suggested we proceed with the transfer. That night we started 1.5cc of progesterone shots. Breaking news: On April 2nd Charley and Ellen got engaged!! This was a wonderful distraction and super exciting! On April 3rd we did the transfer at 1PM in the operating room. The cool thing about the transfer is that they allow the husband to come back. Peter essentially was in a space suit, hair net, shoe covers, etc and got to hold my hand. I took a Valium to make sure I was relaxed, but the procedure was pretty quick and relatively painless. Due to having a thin lining and inconclusive embryos, we decided to implant two embryos (of our 4 total) to increase our chances. We let the embryologist chose the best and an average embryo. The coolest part is being able to watch the embryos shoot out of the catheter into my uterus. Now we waited to see if they implanted. After a transfer, you take progesterone which is a huge needle that goes into your butt cheek. For me, it was very hard to insert, and sticking myself was terrible. I’ve had a friend poke me in a public bathroom in OKC, 2 different co-workers help in Vegas on a work trip, I did it myself in Vail on a work trip, and my loving husband did it every single night and never once complained. During the 10 day wait I tried to take it easy and really rest. I ate pineapple everyday which is an old wives tale but maybe it works… otherwise watched lots of movies and relaxed. I went on a few walks with friends and tried to keep a healthy amount of activities to make this time pass by. I didn’t have any symptoms, but for some reason my mind really thought this time I would be pregnant. I would get very very minor twinges in my stomach which easily could have been nothing, but I could tell in my heart this was going to work. By April 12th we were able to have a blood test. Since the embryo was already 5 days old, on this day I would be considered already one month pregnant! The nurse called around noon and said I WAS PREGNANT and my HcG was 70! I had a hard time being excited and believing the good news after all the heartbreak, but the nurse promised me people with 70 have healthy babies “all the time”. After talking a little more I was super excited, hung up the phone and burst into happy tears. I immediately called Peter then our family, finally great news!! By this night I finally started having symptoms and started to feel a little nauseous and my skin is breaking out a little bit. Oh, and I took an at home test after we had the blood results which is super fun to see it read “pregnant”! Over the weekend I started having symptoms. At night after dinner I would get nauseous and my breasts were hurting (which could be the progesterone) and really exhausted. However, by Monday and Tuesday I was back to my normal self I go in Tuesday for additional bloodwork and it should be about 280 by now. I’m terrified. Great news, our HCG levels were at 480!! Now we wait until April 30th for an ultrasound and the heartbeat was 70, and a few days later it was up to 169! We had them “graduated” from our specialist to our OBGYN, Once I hit week 5 I immediately felt exhausted. I can’t remember ever being so tired! Until 10 weeks pregnant, I took estrogen 3 times a day, thyroid medicine once a day (I’m in the normal range but they wanted it lower for the baby’s brain development), wear an estrogen patch, take metformin at night, a prenatal vitamin, and a progesterone shot at night. Wow. After 10 weeks, I stopped all meds except the thyroid medicine and a prenatal vitamin. I’m no longer high-risk, and I see my OBGYN like normal pregnant people. I can’t believe it is finally happening. We are having a baby! FAQ: Acupuncture: There is some scientific research showing that acupuncture is good for IVF, so our doctor likes it but certainly doesn’t require it or have very strong feelings toward doing it. I decided I wanted to give it my all, so I went weekly Jan-March 2019 to Dr. Lin Zhou in Richardson, TX who specializes in fertility. She is definitely an expert in the field and I enjoyed going, but over time it because too much on top of the million other fertility appointments. It added more stress to my day, which really negates the benefits. However, she would stick itty bitty needles throughout my body from my feet, stomach (sometimes these would be hooked to a machine and pulses), hands, and head, and I’d lay for about 45 minutes. I never had any pain. If you have time in your schedule, it definitely can’t hurt. Support Group: I wanted to thank HPUMC (Invisible Sisterhood) for having an incredible support group. I couldn’t have gotten through this without these amazing friends and resources. Emotions: Whoaaaa I could write an entire post about the emotions of IVF, but I wanted to keep this to the facts and my story. Learning you need assistance to get pregnant was a huge hit to my heart, but I realize I’m not alone and there are many people out there struggling. It’s hard to be positive with all the hormones and medicine in your body, so I’m very grateful to all my friends and family for being patient with me. Travel: I highly suggest booking refundable trips. We had to cancel and change nearly every trip we planned. For example, I had a perfectly planned IUI to occur on a Tuesday, and I was going to Seattle for work on Thursday. When I went in on Monday, I learned they wanted to push my appointment until Friday (when I would be in Seattle). I took a red eye home that night and made it all work. You never know what your body will do! I know this was a long post, but our journey was too! I wanted to share my story to help support and inspire other women going through this. It’s emotionally and physically tiring, but the end result was 100% worth it! If you’ve been through IVF or are needing support during this time, feel free to reach out! Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Related Previous ArticleHow To Prep Your Guest Bedroom For Out-Of-Town Visitors Next Article8 Rainbow Mules To Add A Pop To Your Everyday Look 07-10-19
WE’RE PREGNANT & It Wasn’t Easy: My Journey With IVF
