Wow, it has been a long time
since I've posted in this space! Blogging
has definitely been put on the backburner over the last couple years since
becoming a mother. It's amazing how much
where your time goes to changes when there's a child involved. I still want to dedicate this space to
infertility and motherhood so I'm here with an update, one that I'm not too
happy to be sharing.
After our ERA late last summer
the original plan was to transfer in the fall, but we decided to wait it out
and do our next transfer after the holidays.
Once February came around and things slowed down we began our
cycle. We opted for a "natural"
cycle this time which means that you allow your body to grow your lining rather
than taking estrogen to help it. It's a
lot less meds but more monitoring. It
was something we had never tried before so we figured we'd give it a shot since
I've never had an issue with my lining in the past.
CD1 came on Thursday Feb 13th
so on Monday Feb 17th I was in for my baseline. My lining was at 6mm and I had a follicle already
and they wondered if I still maybe had a few days of my cycle left, I told them
it was unlikely as my periods were normally about 4 days. They had me come back on Wednesday and they
told me that my lining was continuing to thicken & the follicle was
continuing to grow. I also had some
fluid in my uterus which they wanted to keep their eye on so they had me return
on Friday Feb 21st where they determined I would probably end up
triggering (triggering ovulation during a natural cycle to help the lining
further) that night. The fluid had moved
and the follicle had grown. My lining by
that point was over 8mm and things progressed about a week sooner than I had
anticipated.
We ended up triggering and 6
days later on Friday Feb 28th we had our first embryo transfer with
our new clinic in Chicago. It was
overall kind of frustrating because they told me to be there at 11:45 for a
12:30 transfer and to come with a full bladder so I did. They weren't able to get us in for our transfer
until 2:30, they had allowed me to empty my bladder just a bit right before but
it was an agonizing couple of hours. To
make matters somewhat more chaotic, we were heading out of town for the weekend
to Wisconsin Dells and were trying to beat the traffic out of the city on a Friday
afternoon.
Overall the transfer went
smooth. The embryologist came in to tell
us the embryo looked good and was re-expanding as expected after being frozen
(they dehydrate them when they freeze them) and all looked good so we were
happy to hear that. There were some
technical difficulties during the transfer, the normal catheter they use kept
going into what they referred to as a "false passage" because of my
retroverted uterus so they had to use a special kind that is more flexible to
get the placement where they wanted it.
They also wanted to show us the embryo on camera to verify it was ours but
the camera was not working. The doctors
and team seemed to be pleased with how smooth everything went and I think we
both had high hopes that this transfer would work despite some of the chaos in
the beginning and the delays that we had on the day of transfer.
We spent the weekend in the
Dells. I did as much resting as I
possibly could but it's hard when you have
a 3 year old. Joe was pretty much
in charge of caring for her while I did my best to relax but also help out when
I could. The weekend was fun but went
quickly, by day 3 I knew I should be feeling some cramping, that's what I had
always felt in the past with the cycles that I did end up pregnant, but this
time I felt nothing the entire 10 days after my transfer. I knew early on that it probably didn't
take, I just felt it in my gut and knowing what my past symptoms were &
having experienced none of them this round I knew it was likely the embryo
didn't implant.
On Monday I went in early for
my beta but never heard by the time I left work so I went home where I knew I
had 1 pregnancy test stashed away. I
took it and immediately it was negative, there was no sign of pregnancy at all
on the test. The doctors office finally
called me around 5pm to confirm what I had already known. My doctor told me that she would continue to
look for missing pieces but I'm not really sure there are any. I'm just chalking it up to an abnormal embryo
at this point.
It's not the news I had hoped
to share, but I am glad that it was just a clear negative and not another
chemical or miscarriage. I was very
fearful of having to experience that agony again and I'll be honest, there's
some relief that that wasn't the case.
Pregnancy loss is a big part of what held me back for so long on
continuing to move forward with any transfers.
I think recovery from this most recent one will be a lot easier.
I know everyone wants to know
right away what the plan is. If it were
up to me and my pocketbook was endless we'd just do another round right away but
unfortunately that isn't the case. We
just spent $4500 on basically nothing so we will have to come up with that
amount again before we can consider another transfer. There are definitely some projects around our
house that we want to get done this spring too, our back patio being one of
them so it may take us awhile, it's all pretty much up in the air. I'd hope to do another one in a couple months
but there's really no way to know at this point.
We still have two embryos
left. Once we use these last two it will
be the end of our journey. I'm trying to
remain hopeful that there's still a take home baby between one of these two
that we have left. I know these two are
the worst quality of the 6 we had, but when I say "worst" I mean they
are still relatively good quality, my previous clinic graded them at 3.5AA, our
new clinic said they'd be a lot more conservative on their grading so they're
probably considered 3AA by our new clinic or maybe less than that, however they
are still pretty good quality embryos as far as we can tell without further
testing.
Emotionally I feel a lot
better about the outcome of this cycle than expected. It still really freaking sucks, it doesn't
hurt any less than previous failed transfers, but I am happy that it wasn't a
beta hell, chemical/miscarriage, stuck in limbo, type scenario—I just don't
know if I have it in me to go through that again. It's funny I became that naïve girl again
just like I was in the beginning of IVF when I thought the first round would
work, I thought the same thing about a sibling cycle. I thought it would be SO EASY, and yet here
we are, 3 transfers in, a chemical pregnancy, a miscarriage and D&C, and
now a failed transfer and still no second baby; beginning to linger dangerously
close to being done with infertility treatments all together and the real
possibility of never being able to experience pregnancy again, never giving
Georgia the sibling we always hoped we would.
It's truly unfair and I will question every single day why this has to
be so hard for the people who want it so badly.
I will try to be better about updating
here with any future transfers, if not for anyone who is still reading this,
for myself to remember how things played out as the years go by. I appreciate everyone who still comes here to
read this, we have so many still cheering us on and supporting us so many years
later. This blog will be 8 years old
come May and some of you have been here since the beginning and we can't thank
you enough for all that support!
