Done

Beta #2 was 10. Like we expected. I'm glad we can move on now. My doctor seemed to think it was a good sign that something was happening. I'm going to wait for my period and then start straight in with an FET cycle. It seems pretty simple, estrogen tablets to thicken my lining and hold off ovulation for timing purposes, check at 8-10 days later, maybe Ovitrelle but he didn't mention it in this conversation. I have a collection of them in the back of my fridge that I'm itching to use.

He then mentioned that even though we requested our embryos to be frozen individually, they froze them in pairs because of the quality. They are good quality but not excellent. I'm very upset about this. I really don't want twins. In this whole process I felt like this was the only amount of control I had and I feel like someone just ripped it away from me. Obviously no one is forcing me to transfer two, but now my decision is pretty impossible because it would mean just tossing a random one in the trash. I only have two shots now, granted with a higher rate of success, but I was really willing to wait out the months in order to avoid twins. I feel like IVF #2 was just moved up much closer in my future and I'm really not happy about it. It was no one's decision besides my own whether I was willing to risk having twins and some random lab technician just make the choice for me.

Very Sad

I really thought this was it for us. There's a wave of newly pregnant women in our community and I thought I might be able to catch the tail end of the wave, have some friends be pregnant with me. But it's not too be.

I don't talk about my daughter much anymore on my blog mainly because I feel that if I'm venturing into IF blogging territory I don't want to rub it in people's faces too much. Needless to say she is absolutely wonderful, and while I'm not giving up on another baby yet, we were very lucky to have her and appreciate her existence more an more everyday. I really wish we can give her a sibling. Most of her friends have at least two or more already and there's just no way to explain to her that it's just not so easy. The day of my transfer she spontaneously said from the backseat in the car "Ooof, when are we going to have a baby?!". I took it maybe as a good sign that she was aware of some good baby vibes that we weren't aware of, but it wasn't to be. Again, very sad.

Everybody was just so positive for me this cycle, everyone thought that it was really my time. My friends, my family, my husband, maybe even my daughter. But I guess you need more than positive energy.

I am thankful for the couple days of positive hpts. Something has changed for us, we're pretty sure that this was the first time in years that anything was fertilized. I'm thankful for the four frozen embryos, and hopefully a FET in our near future will be it. This cycle really wasn't ideal for implantation and this just proves it. We tried our best, my RE deserves big gold stars for this one. It's the closest we've been in a long time and now I have to stay positive and move on.

Beta 1 (14dp3dt)

27.

It's definitely not looking good. My RE agrees. He says to give it a chance, keep doing the PIO, and check again in two days, but he agrees that it doesn't look good.

It's so sad. I really hoped that once we got past the fertilization we wouldn't have any problems. I imagined getting a negative, but I never imagined I might have a chemical pregnancy. I'm going to go cry now for a bit.

Waiting

I never thought I would be hoping and praying to have a reason to continue sticking myself in the butt with an inch and a half needle. My PIO has become strangely comforting. Still waiting for Beta results, not so patiently.

Uncertain

I tested again this morning. I don't feel like the line is getting darker, I'm almost scared it's getting lighter. I guess that's why peeing on sticks is not exactly a scientific method. Beta tomorrow morning. I'm scared.

12dp3dt

Just a quick update before Shabbat. I braved the shopping center on a Friday afternoon and got two more hpts. One to indulge myself this afternoon, and one for tomorrow morning. This afternoon it was positive but still very faint, I'm going to assume that it was due to taking it in the middle of the day still early on. Tomorrow morning I'll do a real test for comparison's sake. Fingers crossed that it gets darker.

Going Crazy

Another crampy night with slight spotting in the morning. This I don't like.

I need to go buy another hpt.

10dp3dt

I don't know whether to be excited, or to hit myself over the head for being stupid.

I tested this morning. I caved. After a year and a half of staunchly not peeing on sticks, I caved. And it was positive, faintly, but I definitely saw it. Here's the problem, it could still be the HCG booster shot that I took the day of transfer. Most things I read say it lasts in your system for 10 days, but this shot was about 1/6 the dosage of a trigger shot, so does that mean it was out of my system faster?

In any case, my rational was that if I tested today and it was negative, chances are it would be accurate and not a false negative (I'm talking odds here, I know a lot of people get later positives). So, I at least wanted to know that it wasn't negative. In my mind it means that I'm still in the game and that's what I wanted to know. What do you think? Shot or pregnant? Ack.

8dp3dt

I'm freaking out a bit here. This morning I had a lot of cramping (in my lower back, exactly like before my period) and some light spotting. I know it could be implantation bleeding but it could also very well be a bad sign as well. The only thing that is keeping me positive is that I'm very hopped up on estrogen and progesterone, and the only time I ever spotted on progesterone was a day or two before my period, not the middle of my luteal phase like this.

Here I am several hours later and my lower back is still cramping and it's hard to take it as a good sign. 6 more days until my beta.

4dp3dt

Oooh, I never thought I would get to title a post like that. I feel very special now. I have some good news and some bad news. Actually, more good than bad so that in it of itself is good. Tuesday afternoon my doctor called me to tell me that they froze two more embryos and the last one was still being observed. So, that's a total of 1 embryo transferred and 4 in the freezer. Not bad at all. Also, I had blood work done today and my E2 and Progesterone are nice and high which means the estrogen patches and PIO are doing their job. The doctor seemed happy.

Now the bad news. Cabotrim sucks! I've been taking Cabotrim (It's called something else in America, but it's a pill used to help women stop nursing as well as many other things, that is also used to help calm down the ovaries to reduce my risk of late onset OHSS in the event that I do get pregnant) for 8 days, starting the day of my retrieval. Besides muscle weakness and general tiredness, it has also completely frozen my digestive system! To be honest my stomach doesn't really hurt at all it is just extremely scary knowing that I have 8 days worth of food in my system that isn't making it's way out. Sorry, I know it's gross but it is keeping me very preoccupied. My doctor says that since my ovaries feel fine I can skip the last pill. Thank God. Hopefully stuff will get back to normal soon.

Also, a bit disappointing is that my doctor just told me today that I have to wait two weeks from my transfer to get my beta done. I took some Pregnyl the day of my transfer, so he thinks it will still be in my system if I don't wait two weeks. No fun, I thought the whole benefit of IVF was that you got to wait less than two weeks since you get a couple of days outside of the body. Oh well, I just have to readjust my expectations a bit.

Transfer

We transferred one embryo this morning. My ovaries seemed nice and calm and the doctor thought it was definitely worth a shot. Even better was that he thought my ovaries were calm enough to give me an HCG booster shot, which from what I have read significantly increases our chances with the whole Decapeptyl thing. I got about 1/6 the dose of a trigger shot, and I may get another in a couple of days.

Overall, we made it to 6 embryos this morning (I think the rate at which the numbers are dwindling shocked E a bit, but I pretty much expected it). Three that looked great, of these one they transferred and the other two are being frozen right away. Then three more that they are going to check on again this afternoon and then decide if they'll be frozen or not. I think they were all 8 or 9 cells, on the good side of good. A little disappointed, to have so few embryos after 25 eggs, but that's pretty normal isn't it? At least I have two more chances before I have to do IVF again (you can see how optimistic I am here). It's really hard to feel like we have a chance, after so much disappointment what's going to change? I guess the fertilization was a big hurdle, so at least we have that.

Wish us luck. I'm going to go have a nurse do PIO for me today and then hopefully E will take over from there.

Update

11 Embryos. The doctor seems very happy with that. Interestingly he said all of the eggs that fertilized did so using ICSI. He says that even with a bias of using the better eggs for ICSI, the fact that none of ours fertilized using traditional fertilization points a pretty big arrow to our problem. If we ever do another fresh cycle we will use ICSI on all of the eggs.

Still trying to get all of my prescriptions together for my super luteal phase support. Not looking forward to PIO. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the results. I'm a little upset that ICSI wasn't used on all of the eggs, but my doctor assures me that they never know what will work better for a couple and they prefer to split their chances on the first round. Now we know.

On Ice

I really don't know where to start now, so much has gone down over the past couple of days with my treatment and I just didn't have any energy to update here. I guess I'll start from the most recent and move backwards a bit.

I just came home from my retrieval. I have been dreading this ever since I saw my husband's crappy SA way back when, knowing we would probably end up with IVF. It went much more smoothly than I expected. I went in to the hospital at about 7am, they got me dressed and ready, said hi to my doctor and then walked into the OR. I laid down on the table, the anesthesiologist got the IV in in one easy shot and then I was out. Next thing I know I'm waking up in recovery and my doctor is talking to me. They got 25 eggs! Yay! Since then I've felt really fine. No nausea, just a little cramping which has gradually lessened and lessened. I haven't even taken anything for it. It was a good experience.

Now, a little background on what went down leading up to today. I went in for monitoring on Tuesday, had lots of good follicles the largest being around 20mm but my E2 had tripled since two days before from 3000 to 8400 (pmol/l, not the units they use in America, my E2 maximum was closer to 2500 in American units, just for reference). So, while the E2 value itself didn't raise eyebrows, the rate at which I had been responding did. So, the decision was made, by us and my RE, to eliminate the risk of OHSS and take a Lupron trigger instead of Ovitrelle. He just had a feeling the Ovitrelle would send my hormones over the edge. The only drawback to this method is that with a Lupron trigger the chances of getting pregnant from a fresh transfer are much lower unless you take a bunch of Luteal phase support. So, we decided to either freeze everything or see how I was doing after ER and make a decision from there. As of now, it looks like I'm going to take a small dosage of HCG, and take estrogen and PIO for the rest of the luteal phase and try to transfer something fresh. The PIO came as a bit of an unpleasant shock, not only is it not covered by insurance and they have to special order it, but I was really looking forward to a break from the needles, let alone IM shots that I have no idea how to do. But it looks like that's where we're headed. I'm going to discuss the details of the protocol with my RE later today.

But the good news is ER is over, and I have lots of eggs. Let's see what fertilizes from that. They are going to do half regular fertilization and half ICSI. Wish us luck.