Fresh Never Frozen: Transfer Day!!!

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Transfer Day!!!

Today was a long awaited day for our family! The morning got crazy getting my son out the door to school, my mister having to run into work, finalizing bed rest preparations, picking up another last minute prescription, and then racing to be at the clinic by 10 am. We checked in, I began drinking my 32 oz. of water to fill my bladder, and then we talked with the embryologist. He had walked by a few times while we were waiting and I was convinced his expression was going to bring us terrible news about only one embryo surviving and that the quality wasn't very good, which would mean our chances of pregnancy were slim. I was totally trembling when we finally talked to him. He reported that two of the six embryos had survived. One looked awesome and one looked pretty good. He recommended and we decided to put both embryos in. He said I should get pregnant and that we have a 50/50 chance of twins. I felt a little stressed that there were not any extra to freeze to help take some pressure off, but then realized I was being greedy and needed to focus on the positive, which has been hard for me since this process failed for us last time. I think my acupuncturist noticed I needed to absorb everything, because she had me pop my Valium (the only medication used for the transfer procedure) and filled me up with acupuncture needles to calm me and my uterus. A "quiet" uterus is important for the embryos. By the time it was time to go to the transfer room I was calm and all cozy wrapped up in a warm blanket. The procedure is only about 15 minutes and using ultrasound the embryos are dropped into the uterus by the reproductive endocrinologist and embryologist. We even watched on the big screen while our babies were drawn up from their lab tubes, filled into the catheter, and then the doctors do a countdown to coordinate placing the embryos and removing the tube. On the ultrasound screen you couldn't see the microscopic embryos but you could see two flashes of light where the medium surrounding the embryos shows up. The worst part of the entire procedure was the full bladder! By this point I'm totally feeling the 32 oz. I drank an hour prior to the procedure, but I have to lay flat another 15 minutes or so. Then, regardless of the fact that I feel like I'm going to leave a mess on the floor, I'm nervous about standing up and disturbing the embryos. My nurse compares the transferred embryos to two grains of sand in a peanut butter sandwich. Repeating that to myself, I shuffled to the bathroom. To be sure my uterus is happy, I had one more acupuncture treatment before going home and getting in bed. Now the waiting begins and it's all up to the embryos to implant into their new home! Here is their first picture:

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Our Infertility Journey

In 2007, right after our daughter was born via a very easy VBAC delivery (vaginal delivery after a c-section), we were wanting another baby. Not right away, but eventually.;) We really never prevented pregnancy and in 2009 we had a surprise pregnancy, followed shortly by an early miscarriage. This was my first miscarriage, so I was not too concerned since women seem to have them all the time. By 2010, after really "trying" to conceive nothing was happening. My ob/gyn prescribed a little clomid to get the ball rolling but nothing happened. Then, we added in several months of IUI's (aka artificial inseminations), which also never worked. We were feeling discouraged and did further testing to find out that my mister has a severely decreased morphology putting us in the 1% chance range of conceiving naturally. The summer of 2010 he had a varicocele repair surgery in an attempt to fix his problem. There is only a 50/50 success rate for the surgery and we ended up in the 50% that do not respond to the surgery. We took a break from everything for a while, had a 10 year anniversary trip to Maui with a little Clomid and got pregnant. At the 8 week ultrasound there was no longer a heartbeat and I miscarried for the second time. At the beginning of 2011, we decided to take things a step further and consult with specialists. We decided to pull out the big guns after being told we'd easily conceived doing IVF with ICSI with chromosomal screening. The IVF cycle was hard and didn't go as well as planned. We ended up with only one little boy embryo who was genetically perfect. We were thrilled at the news and even had positive pregnancy tests following a frozen embryo transfer. Shortly after, I miscarried for the third time. I got very depressed and had my first experience with situational depression. Months later after a visit with my doctor, a terrible visit with an adoption agency, the clouds lifted, and we decided to try IVF one last time. I knew there was no way I could do it a third time physically and we certainly couldn't do it again financially, so our second chance was our last chance. There were many set backs as we had to cancel the second cycle after discovering a suspicious (as in cancer suspicious) ovarian cyst right before preparations for our embryo retrieval. I had surgery and everything turned our fine, but we were feeling discouraged as the cancer scare was terrifying and we had to wait 4 months before returning our focus back to IVF round 2. Round 2 didn't go exactly as planned, but the end result included the transfer of two great looking embryos. I'm certain that I will hold a baby again one day, and only then will we be able to say that the journey was all worth it!