Fresh Never Frozen: Still keeping the bed warm!

Friday, June 1, 2012

Still keeping the bed warm!

My mom left today. Sad for me, good for her, I'm sure she needed a break! My mister is off the next four days so he will resume her duties. Let's just say the house might not sparkle and the food won't be like grandma's but the kids will still have fun and no one will go hungry. I have had a few friends ask me, so what now? After this weekend, I will gradually increase to light-normal activity. I still need to keep my heart rate below 140 to insure adequate uterine blood flow, no heavy lifting, no caffeine, etc. I'm still being followed by my doctor very closely with frequent lab work. Because I've lost my last three pregnancies, I'm on a slew of pregnancy "support" medicines. My doctor isn't taking any chances! I start each day with a Lovenox (blood thinner) injection as well as a baby aspirin at night to prevent placental micro-clots. I take steroids morning and night as well as mega-vitamins three times a day. My hormone support includes progesterone three times a day and estrogen in the mornings. I have 8 med alarms on my iPhone and there is no way I could keep track of things otherwise. If I'm pregnant (I mean after I find out that I'm pregnant), some of the meds will continue the entire pregnancy and some I will gradually be weaned off after the first trimester. I will also "graduate" to a regular ob/gyn after the first trimester. I can't wait for that thumbs up!

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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!