October 2009: "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes..."
Having kids right away was always our plan, yet now here we are two years and two IVF treatments later, and still no baby. My husband Shawn and I wanted to start a family immediately after getting married. We thought it would be easy, just like it was for everyone else. We never prepared for the detours life was about to throw us!
July 2010: "When are you guys going to start having kids?"
After about 9 months of seeing “not pregnant” on that stupid little test, we decided to go to the doctor to get “checked out”. We found out that IVF would be our only way of possibly conceiving a child ourselves. For those of you who aren’t familiar with fertility treatments, IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) is the process of fertilization by manually combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish. When that is successful, an embryo is made and is placed back into the uterus. That’s layman’s terms…Trust me, it’s much more complicated! So anyways, there we were, shocked, hurt, confused and mad. This wasn’t exactly news a couple of newlyweds wanted to hear, especially because we were like most newlyweds…broke! Again, if you don’t know much about infertility, IVF treatments cost about $10,000-$20,000 a pop after testing, meds and all that fun stuff. So, we drove home, emotional…or emotionless, I think I was a little of both. We sat down, talked about all of our options and decided to pursue IVF. We found a doctor and eventually started to get excited, because we just knew even though this wasn’t what we had planned, this would work for us the first time, it had to! Little did we know…
November 2010: “You’re still young, you have plenty of time.”
We had just celebrated our first wedding anniversary, and only a few friends and family members knew we were about to do a round of IVF. I was taking medicine that made me feel and act like a crazy person, and I was bruised from all the shots. On top of that, I had gained at least 10 lbs. Thank you hormones! I didn’t care though, it would all be worth it, I kept telling myself! The day of the retrieval, they got 15 eggs, which is good! With that many, we’d be able to freeze a bunch to save time and money down the road! I went home and was in terrible pain. I had shooting pains through my whole upper body and ended up having to go to the E.R. because it was so bad. It turns out all the poking and prying to retrieve the eggs can cause some pretty bad pain. Good to know AFTER THE FACT!
Three days later, after being pretty sore and taking it easy, we went back to have them put the embryos back in. That’s when we got the devastating news that only 3 out of the 15 had made it, and they were really crappy. Those were the doctor’s exact words. He called my cute little embryos CRAPPY! The doctor suggested we put all 3 embryos back in, since my chances were so low of them sticking. We transferred all 3, and left the hospital feeling pretty defeated. We still had some hope that at least one would stick, I mean there were 3 for goodness sake! Two weeks later, I went in for my blood test and it was negative. Deep down I knew, but it was still completely heartbreaking. We had spent so much time and money invested in that cycle and now what were we going to do? We couldn’t afford another round. We definitely couldn’t afford another negative.
A few weeks after our devastating negative, we got a call from the doctor. They decided they would give us a free mini IVF cycle, since they believed the previous cycle was ruined because of a lab mistake. A mini IVF is a cycle that uses different meds, less time and less money, but in return you get less eggs. It costs around $7,000, compared to the $15,000 we had paid for the previous cycle. I would have chosen another full IVF obviously, but they wouldn’t give us a free full cycle, so we took what we could get.
March 2011: “Just relax, it will happen.”
After more meds and countless ultrasounds and blood work, it was time for our second retrieval. I did everything I could to de-stress before this cycle. I cut out caffeine and alcohol and was eating healthier. I was drinking water and pomegranate juice and taking my vitamins religiously. I was taking daily walks and doing everything I could to “relax”. They only got 3 eggs this time, since that’s how the mini cycles work, but two of those made it and were really good embryos. We were so happy! The day of the transfer, I was positive it would work. This time I had such a good feeling! They transferred our two good embryos and we waited! A few days before my pregnancy blood test, I was feeling extremely tired and nauseous, which excited me even more…everyone knows those are early pregnancy symptoms! Well, it turns out they were also symptoms of the medicines I was taking…because the blood test was another negative. I wasn’t pregnant. We couldn’t believe it. How could this be? What did I do wrong? What did we do to deserve this pain? We asked the clinic to give us at least another free mini cycle, since we had paid for a full cycle to begin with, but they wouldn’t do it.
November 2011: “Why don’t you just adopt?”
After months of heartache, we talked about what we should do next. We looked into adoption and took into consideration all of our options. I was recommended to a new doctor, so we decided to meet with him just for a consultation. After meeting with him and going over how he does things, we found out that our previous doctor skipped some pretty important steps in the IVF process. I won’t get into all of that, but let’s just say, I could be holding my baby boy or girl right now, had they done things differently.
So, now we have a new doctor that we love, and we want to give IVF another shot before pursuing adoption. Adoption is wonderful, but is just as complicated and expensive as IVF! We will probably adopt one day, regardless if this next round works or not. But, we don’t feel like we were given a real shot with our last doctor and we want to give this all we can. We don’t have money for another round of IVF yet, but we’re going to save all we can and hopefully that will be enough to start a new cycle sometime in 2012 or 2013. All I know is that I’m supposed to be a mommy, and I will be some day. This has been the hardest thing I have ever been faced with, and I certainly didn’t see my life going this way, but I think it will all make sense one day, and I will understand why God put me on this journey.
Sorry this first blog was so long, I had to catch up with everything that has happened over the past two years! Believe it or not, that was the story in a nut shell! I’ll try to blog more often as we continue along this emotional and chaotic road of infertility. Thank you for reading!
