Baby Deck, or as we affectionately call, Baby Bean! We are over the moon excited to have this little person enter our lives, January 1, 2015. It has been a long journey that has had it's fair share of ups and downs, to say the least. Here is a little summary of our story...
When my husband and I got married in 2011 we did not expect to struggle with infertility. At first, we just said if it happens it happens, but when a little over a year passed and we were still not pregnant, I became concerned. Every month I was spending money on ovulation kits and getting "smiley faces" when I was ovulating, but again nothing. People would tell me to "relax," "it will happen," but when you are 34 and time just passes by so quickly, it is not as easy to wait as you think. I decided to seek help from my OB/GYN. They suggested that my husband and I go and get tested just to make sure we were both okay. My husbands results came back good and so did mine...so now what?! My doctor then wanted me to go on Clomid for three months. He said the chances of it working in the first three months were high considering I was healthy. The first month came and went, and then the second, and then by the third I was really disappointed. I mean this medication is not fun. It made me moody, irritable and not fun to be around. I went in for a follow-up appointment with my doctor to discuss my options, and the first thing he said was "it's not working, you need to see an infertility specialist." I bawled my eyes out...really? Why? We are fine and healthy? They referred me to a specialist that was close to home. I had also heard success stories from friends that they were the best doctors for infertility.
We started our journey with Shady Grove Fertility, September 2013. In January 2014, we started the IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) process. This is definitely not something I will sugar coat for you. It was hard, and emotionally and physically draining, but I kept thinking about the end result...a healthy child. The hardest part for me, were the injections in the stomach and going in to be monitored daily. The point of IVF is to grow your eggs larger, so that they can retrieve them for fertilization. Each day they grew bigger and bigger and by retrieval day in February, it felt like I was ready to burst. About one hour prior to retrieval, I was in severe pain. Little did I know that I was ovulating. The nurse told me on the way back to the operating area, that I was ovulating x's 10! I could not wait to get them out. I was under local anesthesia and did not feel the procedure at all. I am telling you this because I made the mistake of You Tubing "Egg Retrieval," well there were videos of girls awake and crying during the process because of the pain. I was mortified. So please!! DO NOT search the internet for answers. Shady Grove actually had an amazing Facebook page and it helped me get through each day to hear other success stories that were uplifting and motivational.
When I came out of surgery, I had some cramping...it wasn't bad though. We went home and I relaxed for the rest of the day. Before my retrieval, my doctor told me that they might have to cancel the IVF transfer due to Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS). In a normal IVF procedure, you take your meds, have a retrieval, they fertilize your eggs with your husbands sperm, and then you wait to hear how many fertilized into embryos, and then they call to let you know what day to come back in to transfer one of the embryos. In my case, I was hyperstimulated from the medication, so they had to freeze all of my good embryos. We froze 6. Out of 24 eggs retrieved, 14 fertilized, and 6 became embryos. My doctor was concerned that if he transferred a fresh embryo that I would miscarry. He said my chances to get pregnant with a frozen embryo were a lot higher. In March 2014, we started a new process called FET (Frozen Embryo Transfer). This process was much easier than IVF. I did not need to be monitored daily and shots were much easier, even though they were larger and had to be injected in my backside. I have to admit when I opened the medication package, I was a little intimidated by the size of the needle. Do not let this scare you. My husband thought there was no way he could inject me with them, but it got easier over time. It helps that you can numb the area before and heat the area after. It helped with sensitivity and soreness.
On April 15th we went in for our transfer of one AA embryo. It was fascinating. We got to see what our embryo looked like frozen and then thawed. It all happened so quickly and did not hurt at all. I was only uncomfortable when they had to push on my stomach to use the ultrasound while my bladder was full. After the procedure was over we went home and waited. We had to wait two weeks (the 2WW - 2 week wait) to find out if we were pregnant! It was the hardest time ever. Two weeks after the transfer, I went in to the office to get my Beta test done (blood test). I had to wait 8 hours to get the results...It was the hardest 8 hours to get through ever! When they called me, all I could do was hyperventilate. I was so nervous and shaking so bad. I was also at work, which made things even harder. When the nurse told me over the phone I was pregnant, I cried. I was so overcome with emotion. I called my husband right after, and he thought it didn't work because I was crying so hard. He was so excited when I told him we were pregnant. I was in my first trimester of pregnancy at 4 1/2 weeks. :) We told our parents right away, but waited to tell the rest of family and friends until I was 12 weeks. We didn't want to jinx ourselves after all we had been through.
Up until about 10 weeks I was instructed to still take my injectable medication of Progesterone and Estrogen. I had two ultrasounds up until that point and everything looked great...heartbeat was strong. I graduated from Shady Grove Fertility at 9 weeks. We can not thank Dr. Munabi, our nurse Melanie and the rest of the Shady Grove staff enough for what they did for us and helping us through this journey.
My goal is to post weekly updates of my bump and pregnancy. I am a little behind as I am 16 weeks tomorrow, so I hope to give a first trimester summary in the next few days.
Hope you are having a good week :)
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