We Graduated!

Today is a great day because we had our 2nd ultrasound in two weeks and all is looking good and healthy. Our little guy or gal is 8 weeks 5 days today and measuring perfectly in size and had a heartbeat of 174! Two weeks ago we got to see the heartbeat for the first time and at that time it was 127. This is all good news because it means we get to leave PNW Fertility after 13 months of ups and mostly downs. After all the heart ache of not getting my lining thick enough, the hysteroscopy, the first transfer that ended in DNC, the shots of progesterone, lupron, estrogen, and HCG triggers, the baby aspirin, tons of acupuncture and ultrasounds, and the months and months of doctor appointments we finally get to go to a normal doctor or midwifery group. I can’t tell you how excited I am to feel just a little bit normal for once after finding out about my 3 way translocation last summer. I know we aren’t out of the woods quite yet because it’s still early and it will still be a few more weeks til we tell the world but for now this is the happiest news we could hope for.

-H

New Beginnings?

Hello! It’s been a few weeks since my last post. It feels like a lot has gone on and at the same time nothing has gone on since I last wrote. I don’t even know where to begin with this post.

Yesterday my sweet, beautiful 93 year old grandmother passed away. She was not in any pain but was in the hospital. I got to see her Sunday for a visit at her home and could tell that something was going on with her. She was more tired than her usual perky self and just didn’t look good. My dad and uncle took her to the hospital later that day but I didn’t learn of this until Tuesday afternoon. She was dehydrated and had a bladder and kidney infection but was doing much better. I even talked to her for a few minutes at 3:30pm Tuesday and it sounded like she would go home in 24-48 hours. She sounded way better on the phone and said her legs were wobbly but she had gone for a walk around the building and had just needed rest. I told her I loved her and said good bye thinking she was still going to be with us for a little longer. But around 4a.m. my dad and uncle got calls to come to the hospital because her health had declined. They were with her at 4:45a.m. when she died. All I can say is she was the best grandma there ever was. Never judged anyone and always was around to talk or give you a smile. Grandma, I’m going to miss you and your laugh and spunk.

As for the fertility stuff – we decided not to look at other Fertility Clinics. I’m not sure exactly why other than to say that it seemed like it would just take more time to get going again and cause more ups and downs. We have been looking at new egg donors this week and have decided on a couple of gals. My husband has to take a genetic carrier type blood test next week and that may determine who we pick if he and these girls are carriers for any of the same things. One of the girls is currently matched with another couple so we would have to wait a month in between her cycles before we could use her eggs and would push us out to June sometime for new embryos; the other girl is slated to give eggs to the egg bank at the clinic we are at but we could end up using her eggs as early as next week and have embryos created while we are away on a trip.

I also started seeing a therapist a few weeks ago. It has helped to have an outlet and someone to talk to outside of the situation. She thinks I may suffer from compounded loss since I’ve lost (now) three grandparents in less than two years and have had 3 miscarriages and 1 DNC in about one and a half years. We have talked about meditation and just taking care of myself. She is good at reinforcing and reminding me that it’s okay for me to not be working outside of the home right now or it’s fine if I go see a friend at 3pm for happy hour or take tennis lessons or not work full time on things I think I should be doing. She calls it “wringing myself out” for the next round, and boy do I need it.

I’ve also started seeing a new acupuncturist. I saw the Chinese Dr. twice but she did not acknowledge my chromosomal issues at all. I decided I was not comfortable with that and so have moved on to someone else. There is no amount of herbs or acupuncture that is going to fix my chromosomal issues. She thought that no matter what my chromosomal rearrangement is we could still get pregnant with her support and then if that didn’t happen then we should move back to egg donor options. I even brought in an inch tall stack of paperwork from my doctor records over the past year and my basal temperature chartings and she still didn’t get it. Now I am seeing Kristi Stoddard who seems wonderful. She is a little more of a drive for me but hopefully she can help with my uterine lining and sustaining a pregnancy next time around.

I think that’s about all for now. I’m excited for a 10 day vacation coming up, have been exercising and just trying to stay sane while my husband works crazy hours and tries to support me during all my ups and downs. In some sort of way I hope with my grandma passing away and with new egg donors in our reach there is a new beginning lying ahead of us with happiness, calm and a healthy baby to hold.

-H

Nothing New Really…

Not a lot going on in my world right now other than still dusting myself off and trying to make some changes for my sanity. I have started to watch Gaiam TV and do some yoga and pilates videos through there when I don’t get to the gym. I’ve been also trying to get to the gym 3-4x a week and have really been focusing on some areas that I’ve noticed could use some toning lately (back side, stomach…the usual for most people). I hope in a few weeks that I will notice some difference. I’m also trying to find some people to play tennis in the Seattle area now that the sun is out because that is always fun and takes my mind off of things.

Today I have my first appointment with a counselor to discuss some of the things I’ve been feeling with the infertilty and other things in my life. I’m hoping that I will only need 2-3 sessions or to go every couple of weeks for a short time but I’ve got a lot on my mind so I’m afraid that I might be going for a long time! I’ll let you know how it goes.

I also saw the Chinese Medicine Dr. this week. She was stern and strict just as I had pictured she would be. She gave me some Chinese herbs to take—she has a different tea mixture for each of the 4 areas of a woman’s cycle. I’m apparently in the ovulation zone right now. It has been 18 days since my DNC and just waiting for another cycle to start. The one thing I don’t think she really understood was my 3 way Balanced Translocation…I think she thought we could definitely get pregnant on our own and didn’t understand why we would do IVF/egg donor because I’m still young enough. Either way we are still doing egg donor so hopefully between the two we will get pregnant next time.

As for when next time is…there is no time line yet. My husband and I are going to look into some options with some other fertility clinics in late April. There is a program where you can get up to 3 donor egg frozen cycles and pay one fee and if you don’t take home a baby after the 3rd attempt you get your money back. Whether we will qualify I’m not sure but we have to have a consultation first before we can even talk about the financial aspect. Our current clinic does not offer this program and since we are looking into getting a 2nd egg donor it makes sense to look at other options. I do worry that the other clinics we are meeting with are too big and “corporate” feeling. I like my current doctor quite a bit and trust that they are doing a good job with us. It’s hard to think of starting over with new people and even just filling out the paperwork brings up all the past miscarriages and everything before; I just really don’t want to start over.  In the meantime, I have not heard about any new egg donors yet from our egg donor coordinator so I guess we’ve got some time. I feel like we are in limbo and I would love to have a plan.

-H

New Egg Donor on the Horizon

I talked to our Egg Donor Coordinator this morning. I had just gotten up about 8:45 this morning and she called at 9:10am. I was just starting to think about my day and wasn’t really prepared to talk about all this stuff. But I had written her an email on Monday asking her her thoughts about what to do next. She had talked with my Dr. in length about our situation. As a reminder to anyone reading this, we did one egg donor in November but had to freeze the 3 (only 3!) embryos we got, it took 4 months for my lining to perk up enough to transfer in February, we thawed one embryo and it didn’t survive the thaw (1 in 100 chance) and thawed #2 and tranferred on Feb. 17. It stuck for about a minute in terms of how long it needed to stick and stopped developing at about 5 weeks. I had a DNC on March 19.

The next step apparently for us is to either use the last embryo we have or do another egg donor now or soon and freeze what we get from that cycle. Everyone seems worried that since two embryos haven’t made it the third one won’t either because we may have gotten a bad batch. AND the thing is we have always said we want two kids. So even if the last embryo makes it and we got a miracle child out of it we would probably try this again anyways. At the beginning of all this we really wanted two kiddos who could have the same mother biologically and that would not happen if we tried with the one we have and then tried with another embryo from a different donor later. Is that really important? Probably not in the grand scheme of things, but it was a nice thought. I still really want my kids to at least be half of my husband and I know he wants that as well so we must keep trying.I still really want to get pregnant and grow these babies myself.

My egg donor coordinator is going to start looking through every egg donor they have at their disposal and start sending me profiles. We want someone who is proven, meaning they have helped other couples get pregnant; someone with lots of eggs and follicles so we can potentially get lots of embryos this time; and there are other characteristics I’m sure they look at that make someone the “perfect” donor. I do worry that we will end up with a “bad batch” again because there is no guarantee. The donor we picked last time had a great track record and she got every other couple pregnant. I feel like I am the exception to every rule they have ever heard of unfortunately and I feel like we have to catch a break some time, right?

Just before I got on to post today I was searching around facebook and ended up looking up someone I used to work with. Lo’ and behold she had a baby today. Go figure. Sometimes I feel like I just can’t win. I really am happy for friends who have babies, but a large part of me is jealous. When will it be my turn?

So I’m hoping we find the perfect match and that this person will create a boatload of eggs for us and more will survive. I’m hoping to find someone in April or May so that while we are on a vacation early May we can come back and get my lining perfect and transfer. I’m even hoping right now that if we transfer two maybe they will both stick and we can be done with all this.

-H

Bad Eggs?

Today my DH and I had a follow up with our Dr. to go over this cycle and to figure out what might come next. They still don’t know why we got pregnant and then it stopped developing or why one of our embryos didn’t survive the thaw (1 in 100 chance). Maybe it’s related? My Dr. said it might be a bad “batch” which is horrible to think we have one frozen embryo left and what if that one doesn’t work? The donor we chose had a good success rate with other couples …all 5 other couples got pregnant and have kids and she notoriously had more than 3 embryos with all of those other families. We talked about doing another fresh cycle with a new donor because maybe that would give us better odds but we will probably go ahead with the frosty we have and then try another donor if we have to…we do still want siblings though so maybe that is a better option? We also had my DH tested for any chromosomal anomalies just in case…wouldn’t that be bizarre!? I’m sure he is fine because he has 4 siblings all with families but it’s a shot in the dark to see if something else could have happened. I had a blood draw today and my hcg level is down to 162, which is good news. After the DNC Monday it was 767 on Tuesday so it is falling fast. I’ll go in one more time once AF starts. I’m starting to feel a little more back to normal today and the sun is shining finally in Seattle so it’s a good day. Now just to figure out what to do with all this discouraging information.

-H

Not Your Average Miscarriage

The last few days have been pretty rough.

By last Thursday I STILL hadn’t had a miscarriage. Back on March 6 I was told I would start a period within 3-5 days…but then when that didn’t happen one of my nurses told me that it was possible for it to take 2-3 weeks. But by about day 9 I was still having some cramps and off and on again pain on the lower right side and my breasts still hurt. With an HCG level of only 171 on March 6 I thought for sure it would have come by then. I decided to take matters into my own hands and asked if I could come in for a blood test.

On Friday morning I went in around 9am, got my blood drawn and then went to the gym. I waited and waited til about 2pm for the call from the nurse. FINALLY I got the dreaded words…”your hcg has gone up to 1406 and we are worried about an ectopic pregnancy”. An ectopic pregnancy is one where the embryo is growing outside of the uterus so it could be in a fallopian tube or an ovary and with that since tissue is growing and those structures are so small something could rupture and the woman can have internal bleeding and will need surgery.

At that point since it was Friday afternoon I was being told that I couldn’t come in til Monday or Tuesday, which I thought was ridiculous with something like this. I’ve had ultrasounds and blood draws on the weekend before; sure, they can’t do everything with the weekend crew but it seemed like with something so serious they should get me in. But then my Dr. called me a little after 3pm and said she wanted to see me or get me into the hospital across the way that afternoon. Then she called and said just to come in to her office and they would do an ultrasound before she left and if they saw anything horrible they would then send me to the hospital. Meanwhile, I’m calling my husband with every update and we are both freaking out a bit.

I got to the Dr. office a little after 4 where my husband was waiting for me. Immediately they pulled me into an examination room and we did an ultrasound. They looked all over for what felt like 10-15 minutes and couldn’t find any sign of the embryo. Then I did blood work to check estrogen/progesterone/etc. Those levels all came back normal. We went home not really feeling all that confident about what was coming next or what to do and decided to get out o the house for the night since there was really nothing we could do at this point. One other thing I should say at this point is my husband had to leave on Sunday morning for a work trip to WA D.C. and the Dr. told him it was okay to leave as long as I had people staying with me and some support.

My next appointment was on Sunday at 8:30am. On the weekends at my fertility clinic there is a woman who apparently is amazing with the ultrasound wand. She looked around for 5-10 minutes and didn’t find the embryo itself but did find a small pseudo sac about the size of 5 weeks, which is about when my hcg levels dropped. Because your body thinks its pregnant this one layer sac can form but if it’s ectopic there can still be other tissue forming somewhere else—Still no sign of this other tissue though. We did my blood work and then I went home and went out for coffee with friends. Meanwhile my husband left for the airport. The decision from my Dr. was she would call me with my results in a little while: if the numbers went down we would follow the numbers back to 0 and it should discard itself; if the numbers went up we would do a D&C or I would take a medication to get rid of the pregnancy. The phone call came while I was at coffee: The numbers went up from 1406 to 2200. …When my Dr. called and said these words it almost felt like I was out of body and watching myself on the street corner taking this call and just listening to my options. Option 1: Have a D&C—take out the sac in the uterus and hope that nothing else is growing. Then come back the day after the procedure and have blood work taken. If the numbers go up we know it is ectopic and will still have to take medication; if the numbers go down then we continue blood work every 2-3 days until the numbers are down to 0. Option 2: Take methotrexate which is a pretty toxic drug and used for chemo. It would kill any other tissue that is forming but also takes 2-3 months to get out of your system, hence, it would take longer to be able to try again with our remaining embryo.

We chose to do option #1 yesterday. My husband was out of town so I had my step mother-in-law take me in. When she picked me up I was a little emotional but I was doing okay. She got me to the office at 9am; the surgery was at 10am. I listened to my options again, I signed consent forms, had my vitals taken, and then got into the gown and funny blue hat and footies they make you wear in surgery. I walked into the surgery room and got on the table, put my feet in the stirrups. They took some blood work from my hand and put the catheter in there…my Dr. came and held my other hand while that was being done. Then they put the sedation mask on my face and I fell asleep. Sedation is a wonderful thing—one second you are being told they will take good care of you and you are talking about some random thing and the next thing you know you are waking up in a recovery room. I felt like 2 hours had gone by…nope, only 20 minutes!  They brought me apple juice and animal crackers post surgery since I hadn’t eaten anything that morning. I just remember feeling a bit woozy and had a bit of cramping but nothing major. The nurse took me to the bathroom while I still had an IV and then my step mom-in-law came in and visited with me for a bit and finally I was ready to get dressed and go home. Once home I got in my PJs, MIL went to the store and got me a few groceries and brought me tulips (my favorite) and made me lunch. I was really lucky to have her yesterday. Then she left around 1pm and I basically sat on the couch the rest of the day. I had a friend stay the night and watched movies, ordered pizza and made yummy cookies and now this morning I am about to go see if the hcg levels go up or down. I should know more this afternoon.

-H

UPDATE: Levels are down to 767 so this is a good sign and I don’t have to do the toxic meds. I go back Friday for a follow up with our doctor that we already had scheduled and then next Tuesday for another blood test to make sure levels are going down still. Phew! It looks like even egg donor eggs aren’t always perfect.