Archive for category embryos
Last Shot!
Posted by genescramble in baby, balanced translocation, egg donor, embryos, FET, genes, genetics, infertility, IVF, pregnant, progesterone, translocation on July 18, 2012
For anyone who doesn’t know, when someone does IVF (with or without egg donor) the person has to take progesterone til there 10th week of pregnancy. Some women use suppositories and some give themselves a shot daily. Well, I started shots of progesterone to support the pregnancy back on May 26th (2 days before the transfer) and I am happy to report that today was the last one! At this point the placenta takes over and supports the baby with what it needs. …I will not miss my morning routine of sitting on a heating pad, heating both the progesterone in oil and the area I inject it into. I will not miss getting the needles ready, and I will definitely not miss sticking the needle in to my upper back hip every single day. I think it’s time to find a new normal.
In other news, I’ve been having crazy heartburn this morning but gladly have only had really, REALLY bad nausea once so far this pregnancy. Our next big appointment is July 31 when we do the nuchal translucency screening which tests for the possibility of down’s syndrome, spina bifida, and a few other things. This is a normal screening that most pregnant women have and should be completely fine since I used the egg of a 29 year old.
-H
Not Your Average Miscarriage
Posted by genescramble in baby, D&C, egg donor, embryos, FET, hCG, infertility, IVF, miscarriage, PNW Fertility, pregnant on March 20, 2012
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.
A Little More Hopeful
Posted by genescramble in baby, egg donation, egg donor, embryos, FET, follistim, frosties, hCG, infertility, insurance, IVF, miscarriage, PNW Fertility on March 8, 2012
Today I got up around 8:45am and my phone rang about 20 minutes later. When my Dr. office calls it says “UNKNOWN” so I always know its them. I answered it expecting to be talking to the nurse but it was Dr. Lamb, who has been my infertility physician since last June. She was calling to check up on me and make sure I had good support through all this and just make sure I’m doing okay. She had no real words of wisdom for why any of this happened and she is sad for us and was very hopeful when our numbers were so good the first blood test last week. There’s no way to know why this happened, it just did and now we move on and try again. She said it is okay for us to take a month off and feel things out but there is a chance that we could just roll right into another cycle right away. Once my period starts I will go in and we will do a blood test and ultrasound and see where my hCG levels are and if there is any scar tissue from this miscarriage. If everything looks okay I think we will probably just start follistim again and roll with the punches! If not we will probably have to wait til June because we have a trip to Europe coming up early May (to celebrate our two year wedding anniversary coming up!) and I would most likely need to be around for tests, etc. at that time. Part of me wants to continue on with this right away and part of me wants to wait because wouldn’t it be nice to be able to eat brie and drink wine in Paris? It could also be a nice celebration if we get preggo though. I guess I’m game either way.
I also called Premera today because our healthcare starts over April 1 and there is a new plan that we can choose to participate in. I found out they offer 15k lifetime in infertility benefits which is great because our current plan offers 10k lifetime and we have almost used that up with all the months of trying to get my lining thick. There will be more out of pocket costs with this new plan but its so wonderful that we can start over with coverage, plus now we seem to know how to thicken my lining so it shouldn’t (knock on wood) take so long next time.
We’ve started having discussions on what to do next if this next transfer doesn’t work but really I think we should be continuing with positive thoughts that the next one WILL work and when the time comes, if we decide to have more children, when we decide to have more, then we will figure out what to do then. I think we are a little discouraged about using the same clinic but there are ups and downs everywhere you go and I really like the care I’ve been getting so we’ll just have to see what happens. To be continued…
-H