Didn't see that coming!

So there has been a strange turn of events.

Our April IVF has been cancelled.

I'm pregnant.

Yes, you read that right.

I'm knocked up.

The old fashioned way.

Didn't see that one coming.

Picking Up Pace..So it Seems!

The fluid ultrasound is done! $506 and 6 hours on the road later!

I spent the 3 hours on the road to Dr. McBaby's office feeling sentimental, nostalgic, and even a wee bit giddy. Of course the way back, I was just ready to be home! But the last time I traveled that road was to pick up our embabies on transfer day. We left the clinic and traveled back, feeling sad, worried, let down, broken. 

All of my test results had shown both of us to be healthy with no reason to suggest we wouldn't have excellent quality embryos. But it was on this day that we were sat down by the embryologist and Dr. McBaby and told that 7 of our embryos had completely quit growing and the 3 remaining didn't look too good but they were hopeful. The thing is all I remember was my heart being ripped from my chest yet again. They were hopeful but not really all that optimistic. They highly encouraged us to transfer all three remaining embryos, something we had originally been told wasn't even an option. They "never" transfer more than two.

We drove home so defeated. 

Of course we know how incredible our story turned out to be. Lauren is here. Our miracle.

The fluid ultrasound was uneventful which is GOOD. No issues at all were seen.

And since he was already all up in there I asked which ovary was doing the ovulating this month. I mean, we might as well give it one last go if we can, right? 

But of course, it is the right ovary, where I have no tube whatsoever. 

Not surprising. I'm still convinced the left side only pops one out every 6 months or so. I know its not scientific as I base it solely off of the ovulation cramps. I seem to get the cramps on the right side and the few times I've had a confirmed left side ovulation I feel little to no cramps. And that happens every 4-6 cycles....so bah humbug.

But I also know that my left tube is crappy anyway...so it probably doesn't matter.

I met with Marge and got my birth control prescription that I'll start with my next period in a couple weeks.

And I got my calendar!

My protocol is exactly the same as last time which is reassuring...calming even, in a way. I guess just because I've been there, done that.

Then Marge suddenly turned to me and said, "I will never forget the day I had to call you and tell you your betas were not doing what they were supposed to be doing.". 

And I smiled and then cried.

At 9dp5dt my beta came back at a respectable 64. But 5 full days later they were only 91. We had to wait 5 days because of a holiday weekend since I was getting my betas done locally. And with that it was over. We all assumed they'd risen initially but by the time we checked them again they were back on their way down. She said we would recheck again in 2 days. It was understood we were looking for them to go back down. She told me to call if I had any bleeding. I mean, seriously, we knew it was over.

Instead 2 days later she got to call me with good news. 

200. 

At 5 weeks. 

They'd doubled for sure but they were still so low for FIVE weeks!

Marge told me excitedly they'd doubled and I was in such shock I didn't understand. I kept saying, "But what does that mean?". 

She kept saying, "Katie. This IS good news."! Over and over.

She said she's never gotten to make a phone call like that before. 

My miracle.

We did one more beta at 5w2d and they came back around 500. 

We did our first ultrasound a week later and saw our sweet baby with a healthy heartbeat. And a tiny sac where another little peanut had tried so hard to grow. The explanation for the wonky betas. 

And I'm crying again.

What a rollercoaster!

And what a sense of peace I have having my sweet baby girl!

So...my calendar. I expect to start BCPs in just about 2 weeks. I should be ovulating tomorrow-ish. And my period should start 12-14 days later. My cycles were a little wonky while breastfeeding and this is my first cycle not breastfeeding at all so I'm not too sure how long my luteal phase is anymore. It varied from 3 days to 14 days while breastfeeding.

But I expect to start BCPs on the 3rd day of my period, so maybe around 2/23. 

February 23- March 17: BCP

March 18-March 22: BCP & Lupron 10units

March 23- March 28: Lupron 5 units

March 26: Expect a Period, Baseline U/S and E2

March 29: Lupron 5 units, dexamethasone 0.75mg

March 30- April 1: Lupron 5units, dexamethasone 0.75mg, Gonal-F 300 units

April 2- April 5: Lupron 5 units, dexamethasone 0.75mg, Gonal-F 75units, Menopur 1 vial

April 6: Lupron 5 units, dexamethasone 0.75mg, Ultrasound and E2 and await further instructions!

AND....so I've reread what I've written a couple time and geez! This anonymous thing is HARD. I used my real name, my child's real name and the name of my doctor! Of course I have since changed it but I didn't think I'd slip up so often! Oh well....

I've Got Goals!

Things are moving along.

Today Bryan gets his SA done locally and the results will be faxed to Dr. McBaby's office. I haven't even worried about his results. But of course now that the day is here I might be a tad bit anxious about it. And I actually have no idea how long it takes for the results...

My fluid ultrasound is on Wednesday! That's exciting and scary too. Both of these tests were no big deal and our results were great back in 2012 but holy crap, it's 2015! So many things could have changed!

And today I have to pay a small fortune to hold our spot for April. Goodbye $2000. I'll miss you. Though, you're tiny in comparison of what is to come.

The word has also gotten out within our circle of friends that April is the month. I always have such mixed emotions about this. None of my friends have dealt with infertility. A very small number have had a miscarriage but even they were pregnant again within 3 months. And while a miscarriage is a devastating nightmare no matter what the circumstances or how quickly you get pregnant again, it's still just not the same as years of losses and disappointment.

With our first IVF I kept a blog that was very open. I shared it on FB. Family, friends, strangers....I had a couple hundred followers! Yeah, I was popular! Ha! But here I am anonymous....why? Because of one person (a family member no less) who went off the deep end and apparently believes IVF babies are the spawn of Satan and the parents who would have the audacity to even consider IVF (because clearly infertility is a punishment from God and a billboard sign that we are meant to adopt and ONLY adopt, because I have $40k sitting around.....) must be Satan themselves. Sigh.... So anonymous it is. I feel silly, a little ashamed even, that I've let one person ruin it for me but I also feel an intense need to protect Lauren and any future children, whether IVF or adopted. So we will be anonymous from here on out.

But I digress....While some of our friends have already "completed" their families, there are others who are trying for number 2 right along with us or at least have plans to start TTC within a few months of us. And it brings back those sad memories of trying for our first and being left behind, once, twice, and even three times. But we don't know if we will be left behind or not. And I know I have to hold onto the hope that we might not be.

But I'm not dwelling on it. Lauren helps so much with that. The fear is still there but being on this side of the fight, with a baby, being able to BE a mom, this is just so much easier. I don't say that to rub it in. But rather to validate how horrible the journey is when you're still trying for the first. When you have no idea if you'll ever get to parent a child. I can only go off of my own experiences...

I have a couple of health goals I'd like to work toward, that I am working toward. And I think I'd like to use this blog as a means to motivate myself and just keep track of how I'm doing.

We were both incredibly unhealthy when we did our first IVF. We coped with life, infertility, loss, in our own ways and none of these were "healthy" in any sense of the word.

When I got married and we first started TTC I was a very healthy, athletic 125lbs.

I looked good.

Sob. Sob. Sob.

I'll never have that 28 year old body back. Ever. Well not without plastic surgery. Stretch marks and saggy skin have seen to that!

But I can still be healthier, look and feel better!

I want to go into this IVF and know that I did everything I could possibly do in order to give it the best chance of success.

I was so incredibly depressed from our miscarriages and resulting infertility that by the time I actually became pregnant with Lauren in 2012 I weighed 170 lbs. I'm 5'5". On a good day.

I already had knee pain before pregnancy.

Oh dear Lord, as you can imagine it just got worse and worse. And the day I delivered I weighed in at 199 lbs. Amazing.

Today I weight 148 lbs. And I know I'm already so much healthier. I don't exercise as much as I should and I REALLY struggle with the motivation to do so. But I have really gotten a hold on my diet and our entire family eats VERY healthy. Almost zero processed foods, tons of fruits and veggies. I just know that my insides are getting everything they need and I feel good. Like really good.

Well....ok, last night was the Super Bowl! Ha! I don't feel that good today. Dinner at the party we went to consisted of fried chicken, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes and lots of desserts to snack on!

But my every day diet is pretty fabulous!

We used to eat out 5-7 times a week. Not only do I not know how the heck we could afford to do that, I also just cannot fathom WHY.

We limit it to twice a month now. And now we hate to spend the money and get frustrated that our food options aren't usually very healthy or as tasty as we could make it at home!

But anyway....My overall weight loss goal is to get to around 130lbs. 125 would be awesome. But I'm not focusing on my overall weight goal at the moment. For now I just want to lose 8 lbs before April 1st. That will put my weight at 140.

To do that I'm planning on keeping my diet about the same. I don't count calories. I just try to eat healthy foods whenever I'm hungry. It seems to be working. Slowly but surely.

But I need to kick it up a notch if I want to lose 8 lbs in 2 months. So, I want to get back to running, a little weight training, and lots of walking!

Here's my goals for the week. Rain or shine.

1.Walk for 45 minutes three times this week.
2. Run one mile twice this week.
3. And start some weight training this week, I'll have to get Bryan to really help me with this one and have him set some goals for me since he does this daily. I'm thinking 2 or 3 days of it.

So I hope to check in at the beginning of next week and let everyone (giggle....I still have zero followers!) know how well I did at meeting my goals and I'll do a weight check in and see if I'm made any progress.

Nerves

Ugh.

I'd forgotten just how nervous I used to be.

All. The. Time.

This is absurd. But I'm ridiculously nervous.

Dr. McBaby is supposed to call sometime in the next 3 hours. They don't tell an exact time just give a three hour window...which is worse because I'm sure it'll be three hours before he calls so I get to be nervous until then!

I don't really have anything to worry about. But my anxiety is so high. I can't eat. I put Lauren down for her nap and am hoping he will call while she's asleep just because I know she'll be a handful if he calls when she's awake!

And then I get emotional and think to myself, "What a beautiful problem to have!".

So I have a list of questions...

1) Why do you think my AMH levels went up? Does it really mean anything?

Edited from after our conversation: He said it didn't mean anything really. Well, he said it probably meant I was getting younger and younger! Ha! But seriously, he didn't think it was significant at all. Variations in labs possibly (though it was the same lab...). But if it had gone way down that would have been cause for concern but basically he considered there to be no change. 

2) I'm really a numbers girl. What are our chances of another successful IVF based on what we know from our last cycle and our latest test results?

He quoted about 40%. Obviously, he doesn't know how its all going to go down. But if he had to put a number on it based on everything he'd put it at 40% for a successful pregnancy.

3) Do you ever see a significant difference in egg quality when a patient has been taking French Pine Bark?

He said there are no studies on it BUT that he really believes in it. He cannot prove a thing but knows it won't hurt and he has seen cases where there was a significant improvement....was it the French Pine Bark or total coincidence? He'll never know!

4) And how reliable do you think the Sperm DNA fragmentation test is that we took right after our first IVF? Could there still be a sperm problem even if the traditional SA and the DNA frag test didn't pick up on one?

And I didn't ask this!!! Why? Because I didn't write down my questions. Because oh, I only have 4 questions...I won't need help remembering....

I'll ask next week when I see him!

We took a sperm DNA frag test after we learned that all our embryos were poor quality (well we did have one rated "fair" and two "poor" but none of the others even made it that far, the other 7 had completely quit growing). Dr. McBaby originally thought it was probably a sperm problem because of when the decline happened. Day 3 almost every single emrbyo looked fine. Day 5 was a totally different story and this is typically due to sperm issues. Bryan's SA's had always been excellent and we honestly thought our first IVF was going to be a failure so we decided to do this test ASAP because we didn't want to have to wait too long to do another IVF. But the DNA frag test came back better than excellent. And Dr. McBaby said then it was most definitely my eggs to blame.

Ouch.

But I'd like to pick his brain on the test a bit more. Bryan was a moderate smoker for our first IVF. This time around he has quit for a few months with the help of Chantix and Wellbutrin and he's now taking French Pine Bark too. But I'm just curious to know if he thinks there might be just the slightest chance that the DNA frag test was somehow inaccurate or maybe there's just still more that they don't know about and maybe just maybe it was his sperm and since he's healthier it might all be better this time.

I know most of my questions aren't going to have definite answers. But I like opinions. I like information.

I'll try and update after we chat. That way I'll have a fresh record of what we discussed.

AMH

So my AMH results are in and they're good. 4.14.

Two and a half years ago they were 2.7. They were pretty good then too.

So I have no idea what this means. If anything at all. I thought AMH didn't fluctuate very much and naturally it should go down with age. So I'm a bit confused.

I've been taking French Pine Bark since August for the purpose of improving egg quality. We won't know with any certainty if it has helped until egg retrieval and seeing how the embryos develop. So I don't know that a big increase in my AMH has anything to do with better quality. All my research says not really. Higher AMH usually results in more eggs during stimming, more eggs mean a better chance of having some good eggs. So maybe it's a good thing.

But I had a decent number, if not a really good number of eggs last time. 12 mature. 10 fertilized.

Or maybe it's a sign of PCOS. I mean I don't think I've got PCOS but one website I ran across said above 4 is indicative of PCOS. Ehh, who knows?!

I just have not heard of such a huge increase in AMH levels. Not that I have any readers currently but can anyone out there she'd some light? Anyone, hello? 😝

I have a phone conference scheduled with Dr. McBaby this Wednesday afternoon. So I'm guessing he can shed some light on this for me. Marge did say that they probably weren't going to change my IVF protocol. So that's good. It was considered a "micro IVF" protocol so medications are fairly low dose, which means cheaper!

I remember all of these feelings, worries, obsessions, fears from the three very long years we tried for our first child. They're so much easier to handle now that we've made it to this side. But they still kind of suck!

The what ifs! How comes! What do I do nows!

Mehhh.

Labs are Done

A few months ago I emailed my IVF nurse, let's call her Marge...to inquire about doing an IVF cycle in January. I suspected that breastfeeding would pose some problems and I wanted to see if there were any supplements or medications that my doctor might recommend since we discovered that I have poor egg quality after doing our first IVF.

Marge responded immediately and recommended that I begin taking something called French Pine Bark. So I think I went to the store that same day and started popping those pills! She also said that I needed to have ceased breastfeeding for 3 months before we could attempt another IVF. Like I said, I suspected there could be some problems so I'm glad I checked! However, three months was a bit of a shock. I thought I'd just need to quit before I started the medications. But they want my body back in tip top "I can carry a baby" shape and breastfeeding MIGHT prevent that. 

And when we're forking over $15k for one single attempt at pregnancy we really don't want to take any chances!

So I thought about stopping but quickly realized neither one of us were ready so we pushed the date back further and decided we'd stop in January and aim for an April IVF.

So that is where we are now. I nursed my sweet girl for almost 17 months, an accomplishment that I'm very proud of. 

I then emailed Marge again and let her know we were "ready" to get the ball rolling. We got some lab orders in and my husband and I both had our blood drawn earlier this week and are awaiting the results.

I think its time I come up with names for my family...since we're anonymous here at Grow Blueberry Grow...this should be fun!

I'll just go with some names I like....Bryan, Katie, and Lauren. I'll be Katie. 

So Bryan had his blood drawn. One measley vial of blood. They're just checking him for infectious diseases. Meanwhile they took 5 from me. They're checking for infectious disease too, thryoid testing, clotting problems and one of the most important in my book: AMH.

Back in 2012 my AMH was a respectable 2.7. Very normal number for a woman of 31. At 33, almost 34, I must admit I'm pretty scared about what the number might be now. AMH gives you a round about figure of how many eggs you've got left. Obviously, the older we get the lower that number should be....but low numbers can be scary and extra expensive and lower the already low odds that we are going to get pregnant and have a baby!

And that's where we are now.

Our next steps: schedule a sperm analysis for Bryan, schedule a sonohysterogram for me, and then have a sit down with the RE, Dr. McBaby, and figure out our game plan!

Well, hello there!

Man, oh man, does this feel fantastic and weird. Definitely weird. It has been so incredibly long since I've written in a blog.

My blog.

And I'm happy to be back! Anonymous this time around but back nonetheless.

So, anonymous? This will be interesting. Do I use code names? Crazy aliases? Decision, decisions!

I think I'll just start with my story.

It began in 2009 when I married the love of my life. What a ride we've been on! We went through more bad stuff, oh let's just tell it like it was, we went through absolute fucking hell for a number of years. We made some crazy, off the wall decisions, and landed here. Five and a half years later, happier than ever before. With a life darn well near perfect.

We have a dog, named Saint. He's a lab. He's crazy the way most young labs are. But he's super good looking so we let him stay.

We have a litter of cats. Ok, so not really. But we do have four. I love them. Except when they bring snakes into my house for show and tell.

Not so cool.

But the best of all, we have a beautiful (yes, I know all parents say this but in our case its so true...so, so true) little girl. And I don't just mean she's easy to look at. I mean this child is the sweetest, kindest, funniest, smartest little thing I've ever encountered and probably that you've ever encountered too. And because we've been living with this crazy kid for 17 months now we've come to realize that we really want to bring another baby into our home just as awesome and wonderful and cute and loveable as she is. It's hard to find perfection once but we're pretty sure we can do it again!

So our journey begins.

I kept a blog of our journey to my daughter. It was traumatic. Not the blog. But the journey. Two miscarriages, an infection that destroyed my fallopian tubes, an ectopic pregnancy, fertility treatments including IVF and then finally, from out of darkness my rainbow appeared. And just in the knick of time too, I'm not so sure my heart could have survived much more.

And here we go again. In the coming months we will embark down the same road. IVF. This time with a lot more knowledge of what we're up against and just how incredibly lucky and blessed we are to be parents at all.