FET Take Two

I know I'm super behind on posting about Cancun and my new mama cloth, but I'm going to skip ahead a little bit because we had our first ultrasound for our next FET! This time, Dr. D has decided that we're going for a natural transfer instead of a medicated transfer like we attempted the first time.

If you recall, a medicated cycle is more controlled and schedule-able. First, you take birth control to suppress your ovaries for two weeks. Towards the end of the two weeks, you add in Lupron and after a small overlap, stop the BCPs, continue the Lupron and add in Estrogen pills. This starts to build your uterine lining up after the BCPs quieted it down, and you continue the Lupron for a little while to ensure you don't ovulate too early. When the lining looks perfect with a nice triple layer pattern, you trigger ovulation with an HCG injection and 5-6 days later you transfer your embryo back home.

In a natural cycle, you skip the whole first half. I'm not suppressing with birth control, no Lupron obviously since it made me so sick, and we're going to rely on my body to make it's own estrogen the same way it does every month. They'll monitor me sporadically to track my rising hormone levels and check in on my lining to see how it's doing on CD 3 (yesterday) and CD 10. As I get closer to ovulation and my lining starts to thicken, they'll monitoring things more closely and if necessary, will have me trigger ovulation with an HCG injection. 5-6 days later our embryo comes home and we support it with progesterone and estrogen since IVF/frozen embryos can sometimes require a little extra help.

Little embryo heading home

While I'm so excited to finally have the chance to get pregnant, I'm also slightly terrified that my body won't be able to do what it's supposed to to prep for and support this embryo. This isn't IUI where we shoot some swimmers up there and cross our fingers. When we do this transfer I will be pregnant, we're putting a real live, tiny, perfect, chromosomally normal cellular human into my uterus and asking it to implant and stick around. We're risking one of the two embryos I've worked so hard to get and the thought of losing this potential tiny human is devastating. While we haven't found anything wrong with my uterus and I do ovulate on my own, it still seems like a lot of pressure for my body to ask it to do this all by itself. Then again, human beings get pregnant every day without help so obviously there are bodies doing the same thing that mine is doing all over the world right now. I just have to trust that it knows what to do.

This little embryo will be our baby. It's going to successfully implant and be born and grow up to be a tiny human being full of potential. I just have to do everything I can to help it get there.