8 Weeks - Heard Bean's Heartbeat!

This morning we had the absolutely exquisit pleasure of hearing little bean's heartbeat for the first time. It was such a beautiful sound, thumping away, beatbeatbeatbeatbeat like a strong, steady drum. I can't stop listening to it, I need to take a longer video of it next time so I can listen on repeat.

8 week little bean! Not a great photo but still adorable

The downside of the appointment is that we really didn't love the doctor we met with. She's not on my schedule for any other appointments so I'm hoping she was just the ultrasound dating person and not one we're going to have to see again. She argued with me about how far along I am, didn't seem to understand basic post IVF medication (estrogen and progesterone are pretty much standard), wasn't going to look for my SCH even though I told her I had one and more importantly didn't seem to understand PGD/PGS. I introduced myself, explained that this was an IVF/PGD/PGS pregnancy, these are the medications I'm on etc. And she's like oh....I see here you're a FX carrier? You know you could pass that on to boys....and E and I looked at each other like WTF? Is this lady for real? I explained again that yes, I knew I was a carrier since I JUST said we did PGD/PGS and that I was aware my mutation could be passed on to both boys AND girls HENCE THE PGD. Then she asked if I had seen the genetic counselor to talk about passing on my mutation. OMFG.

She was nice and thorough otherwise, I just don't think she has any idea what PGD/PGS is or she wasn't listening when I tried to explain what we'd done. It was disconcerting and we definitely don't want to see her again. We worked way too hard to get this baby to continue care with someone who doesn't understand everything involved.

Unexpected Decisions

I finaaaally got my period after what feels like forever! I know it's only been one month off but man did it feel like a long month, especially because my period was a little bit late too. Now that it's here and I feel like my cramps are attempting to compact my insides, I gave my nurse a ring and she brought me in for my baseline ultrasound and labwork.

E and I went in together for this visit and took care of the thaw and transfer consent paperwork. This set has to be completed in person with a witness so we had to wait for a day when E had enough time to come in. We also filled out our financial commitment paperwork and gave them all our credit card information for the FET fees.

Everything was going pretty smoothly until we got to my ultrasound. I don't have any cysts or issues that could cause problems with a transfer but when she waved the wand over my ovaries I saw way more antral follicles than I usually have. I asked her to go back and count them and to my surprise, I have 19-20 antral follies! That's a crazy high number for me, I never have that many, it's a basically normal number. I was floored.

I mentioned the high count to my nurse in passing as I was leaving the ultrasound room and the first thing she did after confirming the number was ask me if I wanted to do another IVF cycle. I was both surprised and not at the same time, that's an amazing AFC for me and could potentially yield a really nice number of embryos. But it would mean starting from the beginning again, IVF, medications, PGD, PGS, the whole shebang all over. It would mean putting off a transfer for at least 2 months. Spending all that money right after we finish paying for the first two cycles.

I told the nurse E and I needed to discuss it further and that we'd proceed with the FET protocol for the time being. The first part of the procedure is the same, two weeks of birth control, so we have a little bit of time to figure things out.

I really wasn't prepared for this option. My last cycle was such a junker it didn't occur to me that I might be perfectly primed now. E and I have been waiting so long to hold our baby I really don't want to delay.  Then again, it's likely we'll need IVF again in the future since we didn't get quite as many embryos as we were hoping for to have multiple children, and doing another round of IVF now would be a lot easier than doing a cycle with a young baby and a mortgage.   It's such a tough decision I'm not sure where we'll go from here.

Medicated FET

I just got the list of things we'll need to get done before our medicated FET can begin. I was hoping we wouldn't need to get to everything on the list before I can even start birth control but no such luck.

First up:

• Get financial clearance, this means calling their financial manager and getting her approval to go ahead with the FET. I'm waiting for a call back from her on Monday. On the subject of money, Reprogenetics never asked us for payment for adding on PGS to our PGD testing, even though I called them and tried to give them my credit card at least 8 times. Maybe they tried to bill my insurance for the PGS as well as the PGD since we had an abnormal embryo? I don't know but I hope it doesn't hold us up. I'm prepared for the clinic's financial person to bring it up just in case and I'm expecting them to send a bill any day.

 Next on the list:

• Get yet another infectious disease panel. I had a huge panel run when we started infertility testing that I had transferred over to the clinic before we started IVF.  Apparently it is now out of date; it needs to be done within a year and since mine is technically from last August, I need a new one. I really don't want to pay a ton out of pocket for it at the clinic so I'm going to see if I can get my OB-GYN to order it. 

Third one isn't so bad:

• Go in person with E to sign consent forms for thaw and transfer. It would have been nice if we could sign and email the forms but to do that we'd need to have them notarized which is just as inconvenient and not going to happen. Instead, I just need to find a time we can both go in to take care of it. 

And finally, progress!

• Order all the meds! They're thinking BCPs, Lupron, Estrace, Progesterone in oil (not sesame!), HCG, baby asprin, Endometrin, Z pack, Medrol, and Naproxen. They also offer Valium but I'm going to pass on that since I'm not a nervous wreck. It's really for patients who can't relax for the procedure but having been through two IUIs (I've been told an IVF transfer feels just like an IUI, basically painless) a HSG and a Hysteroscopy without meds I'm quite sure I don't need it.

My one gripe is I actually had to call and request the list myself, because I need to be super psycho prepared for this stuff in advance, and I kind of wish they would have taken the initiative to send it sooner. If all this needs to be done before I start medication and I was told to "call on the first day of my period", leaving 2-3 days before I'd need to be on medication, I'm not sure how I was supposed to get this done in that time frame. I'm probably starting to PMS a bit since my period is right around the corner but it's rubbing me the wrong way a bit - shouldn't they be more on top of getting me this information? I'm now waiting on a second email from the nurse as well, giving me the details about which tests they want me to ask my OB-GYN to run. It makes me wonder if they think I'll probably get bumped for the holidays so there's no rush :/  

I really hope not, I'm so ready to get this embie back home where they belong! I am going to make this baby to stick through sheer force of will and the sooner I get them back into my body, the better.

TWO BABIES To Be Thankful For!

We got our results a day early! We have TWO HEALTHY EMBRYOS! TWO!

We followed statistics for my mutation transmission almost exactly. We had a 50/50 shot of the embryos being healthy and we sent in 6 embryos. 3 of the 6 tested were mutation free, but unfortunately one of those 3 had a tiny chromosomal deletion. I asked if there was any way this frostie might still be viable but Dr. D said that with deletions like this, there are usually other segments or things missing as well. This makes me so grateful we decided to add on the PGS, without it we wouldn't have found out that this frostie is sick and would have had a heartbreaking miscarriage or worse, might have had to terminate for defects incompatible with life.

I'm so relieved, I feel like I'm going to cry and possibly be sick at the same time. We still have a long way to go, these babies need to stick! but we're so much closer to actually holding a healthy baby. After seeing so many of these cycles yield nothing to transfer, I'm so, so happy we have healthy babies to transfer.

We are all made of stars

Dr. D needs to confirm it, but it looks like one embryo came from our first batch and one from the second. They're both hatching blasts and although Dr. D told us the genders, we've decided to keep it a surprise. We'd really like at least one thing to be normal about our pregnancy process and since nothing else has been, this is going to be it.

After getting the good news, I asked Dr. D whether he thought we should proceed with our frozen transfer or whether he thought we needed to cycle again and try to get more embryos. They usually say (without PGS) that you need 2-3 embryos per child you'd like to have, and since E and I would love 2-3, but would be happy with any at this point, I knew with only 2/6 that we might need to cycle again. As I've said before, we don't know how quickly my fertility is going downhill but we definitely know it is going. I was ready to hear that we'd need to do this whole process again but Dr. D feels that with my age, if we need IVF again in the near future I should still be young enough to produce some good eggs. I'm not sure if I agree because FXPOI complicates things in ways not reflected by age but I'm going with it.

We have so much to be thankful for this year that I'm overwhelmed thinking about it all. I'm thankful for E and our friendship and marriage, going through this is incredibly difficult and I think it's amazing that we've been able to stay strong and united. I'm thankful for all our friends and family members, who have been incredibly supportive and have helped us stay sane thus far, especially through all the mind numbing waiting. I'm thankful for Dr. D and SCRC for helping us get these two embryos, who with any luck will both be coming home with us as two healthy babies. I'm thankful for IVF and especially for PGD, I'm so grateful that we live in a time where we have the tools and technology to create and screen embryos for so many horrible diseases. And I'm so, so thankful for the two healthy embryos, our two little fighters, who for the first time have given us a real shot at a healthy family.

With a whole lot of hope, wishing, crossed fingers, science and love, we will have a healthy baby in our arms this time next year.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you have a wonderful holiday with all of your loved ones.

Waiting, Wondering, Worrying

Well here we are, the day before Thanksgiving, the day before we're supposed to get our results. I thought I'd been dealing with the waiting and what ifs pretty well, I've been staying super busy and for the most part haven't allowed myself to think or dwell on it. I've been intently picking out super cute leggings from various Aussie websites (It's turning into an addiction and I don't even have my first pair yet), hunting for boots to go with said leggings, working on my aquarium which is always soothing and getting everything ready for Thanksgiving. I haven't been counting the hours but it would pop into my head every few days that we were that much closer to results. Somehow they always seemed far off, something that would be happening in the future.

Now, it's the night before and I'm thinking I'm not so okay. After a conversation about socializing with friends turned into a conversation about parents and babies, I suddenly felt quite irrationally emotional, like a cup in the process of overflowing. It's clear that even though I haven't been consciously dwelling on it, my subconscious has been drowning. I tend to internalize things so I can carry on calmly and I now feel like an idiot for genuinely not knowing why my hair seemed to be falling out the other day. It's one of the telltale giveaways that I'm under stress but at the time I couldn't think what it could be. Way to block out the big stuff brain, I'm sure that's super healthy.

On what will likely be the eve of our PGD results reveal unless the clinic closes for Thanksgiving, which is still a possibility, it appears my brain has run out of distractions. It's hit me like a freight train that this is it and I don't know what to do.  I can't stop going over horrible things even though I'm trying to put only positive energy and thoughts out there.

We still haven't paid for our PGS. H never called me back to get our credit card. Does this mean all our embryos were effected so they never did the PGS screening?

What if all our embryos are sick? What if we went through this for nothing?

What if they don't call with our results? How will I get through Thanksgiving with all those people? How will I get through it anyway if it's bad news?

E just got sick and has probably now exposed me. Will that effect our FET if when we get there?

I'm so, so scared our results won't be good. We've been through so much, I've been through so much I need these frozen babies to be healthy.  Now all I can think about is the worst case scenario and I feel like I'm going to choke on the lump it brings to my throat. Please be healthy embryos. Please be healthy.

Christmas Delays?!?!

Originally, I was planning on putting an embryo back straight away after this IVF cycle. I psyched myself all up for a November transfer and told myself I'd have good news for the holidays. I was ready to go, let's get this embryo toasty warm in my uterus!

Then, Dr. D put the kibosh on that. He said I've been injecting waaay too much medication into my body, two months in a row, and that wouldn't make for the most ideal environment for our embryo. Damn. He suggested that we take a wash cycle, wait for the drugs to really leave my system and start fresh with a nice, fresh cycle. Okay, I don't love the idea of waiting yet another month, but I would never do anything to jeopardize the success of my frosties so I got on board. One wash cycle to get everything out and THEN we'd thaw out a frostie and put it back.

With a regular cycle, it's pretty easy to plan when things should be happening. With this period showing up right on time I was pretty much positive that we'd be doing our transfer shortly after Christmas, probably sometime around the 28th if Dr. D really planned on transferring on CD 17. I've heard some people transfer later, closer to CD 20 or 22 but Dr. D said CD 17 so that's what I went with. I psyched myself up again for a Christmas transfer told myself I'd have wonderful news around January 9th. A September baby would be wonderful, right before the holidays really started to pick up.

I was reading through my IVF support group, reminding myself to practice patience when I read about some clinics closing for the holidays and delaying treatments. This should have been obvious, of course they'd want to go on holiday, but my clinic couldn't be closing because I'm transferring right after Christmas, right?  Right??

Nooooooo!!!

I got on the phone to Dr. D's nurse and asked them about their Christmas schedule. Bam, my worst fears were confirmed. They usually close for two weeks spanning the end of December to the beginning of January. Fuck. Right over when I was supposed to be doing my transfer. Double Fuck.

I explained to the nurse that I was supposed to be transferring over that time period and wasn't expecting my period to start until December 12th. She elaborated that the ART center closes completely for those two weeks but there's still a crew on the clinic side. The last day for most things is December 18th and there are only certain days after that where they can perform specific procedures. This is probably for those people who need to stim longer than expected and need their retrieval done over those two weeks, not for people who are looking to transfer a frozen embryo that's perfectly happy waiting on ice.

She told me to call with the first day of my period and we would see how things look then but it looks like we'll be delayed yet another month. I was just getting used to the idea of taking one month off and now we have to take two. I told my acupuncturist S how disappointed I was and she said that success rates are lower around Christmas because people are stressed out so I wouldn't want to transfer then anyway, but I'm pretty sure she was just trying to make me feel better. I don't see out of town family members or deal with a lot of family drama over Christmas so I'm fairly certain that my chances wouldn't be any lower just because it's the holidays.  My frostie certainly doesn't know it's Christmas.

All I want for Christmas is a batch of healthy embryos! One in my belly and the rest on ice.

If we have to wait two months, we won't get to transfer until the end of January, probably around the 25th. This means that I would potentially be getting good (because I refuse to believe otherwise) news on my birthday. It would be a wonderful birthday gift but I'm so anxious to get an embryo back where it belongs. This process takes so long and every month more feels like forever.

News To Be Thankful For?

I still haven't heard back from H, the financial person at Reprogenetics, so I shot an email off to my Reprogenetics genetic counselor D to see if she could give me an update. H is usually really good about getting back to me, she must be on vacation or out of the office because she's never had me wait more than a couple days. I know they won't release my results until they're paid so she's going to have to get back to me eventually to get my credit card.

Lucky for me, D is in the office and she got back to me pretty much right away. I asked her to confirm that she'd received the samples since I had only heard from Dr. D about that, and asking whether testing had begun because we can't wait for some good news.

The message I got back basically said:

I know the waiting is hard. We've started testing,  it will take the full 15 days. You'll know on 11/27.

I know Garfield. I know.

For those who didn't catch that bit at the end, 11/27 is Thanksgiving. When we will have all sorts of people in the house. We will be getting either really good news or really bad news with a house full of people. The waiting is so tough,  I can't wait to find out, but this is not how I wanted to do it.

Plus, I'm sure Dr. D won't be working on Thanksgiving. If he's not in the office, we don't get our results. Reprogenetics is sending them directly to Dr. D not to us, since the sensitive information should be explained by a doctor yadda yadda. I'd honestly rather they just email them so I don't have to talk to anyone if the results are bad but that isn't an option.

E and I wanted time to ourselves to process and deal with the results. We didn't want to share them with the few family members who know, especially if they're not good, until we'd digested them and figured out our next move. Honestly we really wish they didn't know the testing was going on since their questions/expectations/hopes/certainty really make us feel worse and not better. I don't think they realize how difficult the process is, how often people end up with no healthy embryos to transfer. Even with 6 to test, we could very easily have no healthies and their certainty that all our embryos will be healthy and everything will be roses and sunshine feels shallow.

Maybe we'll get lucky and we'll get wonderful news early. I'm still hopeful that our embryos will be healthy, that we'll have 6 frosty babies to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. But it would be really nice if we could get our results without an audience.

AF With A Vengeance

Unsurprisingly, my period showed up exactly on time, 11 days after my trigger. There has to be something said for predictability, at least I know when the witch should be rearing her ugly head. The first couple days I had to top up my Advil every 4 hours instead of every 8+ like I usually would, those cramps break through surprisingly quickly. A couple days in they're not awful, uncomfortable yes, but I'm good with just a couple Advil each day.

I think the toughest part has been waiting with nothing to do. I've taken the supplements, done the injections, done the retrievals, and now all I can do is wait and wait for my test results to come back. There's absolutely nothing I can do to help or speed up the process which is a very unusual position for me to find myself in. I'm not even sure if they've started the testing yet since I haven't heard back from the financial person yet, I'll probably give both her and the lab a call tomorrow to ask for an update.

(And wait....and wait...and wait...)

Once I stop bleeding like a dying person and feel halfway normal again, my plan is to hit the gym hard and try to take off some of this IVF weight. I feel like I've been packing on inches by the handful and I'd really like to get some of it off before I get pregnant. I already know I won't be allowed to gain a ton of weight, not that I really expect to gain a ton anyway, but it would be nice to start at a more normal point for me instead of this far ahead. Of course, starting a diet/exercise plan right before Thanksgiving is probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, but I don't have a lot of time and I need to get rid of this IVF fluid belly so I have room for a baby in there!

Day 6: SIX EMBRYOS Going For Testing!

Both embryos made it! Holy shit! We now have two more hatching blasts to add to our batch, making 6! I can't believe it, after such a crappy cycle and only retrieving two eggs, I never would have dreamed they'd both be strong enough to make it. Taking them to day 6 was definitely the right decision, the embryologist says they look perfect.  We're going to send these 6 samples out for PGD/PGS and hope/pray/wish/cross everything that they're healthy!!

I was planning on putting one embryo right back once we get our results, an early December transfer, but the doctor says I should take a "wash" cycle. Not everyone needs to take a break but most people only take $1800-$4000 in meds for their cycles and do just one. I've been injecting $9200 in hormones two months in a row and he thinks I should have two periods to wash them all out. The first would be the upcoming one, due at the end of this week if I follow last cycle. Then I'd wait a month, have my next period and start the medication for transfer. He's right and it makes sense, I would never rush anything that could compromise an embie's successful implantation, but it's so hard to be patient!

Right now our biopsy samples are probably being packed in liquid nitrogen and readied for their journey to the east coast. I believe they'll be over nighted to Reprogenetics and then as long as all the samples are good, they'll begin testing. We decided to go ahead and add on the aCGH testing for $2250, it seems crazy to go through all this to test for Fragile X, a developmental disability, and then not check for Down Syndrome or other Trisomy problems. I need to confirm whether they run the tests concurrently or consecutively, hopefully we'll have all healthy embryos and it won't matter, but if somehow they're all affected with Fragile X, they should hold off on the aCGH testing. We won't need to go there though, our embryos are going to be strong and healthy and we'll have a healthy baby before we know it.