My first post! Welcome all, after a few different kinds of fertility treatments and about 17 months of trying with 10 of them getting help from Doctors I decided to start this blog. In doing this blog I hope to inform my friends and family, express my feelings both good and bad and maybe even help someone going through the same thing.
So here is our story...
After going off birth control I was not getting my cycle, I thought it would just take a little while since I was on the pill for over 10 years. I went into my regular OBGYN and she told me that there was nothing they could do yet until a year of trying, we were only trying for 3 months then. After hearing that I was disappointed, I knew something was going on and wanted to get started on other options. After talking to a friend of mine who was having the same problem she recommended me to Partners OB which is where her Dr recommended her to go. In June I started working with Dr Votel, there were many blood tests to see if they could see anything obvious going on. Right away she thought I had poly-cystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), this is something most women with infertility problems have. It is nothing too serious until you are trying to conceive, basically my follicles do not fully mature and drop eggs they turn into little cysts and never go away. After a ultrasound confirmed that I started Metformin and that has stopped the follicles turning into cysts. The next step we took was to get me on Clomid, it was to jump start the development of follicles and then I would continue to take estrogen pills to guide my body and grow mature follicles. After trying that 4 times they found that no follicles were growing enough to mature into a egg so that is when they referred me to start seeing Dr Casey at the Center for Reproductive Medicine (CRM).
At that point I was pretty upset, I was really hoping that getting the PCOS under control and using Clomid would be all that it would take. I did have a lot of hope cause my friend had a lot of success going to Dr Casey, she will have her little girl this summer! So I felt like I was going to be in great hands and was feeling good about starting our next step. We started with me and Harley going in and meeting with Dr Casey to decide on what we were going to do first, it was agreed that we would try a few IUI cycles to see how I responded to that. Being that Harley had a great result in his tests, which he was very proud of and will sing it from the mountains, IUI was the best next step. In December I started doing infertility shots, these shots were to stimulate the ovaries and grow some mature follicles, or follies as the nurses called them! Once I had a couple follies that were 17 mm or higher I would take another shot to induce ovulation, then a few days later I would go in to be inseminated. For IUI they just implant the sperm into your uterus, they still have to do their normal job and find the egg and do all of that hard work but doing the IUI that would get them close. None of us knew how long the process would take, including the nurses. Being that I have PCOS my cycle was LONG to say the least, the follies grew but at a slow rate. Which they said slow was good cause then they would be good eggs, but it was about 24 days of daily shots and about 2-3 ultrasounds a week. Lets just say I know all the ultrasound techs and nurses at CRM very well! Haha! On day 28 of my cycle they did the IUI, two weeks later we found out it didn't work. We were pretty upset that it did not work, since my cycle ended up starting over the same day we got the news we went right back into it and started again for the next IUI. Dr Casey said that it is very common that the first IUI doesn't work especially if you don't usually ovulate on a normal basis so your body has to get used to it.
The 2nd IUI try Dr Casey increased the dose of my shots to get it to go a little faster this time, unfortunately it went a little too fast. Around day 14 of my cycle I was at a ultrasound and I ended up having 7 follies that were mature! It was funny cause they were just looking at my uterus and we could see all of the follies before even moving the ultrasound wand over to the ovaries. So sadly they had to cancel the cycle due to a huge risk of dropping all 7 eggs and having sextuplets or something like that!! Just last month we tried for our 3rd IUI, this time she started the dose high and then dropped it after a few days hoping that the increase at the beginning would get things started strong and it would not take as long as the first cycle. With IUI it is very difficult to control things when you have PCOS cause it will go slow, slow, slow and then all of a sudden hyperdrive! So we were trying to find the right dose and combination to get things to move along nicely, it was going slow like the first round which was ok but then my estrogen started dropping. I started taking estrogen pills to get it back up and it worked and the follies started to mature but a few days later things started going in the opposite direction. Dr Casey called me and we talked about whether we should keep going and see if something turns around or cancel the cycle. I didn't want to start over but I knew nothing else was going to happen that time.
After that Dr Casey and I decided that moving to IVF would be the best next step. IVF is more controlled and they want you to grow many follicles cause they will take all of the eggs they can and it will give us a better chance for multiple embryos to use the first time and then some to freeze for future rounds. So she felt this would be a great choice for us after seeing how I responded to the fertility shots so far. Me and Harley went in and met with her and asked questions about it, we learned that this would be about a 8 week process. We also learned about the procedure, costs and insurance. Luckily we have GREAT insurance, one of the best she has ever seen. So we have 5 IVF attempts covered under insurance so with that many tries she feels that is more than enough and is very hopeful after the first or second try we will become pregnant. During IUI we had a risk of about 20% for multiples depending on how many follicles matured and how many dropped during ovulation. With IVF we have the choice to implant one or two embryos and she said most couples do two to increase their chance of one of them making it. With implanting two we do have a 36-60% chance for twins, Harley was all on board for that! He wants twins- a boy and a girl and then we will be done. I feel like I would want to be pregnant a few more times but we will have that discussion once it comes up :)
At this point my cycle just started, today actually, so we are at CD1 (cycle day 1) and have around 75 plus or minus to go until we know if this worked or not. I start out doing blood tests tomorrow to see what my levels are, after that I will go back on birth control pills! Funny since we are trying to have a baby, but that will help keep hormones and everything going. I will be on them from anywhere between 9-21 days, after a few weeks I will start taking Lupron shots. Lupron will prevent early ovulation, I will take this for 21 days. Around mid May I will start taking more shots, of Gonal F and Menopur which will stimulate the ovaries and get the follicles to start growing. In about the 8-12 days I am on those I will go in for blood work on day 3 to check my estrogen levels, then on day 6, 8 and 10 I will go in for ultrasounds to see how things are growing, once they find enough follies mature enough but not too far gone I will take a shot to induce ovulation and will go in the next day for retrieval. They will retrieve all of the eggs they can before one drops, cause as soon as a egg drops the rest of them dry up and go away. After 5 days of fertilizing the eggs they will take the two embryos that look the best and implant them, 10 days after that we will take a pregnancy test!
We are very hopeful and excited and hope we have good news to share with everyone this summer! Sorry this was such a long first blog but I just wanted to get everyone caught up that did not know what was going on or only new a little. In the future they wont be this long :) Feel free to email me or call me if you have any questions or want to talk about things, I don't have a problem talking about it I just wanted to start the blog to keep everyone caught up who wants to know how things are going. The emails and texts some of you were getting were getting hard to remember who knew what so this will be much easier! Well I'm going to say goodnight now and I hope everyone enjoys there weekend and I will talk to you later, much love!!
