First Post
I am definately a strange duck. I have serval defining characteristics.
1. I am an adoptee times two
2. I have had a gastric bypass
3. and finally, I am infertile
The 3rd reason is why I have chosen to blog. I have had a long history of infertility, but I am continuing in my persuit of motherhood. My husband and I have been trying off and on for over 7 years. As I get older and older, I feel more and more desparate. Here's my battle with infertility in a nut shell...
I got my first period at the ripe old age of 9 (2 weeks before I turned 10). I never had a regular cycle. I met my husband in 1988, and started dating in 1989. We didn't want to get pregnant, so I took birth control pills (BCP) so I wouldn't get knocked up. It regulated my periods nicely. Meanwhile, I started slowly gaining weight. I got married in 1994. My husband wanted to go to law school, so children were off the table until he graduated. When he was done with school, we moved to Texas (we were in NH for his law school). By the time we moved to Texas, I was obese. I started tying to get pregnant. I diagnosed myself with PCOS. My Gyn didn't think I had PCOS and started giving me Clomid. When I didn't get pregnant, she sent me to have an HSG - everything was normal. My dose of clomid grew every month from 50mg to over 350mg. After 8 month of this, I gave up tring via the clomid way. It was just way too emotionally difficult to be so disapointed month after month (not to mention the aweful hot flashes). My weight was now putting me in the morbidly (meaning it can kill me) obese catagory. My BMI was 38.7; a BMI of 35 is considered MO. I was suffering from complete and utter anovulation. Without medication, I could go months if not over a year without a period. So a I made a fateful decision, to have gastric bypass. My insurance didn't cover it, so I paid cash. Miraculously, my period returned after I lost about 50 pounds and became regular and has been ever since. However, I was not allowed to get pregnant for 2 years until my weight stablized. I lost 107 pounds and went from a size 24 to a size 4. I was normal for the first time in over a decade.
We moved from Texas to Washington State. NOTE: You have to clarify which one, otherwise everyone thinks DC. I feel if you mean Washington DC, the say DC! NOT Washington. You don't have to say Utah State. But I digress... I waited the 2 years and then we started trying again. With a regular period, we tried naturally by monitoring my ovulation. After 8 months of trying, I got pregnant. This is could be disputed, but I know that I was. I felt pregnant. I had sore breasts, tired beyond belief, and I missed my period by 5 days. No positive ever showed up on a pregnancy test, but when what I thought was my period showed up, I found one day while in the restroom at work, a clump of tissue the size of a large grape. The hard lump was slightly dark red an gray. This was not a period, it was a miscarraige. We tried for a few more months when I needed another emotional recess from the fun (sarcastic) we were having tring to concieve.
We waited for quite some time, but then I turned 33 and the panic set in. I ain't gettin' any younger and we need to get this show on the road. So time to find a fertility specialist. Unfortunately, the one I found was an A-hole. After my 4th visit, I fired him. I still smile over it today. He called me into his office after another one of his wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am exams for the results. He told me that I wasn't ready, and I had to wait for another month, oh and by the way, please take your file to the front desk, I have to call someone. HUH? What did I look like? I turned to him and I said that I wasn't happy with the brush off and service I had gotten again, and that he can take my file back to the desk. He said, and I'm paraphasing here, that he was too important to do that, and he had more patients to see blah blah blah. So I looked at him straight in the eye and said, "You're fired" (Before Donaldy Trump coined it). I plopped my file on this desk and walk out and never saw Dr A-hole again. Over time, I found that many of his patients disliked if not hated his demeanor.
I started working for a new company that paid for all fertily treatments 100% upto $15,000! I know, can you belive it? I got a referral from a co-worker for a Dr in Seattle. We'll call him Dr Mac. So in May of 2005 I contacted him. He definitively dianosed me with PCOS, prescribed Metformin for me, and sent me off to have a HSG to see if I could have IUI. The HSG was INCREDIBLY painful. Both falopian tubes were now so scarred and twisted from the PCOS that they no longer open. The person giving me the HSG test tried to open them with the fluid that they use. No luck. So my only available option is IVF. My husband was told to do another sperm analysis, his 3rd. As always his numbers are fine, but Dr Mac saw that too many of his sperm were not shaped right so he opted to do ICSI. So all is set right? Welllllll, no. The lab that they are going to need to do the proceedure is being remodeled and won't be ready unitl August. :(
I got a call at the end of Aug, that I got one of the last slots available for a September cycle at the clinc. I started taking my pills and shots to proceed with IVF. The shots were hard to give in the beginning, but I got used to it. As my overies got bigger and bigger, each of them eventully got to the size of a grapefruit, I was eager to undergo the egg retrival proceedure as soon as possible since I was so uncomfortable. It got to the point I could not hardly sit or stand very well. The other bummer of the process was I was developing too many cysts. Dr Mac warned me of OHSS (over hyperstimulation syndrome). When I was finaly ready, the cyst count was around 60 cysts! OMG! During the surgery, they have to aspirate each and every cyst to see if they can get a mature egg out of it. The good news was they got 22 eggs, but that bad news was that I would have to wait 10 weeks to recover so no implantation for me. They performed ICSI on all of the eggs and 17 were fertilized and 16 survived the freezing process. However, I was not well. I ended up with a severe case of OHSS. I gained 15 pounds, perhaps more, in 24 hours. I looked 6 month pregnant and I was in terrible pain. I had to take a week off from work, and then even when I went back, I couldn't stand up straight, and I looked lovely wearing my husbands pants and t-shirts because nothing I owned fit anymore. I was huge like that for almost 3 weeks. When I went in for one of my follow-up visits to the doc's office, I was really still miserable and I was told that all was well and I'll just "start peeing like a horse" soon. And sure enough, I did indeed start peeing like a horse and lost all of the water weight in a few days.
So, now I have to wait until November to start the implantation medication protocol. Lots of shots and this time, they are IM shots in the butt, and my hubby has to give them. Fun for him! At least I got to do shots for progesterone and not supositories. I have heard that they are not too pleasant. 17 days after starting the protocal, it revealed that I was now ready for implantation. That meant egg thawing time! The plan was, since I had so many embryos, to take them to the blastocyst phase (a 6 day old embryo). Going to this phase has a 50% success rate, as opposed to a 3 day old (8 celled) that only has a 30% success rate. The risk of growing them out to 6 days is that many don’t survive the growth process, but if you have a lot of embryos, you can afford going to the blasocyst stage. Since the success rate is 50%, we have opted to only implant 1 egg. I don’t want to have twins if it can be helped for safety sake due to my gastric bypass.
On Monday, 28th of Nov, the thaw process was begun on 10 of the embryos. Tuesday, 29th, the update from the clinic said that all of our little guys survived the thaw! The update on, Dec 1, was that 9 of the 10 were still growing and going strong. Come day 6, implantation day, only one made it, the one they implated.
10 days later, I found out that I was pregnant. We were so excited! At 7.5 week pregnant, I went in for an ultrasound. I was scared see it not knowing that I was going to see a baby or not, but sure enough, there was a fetal pole with a heart beat. However 4 weeks later, when my husband and I went in for our 11 week ultrasound, we found that the baby had died. If my husband hadn't been with me, I don't know what I would have done. He was so stong even though I know it was taking everything in him to keep it together for me. I sobbed uncontrolably the rest of the day. I then stopped all medication and injections and 4 days later I began to miscarry. I had super heavy bleeding and tissues passage for 3 days, then I had 2 day of spotting. Another ultrasound found that I still had not completed the miscarriage. Later that night, it started heavy again. I bled for almost 2 weeks. I won't go into the gory details of the MC as it is very tramatic to have to do it naturally at home.
So where are we now? I had to wait until my HCG returns back to 0, it has, and my next period. I am now waiting for my next period (imagine the drumming of fingers here). I have 6 frozen embroys left and we are planning to let the embroys grow to 3 days and implant 2 this next time.
I know this was long post, but going forward, entries will be more time relevant and most likely not this long. Thank you and good night.
posted by Mel @ 10:04 AM
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