It Finally Happened

 

My blog besties already know this exciting news, but I still feel it’s only right to write it down officially, to chronicle the most recent step in my infertility journey.

You guys, I AM PREGNANT!

That thing I have been relentlessly seeking since January 2016 finally happened. To me. In real life. If you can’t tell, though it’s been a few weeks since I got the news, I still struggle to believe it sometimes.

Here’s how it happened. On our summer vacation back to the States my husband and I went back to our fertility clinic in Seattle, where we had our IUI done back in December. This time we were going with the big guns: IVF. Many people who are dealing with infertility end up resorting to IVF, as it is the best possible treatment and provides the highest success rates, especially if nothing else you’ve tried has worked. However, because it’s so freaking expensive, and quite invasive, a lot of couples will wait years before trying it.

For us, it wasn’t a difficult decision. It seemed clear to us that conventional treatments, including IUI, just weren’t going to make it happen. We still don’t know why we’re infertile, but since we had the money and the time to devote to this process that summer, we wanted to go for it. It was our best shot.

IVF is a lengthy process. You start by getting a ton of tests done to make sure you’re ready and there aren’t any other issues with your reproductive system that they don’t know about already. This included a pap smear, testing for STDs, blood tests for hormone levels, and a Saline Infusion Sonohysterogram (an ultrasound of your uterus after they fill it up with saline, to see the shape, etc.). Most of this I was able to do before we arrived in the States, so we could hit the ground running.

The next step is taking birth control pills for about 3 weeks to suppress your system. They want to start from a baseline and be in control of every hormone and every follicle. After that, you begin going to the clinic regularly for transvaginal ultrasounds (one blog I read called it “dildo-cam”) to monitor what’s going on in your ovaries. You also have to have your blood drawn each time to make sure hormone levels are where they should be. After our first ultrasound we were given the go-ahead to start our stimulation medications. These are injectable drugs that cost a pretty penny (in some cases hundred of dollars per dose). Everyone is prescribed a slightly different mix of them depending on your hormones, but I had to do two injections in my belly each night. The following week, a third was added for the morning. My husband administered these, and the majority of the time I could barely feel them. Some people suffer a lot of side effects from all the hormones, but I honestly didn’t experience anything bad throughout the stimulation phase.

All those meds stimulate the ovaries to produce as many follicles (and eggs) as possible. Then, it’s time for the egg retrieval. This involves an ultrasound probe with a giant needle attached going up in the vagina and poking through the vaginal wall to suck the fluid out of each mature follicle. Thankfully, I was under general anesthesia for this, and afterwards a couple of Tylenol and a nap were all I needed to recover.

We retrieved 11 eggs, which is a decent number, but not as high as I had been hoping. Of these 11, only 7 were mature, and 6 of those were fertilized (using a procedure called ICSI to inject a single sperm into each egg.) Then we waited for five excruciating days to find out how many of those 6 survived to the blastocyst stage (it’s common for them to just stop developing if something is wrong genetically). We were very fortunate in that 5 out of our 6 did!

I had two of those 5 beautiful embryos transferred into my uterus on July 11th. I got to see a photo of them and everything! And then, it was time to wait and wait for another 12 days to see if they “stuck.” I also had to start having daily progesterone injections in the butt to help sustain a pregnancy.

Up until this point everything in the process had gone pretty well, perhaps even better than our expectations. But my husband was traveling (he left before the egg retrieval) and I had a lot of time in my own head to worry and wonder about the outcome of all this. You put so much time, money, and emotional energy into the process, but you know all along that it could come to nothing, and another month could end just like all the others before, with a period and a negative pregnancy test. I vacillated from being hopeful to being sure it had failed, sometimes within the same hour.

I’m actually pretty impressed that I controlled myself enough to not cheat with a home pregnancy test before going in for my official blood test on July 21. I think I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, knowing that every other time I’d taken one in my life, it had burned me with a clear negative. I didn’t want to be agonizing over what might be a line or might not. So, I had my blood test and waited nervously for the results, which came via a phone call an hour or two later.

I’d had this whole plan of letting that all-important phone call go to voicemail so I wouldn’t actually have to talk to the nurse, but somehow my voicemail malfunctioned and she wasn’t able to leave one the first time. When I fixed that and she called back, she left a message but didn’t tell me the results. AAGH! The tension was palpable! I finally gutted up and called her myself, and she gave me the beautiful news that I was pregnant. Finally.

I’m now 8 weeks along, and last week at my first ultrasound I saw the babies for the first time, both with beating hearts. Yes, babies! It turns out both of our chosen embryos were over-achievers and decided to stick around. I’m having twins. I’m going to be a mom.

Each day that goes by I become more grateful for this blessing. I know I could still miscarry, but I’m staying hopeful. If these little guys could make it this far and beat all the odds, what’s going to stop them from going all the way? God willing, I will have my babies in my arms some time in March 2018, a date that seems simultaneously imminent and distant.

Already, all the money, all the time, all the injections in the ass (which I’m still doing daily, by the way!) are already worth it. The only hard part is that I can’t tell everyone I know yet. When people ask me how my summer was, I just smile and think, “kind of boring, but 100% life changing.”