It’s here, it’s here, it’s here!

Laryen and I decided to go out to dinner to celebrate the big day! Then it was time to get my shots ready for Day 1 injections. Luckily I only need to take them at night and right now it’s only 2 shots. The Gonal F which stimulates my follicles to grow more eggs and a diluted Ovidrel shot which helps make sure the eggs are healthy.

Laryen is such a big help through all of this! He made sure my dosage for the Gonal F pen was correct (225 for the first 3 days) and put the needle on it and got it all ready for me! And then we had to get just a teeny bit of the diluted Ovidrel into the second needle. See, the needles aren’t that big!

But it’s still a scary thought to stick YOURSELF with a needle! I’m so irrational but my biggest fear is that the needle is going to break off inside me!

It was super nerve-wracking….I started to do it then got too scared, lol. Then I just went for it! And now that means we have officially started IVF!

The first shot BURNED!!! Our wonderful nurse, Alicia, warned me that it might. Tomorrow maybe it won’t burn as bad. It was tender for a while afterwards. The second needle was super easy! We’ll see how I feel tomorrow! Alicia says some people don’t feel any different, some feel nauseous or bloated or cranky. Laryen is really hoping I’m cranky! 😉

Same time, same thing tomorrow!

The IVF process is just that … a calculated, medicated step by step process that will hopefully give us our bundle of joy (yay!!) But even before that begins, there’s a process to get to the process! LOL. And now Laryen and I can officially say that process (the IVF process) is FINALLY HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So many exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😉

But here’s what I mean:

This is the checklist of things we had to do even before the IVF started. Don’t you just love how organized my clinic is. I do!! Things like this helps me so much, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Dr. Huang explained during the IVF consult (#1 on the checklist) that it’ll take about 8 weeks total before we start IVF. My timing landed around the holidays (there’s always something isn’t there!) and we were going to be out of town anyways so we broke it up. I did a lot of IVF testing in November and then everything else happened in the past few weeks.

I know I’m going out of order here, but #6 and #7 are all the meds that I will be taking and shooting myself up with (yes I kind of feel like a druggie or a pin cushion might be a better way to explain it) #2 on the list is just blood work. They look at my hormone levels and see if I’m low, high or normal and that’s how they decide how much medicine I’ll need during my IVF cycle. Luckily my levels were GREAT so no need for extra meds! You want to know what else is cool that they can see? My egg reserve! I think that’s more important for someone who is in their late 30’s or even 40’s and going through IVF but isn’t it crazy that there is a test that can see that?! I know I keep saying this, but science is amazing!

#3 (part B specifically) was not fun. I’m not going to lie…I hope that was the most pain I’ve felt in this whole process, and I NEVER WANT TO DO IT AGAIN! The doctor needs to check your uterus to make sure there aren’t any polyps, weird things in there, etc that could hurt implantation. That was nothing…and the results were “textbook” according to Dr.Huang (another hurdle cleared!) But then came the Endometrial Biopsy … and ladies if your lady doctor ever says, ‘hey I think we need to do this,’ run like hell in the opposite direction and say no!!!! Ok, I’m really overreacting but it sucks! And the nurses and Dr. Huang said it was going to hurt so they gave me fair warning. They pretty much take a piece of your lining to test for any infectious disease. And the way they get that is by using a tube like scraper thingy that sucks a piece of your lining out and it feels just like you are probably imagining it does. But thank the Lord that came back normal too, so I never need to do that again!

#4 is more organization (yay!)

Here’s a look at my calendar for the next few weeks! The doctor and nurses have a copy so we’re all on the same page with medications, procedures, and doctors appointments. Everything can change based on how my ovaries react to the medication but right now it looks like the egg retrieval will be February 4th and they’ll put the fertilized eggs back in me 3-5 days later.

But we need to get there first! Check out this calendar I made!

Color coded and everything! (yes, I’m a dork) I’ll put all my shots, doctors appointments, procedures and other meds I need to take on this calendar. Everyone I talk to and all the blogs I read say organization during this process is key so the more organized I am, the less stressful I will feel which hopefully will mean a good IVF cycle.

#8 and #9 happened yesterday!

We learned all about my medication; where to inject them, how to mix the medicine, how much to give me every night, and what symptoms I might feel because of the meds. I’ll give most of the shots myself near my stomach area and luckily the needles aren’t too big. (until we get to the progesterone– eek!) But I really don’t care! I’d prick myself a million times if it means we get to have a little Laryen or little Lauren running around.

I also had a baseline ultrasound (#9) This is where they check to make sure you don’t have any cysts on your ovaries or anything that looks suspicious that could ruin your IVF chances. A majority of women get cysts on their ovaries from time to time but they go away. If you pump the ovaries up with hormones it could also make the cysts bigger possibly blocking the tubes or creating chaos. IVF cycles have been cancelled because of cysts — luckily another hurdle cleared! No cysts and everything looks GREAT!

So our checklist is done. And that means we’re done with our process to get to the IVF process. Oh yeah, just one more last minor detail:

I can’t believe it’s here! I know we still have a long way to go before we know if it worked or not but we are here. Step one is right around the corner.

Prayers and happy thoughts are welcome from one and all over the next month. And I just want to say thank you for all the support during this crazy time. We are so blessed beyond words to have so many wonderful people in our lives who care for us so much. Thank you isn’t enough.

Alright….let’s go turn me into a human pin cushion!

All I gotta say is if someone comes over and looks in our fridge they might be a little confused. We have orange juice, eggs, beer, things for lunches — oh and a big container full of medications.

We got our IVF meds today! Say it with me…hip hip hooray! Now we are officially set for when our IVF cycle begins in a couple of weeks.

I knew the medication was being delivered today, but it was still a weird feeling when I opened it. This whole experience is almost surreal. We waited so long for this to happen (3 years trying to get pregnant) and there are so many hurdles we’ve been through to get to here, and now it’s here! It’s exciting, scary, nerve-wracking, and such a relief all is one.

The fertility pharmacies are so great. There are only about a dozen across the country so they just FedEx everything overnight. And we already picked up a couple of meds from our local pharmacy so we are ready to play the IVF game.

Everyone’s IVF story is different, including what medication they need and don’t need. After lots of blood work, Dr. Huang looked at all my hormone levels and another hurdle cleared: my levels are great! So no need for extra medication (which equals spending more money). We were THRILLED when we found that out!

So what’s inside the most expensive package we’ve ever received?

Take a look!

Gonal-f injections:

This medication helps me produce multiple eggs. It’s a follicle-stimulating hormone or FSH. Once my IVF cycle begins, I will give myself a dose of this once or twice a day, depending on how well my body reacts and how many follicles start producing eggs. Remember, their goal is to get as many eggs out of me to fertilize as possible. We won’t know how many shots we need until we meet with the doctor next week.

Oh,and before I move on….the most important part: Yes, I have to give myself the shots. Yes, it makes me kind of nervous just thinking of it, and yes it will probably sting a little…but you know what? I’d do that a MILLION times if it meant for Laryen and I to get that bundle of joy!

 Cetrotide injections: 
This medication prevents my eggs from prematurely ovulating. (Isn’t science amazing?! So crazy that there is medicine out there that does all of this unbelievable stuff!) Since I’ll be taking the FSH injections, I’m pumping all these extra hormones into my body, so it’s bound to freak out and think it’s time to release the eggs. WRONG! This medicine tells those eggies to calm down and just be patient!

Ovidrel:

I’ve taken this medication before during our 3 IUI’s. It’s a trigger shot. I take this shot 24-36 hours before the egg retrieval. It ‘triggers’ my follicles to release the eggs.

Progesterone: 

Compared to the other shots, this one is not going to be fun. You know when your doctor says the shot is going to hurt – it’s going to hurt. I will take these shots after the egg retrieval. But these ones Laryen has to give me because they get inserted in my booty. Yep…my booty… d0esn’t that sound like fun.  And these needles are a lot bigger than the other meds. (see below!) I need to invest in an ice pack ASAP!

Ok, enough of the shots I have to take. I also have meds that aren’t shots (Thank goodness!)

Doxycycline: 

This is an antibiotic that I’ll take right before the egg retrieval.

Medrol: 

This is a steroid that I’ll take right after the embryo transfer.

Phew…..ok. That’s it! Now I just need to figure out how to make sure I put the medicine in me correctly…and hope that I don’t pass out from seeing the needles go into my stomach 😉

Remember the hurdles analogy I keep referencing to? Well, Laryen and I were about to embark on the biggest hurdle of them all — having to pay for us to get pregnant. If you think about it, it’s not like we didn’t know it wasn’t coming. We had already paid so much money to get us to this point; insurance paid for some of it, but not all of it. (p.s. insurance usually doesn’t pay for ANY infertility treatments. It might cover a few appointments or non-infertility medications but for the most part, you’re on your own! Which I still feel is b.s. because remember 1 in 8 couples have some sort of infertility, so it’s not as rare as one would think, thus I think insurance should pay for some of it!)

Sorry…I get a little worked up about all of that 😉 Anyway, Laryen and I were really hopeful it wouldn’t get to the $$ part of infertility. But when it did it was a really weird feeling. You had so much more in the game. It was almost like we were gambling for a baby – without going to Las Vegas.

The first gamble we took was doing an IUI, or intrauterine insemination. It’s where they put the sperm inside the uterus taking away some of the obstacles and making it easier for the sperm to find the egg! The swimmers are “washed” so the bad sperm are gone leaving the “good” sperm behind. The process is done right after ovulation so you know the timing is perfect. We knew this was our best chance so far to get pregnant. But we still needed to ‘pay the man.’ $1,090 per IUI, plus the trigger shot to tell my eggs to ovulate, and Clomid to help me produce multiple eggs to increase our chances. So you’re looking at around $1,200 total per IUI.

And even though this was our best chance so far, it was still a gamble. (FYI: I’m going to throw a whole bunch of numbers at you for a second.) A normal couple trying to get pregnant only has a 20% chance every month they’ll get pregnant. Now for us, Dr. Huang said our chances were more like 2%! An IUI increases that chance to between 7%-18%, making us fall into that ‘normal’ range. But even so, it still wasn’t the best odds. Laryen said it best: “If someone had a gun and gave me a million dollars and said there was only a 15% chance that they would hit me, I’d take the money and let them shoot at me. There’s an 85% chance they WOULDN’T hit me.” Morale of the story…the chances aren’t that high. But for us, it was a SIGNIFICANTLY higher chance and the best chance we’ve ever had!

So we had our first IUI in August of 2015, followed by 2 others shortly after.

All of them ended up not working …. which was very heartbreaking. IUI #1 was really hard on Laryen. For me I was bummed out of course, but knew we had a better chance the second time around (the meds stay in your system, making the next time more of a chance of being successful). So when IUI #2 came back negative, I was devastated. When we started the IUI process, Dr. Huang told us we should do it 3 times. Now, it doesn’t mean that if you did it 4, 5 or even 10 times that it wouldn’t work. He knew a lot of women who got pregnant after lots of IUI’s. But like you can see in this picture below, the chances don’t keep going up. They level off. And if the IUI is supposed to work, statistically it’ll work in the first 3 tries.

Unlike the saying, the third time wasn’t the charm for us. We were bummed out but knew the chances were still really low that it would work anyways. We had to keep moving forward, and we knew that every IUI was getting us closer to our end results of becoming parents. After unsuccessful IUI #3 I remember Laryen saying, “can we get our money back?” Laughter is really important to both of us and it’s helped us through this whole process. And if you’re wondering, no….you can’t get your money back, lol.

Now that brings us to where we are today. The second gamble: IVF, or invitro fertilization. Heard of the word test tube baby? Well that’s the old school way of saying that a baby was made through IVF. (and a more accurate saying would be petri-dish baby, btw). IVF is where they take the eggs out of me and fertilize them with Laryen’s sperm in a lab. Once they’re fertilized they put them back in me and, just like any other pregnancy, a healthy, beautiful baby grows! And if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m an open and honest person and this is part of our story so I don’t mind telling you how much it’ll cost us.

Wow, that’s a lot!

Here we go!

Gulp!

We’re looking at $15,000 (on the low end) per IVF. YIKES!!!!! But got.to.stay.positive.and.keep.going. We got a loan and we’ll pay it off — there’s no way we can say it’s not worth it. It is, of course it is. We just pray that our kiddos are both super smart and really athletic to get a lot of scholarships for college 🙂

Let me tell you, science is amazing. The fact that they can actually do ANY of this stuff BLOWS MY MIND! It’s jaw-dropping awesomeness and kind of overwhelming. Just check out this drawing my doctor drew when we went in for our IVF consultation.

That’s the whole process, squeezed into an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper. I’m a visual learner so it helped me break down the process in my head (even though I did put it in a drawer right after we met with him and didn’t bring it back out to look at until weeks later.) I won’t go into all the details of how it works, but I’ll try my best to explain the process in an IVF-nutshell.

IVF is just like any normal pregnancy, except all the fertilization happens outside the body and in a lab. The doctor pumps me up with a lot of extra hormones (in the form of shots that I need to give myself) so I produce multiple eggs. Once the doctor takes the eggs out of me (a quick hour-long surgery), they are brought to the lab where they are fertilized!

A teeny needle inserts 1 teeny tiny sperm into each egg (the process is called ICSI) and the miracle of life begins.

Over the next 3-5 days, the cells divide, and divide again and again, etc until they become embryos. And once they have enough cells (at that stage they’re called blastocysts), 2 of the eggs are put back into me and (fingers crossed) they like my warm cozy uterus and want to stay for there oh 9 months or so. 🙂

Some of you may be wondering, how many eggs do they get? Well, 18 or 20 eggs isn’t unrealistic. But all those eggs aren’t going to be good…some might be overripe or not 100% developed. And even after they’re fertilized not all of them are going to get to that last stage. In our doctor’s example if you have 12 mature eggs and fertilized them all, on average only 4 will develop into healthy embryos.

Some of you also might be wondering, why don’t they put all the fertilized eggs back in you so you have a better chance at getting prego? Well, 1) I don’t want to be Octomom and 2) it actually doesn’t increase your chances. Not all doctors are the same, but my doctor won’t put more than 2 embryos back in during IVF. Our clinics stats over the past couple of years look like this: With 2 embryos you have a 70% chance of having a positive pregnancy test (yay!) and a 50% of a viable pregnancy meaning there’s a heartbeat. That’s what is scary – still not 100% but it’s damn good odds if I do say so myself. It’s also not healthy for mom or baby(ies) if there’s too many in there. The risk is just not worth it. So we’re gambling on those 2 🙂

Another question we had is what happens to the other fertilized eggs? They go right into the freezer (no, not next to the ice cream in ours at home) at the lab. Those eggs are good for 10+ years, so when we’re ready for another baby we’ll do a FET or frozen embryo transfer which seems like a pretty simple process compared to IVF. You can also donate the eggs to another couple who can’t get pregnant or even donate them to research, so lots of possibilities to look into in the future.

Well, that nutshell was a lot bigger than I intended (sorry!) but I think it’s a good breakdown of the whole IVF process. And for Laryen and I, it’s almost here! It’s hard to explain how we are feeling about it. We are excited of course, but nervous and feel like we kind of have a grasp on the whole process, but in reality we have NO IDEA what the next month or two is going to entail. Every IVF couple is different and there will be a lot more hurdles we have to get through before we see those two pink lines. But we’re taking the leap, tossing the dice and spinning the wheel…

all to FINALLY make our family complete.

Infertility really takes a lot of patience. Like, a lot. And I’m not talking about waiting until you FINALLY get that positive pregnancy test. (can’t wait until that happens btw ;)) There’s a lot of patience in the whole entire process. I wish you could just snap your fingers and say ‘ok, we’re doing invitro!’ No, the doctors won’t let that happen. Because in their eyes they want to try everything else because it is such a big process that’s tough on your body. And who knows, one of those might work and you don’t need to fork over the money for IVF. In our case, they didn’t work…so we’re forking away!

Here’s a list of what we’ve done until now. I probably forgot a few things here and there but I think this covers a lot of it.

I got off birth control in 2012. But I got the depo shots which stay in your system for who knows how long, so my period didn’t actually come back some 9 months later. That brings us to February 2013, almost 3 years ago. We started trying and after about 6 months of no pregoness, I visited my lady doctor. He said for us to keep trying into the new year and if nothing happened by then, to call. Yep, no Christmas miracle for us. So January 2014 came around…and still nada. Laryen and I went to to meet with him to go over the next steps. At the time we lived in Springfield, Missouri — a wonderful city that we loved. But there was one thing that sucked about Springfield… there were no fertility doctors there! Like none, at all! The closest ones were in Kansas City or Tulsa…a good 3 hours away from us! So our doctor could only do so much to find out WHAT was preventing us from getting pregnant. (Yet ANOTHER hurdle in the infertility game of life!)

One of the first things he did was put me on Clomid. Clomid is medicine that helps you ovulate. I’ve never missed a period in my life so I knew I was ovulating, but this would make sure that I was. We tried that for three months in a row, took a month off, then did one more round. The problem is if you take too much Clomid, it could do the opposite and prevent you from getting pregnant — and backwards is not an option for us!

We also got Laryen’s swimmer’s tested. They could only test a couple of things though. Fertility clinics can test way more, but this office didn’t have those means. Laryen’s numbers were great! His swimmer’s were swimming (motility) and there were a lot of them (count). Motility and count were the only things they could test, and with good results we knew we could check that off the list! I got a little more blood work done at the end of the 3rd round of Clomid and they discovered that my progesterone was low. Progesterone is what makes your uterus fluffy and nice for the little embryo to live in! If you don’t have enough of it, then the embryo can’t implant, thus no pregnancy.

We finally felt like we had a light at the end of the tunnel! FINALLY something wasn’t “right” to medical standards. Everything else was great, so this one thing could be the reason why we can’t get pregnant! Let me tell you, during infertility anything that comes up wrong or low makes you so happy! Because at least for us, it gave us something to grasp — something to hold on to. We knew that if they fixed that one thing, and if everything else was good … our bundle of joy would get here!

WRONG! haha, I just have to laugh at myself sometimes. It lightens the mood for me, because this list is a lot longer than I was thinking, lol.

Anyway, I got progesterone suppositories prescribed to me… and lemme tell you, those are not fun! You take them for 14 days and you have to put one in you (yes, up there) twice a day and you feel like you’re leaking everywhere!! But hey, it’s a little thing and I didn’t care because I knew we were moving forward. But still no positive test.

Fast forward to October 2014. We are in a new city! Being a TV anchor means you move around a lot. Now we’re settled into Lubbock, Texas and we love it! And guess what? There are fertility clinics here — a couple of them! Hallelujah! So I establish myself with a lady doc who gives me a referral to a fertility doctor but you can’t just walk right in. No… there’s a waiting list. (it just shows you how many people are going through the same thing as us!)

We got an appointment for February 2015 (2 years after we started trying). In the meantime, we got some more tests done so when we saw the doctor we could know what the next step was. They did blood work and scheduled an HSG. An HSG ( or hysterosalpingogram) is a test where they put dye in your uterus and with an x-ray can see if the dye goes all the way into your tubes and into your ovaries. If it does, then everything is clear and you’re good to go! If it doesn’t, that means something could be blocking the tubes, which means the sperm isn’t getting close to the egg. They tried to get the dye flowing 3 times … nothing. As heartbreaking as this was to hear, we were positive about it. As weird as it sounds, it was ANOTHER thing to hold on to. Something is wrong with my tubes, and that’s why we’re not pregnant.

We FINALLY meet our fertility doctor, Dr. Huang. He’s originally from Houston and over 20 + years he’s helped hundreds of couples get pregnant. He’s super nice and understanding, but also straight forward which both Laryen and I appreciate. We don’t want anyone to b.s. us around…we’ve already spent a lot of money and time getting to this point. Dr. Huang says based on the HSG x-ray and the blood work, it’s inconclusive. He wants a closer look which means surgery.

One of the little incision sites, the other was in my belly button

The nurses and staff sent me a get well card!

Sleepy sleepy after surgery

So sweet of the staff!

I had surgery at the end of February 2015. They checked for two things. One, they repeat the HSG to see if my tubes are working and two, they check for any other abnormalities in my uterus such as endometriosis or PCOS. Endometriosis is a disease where the tissue that normally lines the uterus grows outside the uterus. PCOS (or polycystic ovary syndrome) is a disease where your ovaries grow too big and get cysts on them. MILLIONS of women have these diseases and they’re a huge factor in infertility. (remember 1 in 8 couples have infertility).

My tubes are GREAT! The dye goes through no problem and if anything was in there blocking anything, it’s flushed away! They did find a teeny teeny bit of endometriosis but they burned it off. So it’s like my whole reproductive system is brand spankin’ new! Dr. Huang tells us to give it another few months. I get put back on Clomid and with a lot of faith and hope we give it another whirl.

May 2015: Still nothing. Back to the doctor. Dr. Huang explains they do everything they can to see if there’s a problem with the woman. We are just complicated. So many different things going on inside us that can prevent us from doing what nature wants us to do. Since I was pretty much good to go now they move on to Laryen. Remember, he was tested before and his motility and count is good. But fertility clinics can test so many more aspects of the microscopic sperm, it’s unbelievable! And we get another nugget to hold on it.

So we test Laryen again. And let me tell you, it’s crazy how they do it. He gives them a sample and they put 200 INDIVIDUAL SPERM under a microscope. Can you believe they can do that?! All the numbers are great, except for one.

Morphology. It’s pretty much the shape of the sperm. Sperm has to have a certain shape to get into the egg. They need to have a pointed head so they can dig their way into all the cells surrounding the egg (go back to 5th grade sex-ed class) Pretty much it’s one of the most important parts of what makes a sperm a sperm. Because if it’s not the right shape then no matter how fast the guys are or how many there are, if the morphology is low the swimmers just hang out outside of the egg … there’s no partying going on on the inside — which is what you want. Out of Laryen’s 200 swimmers, 0 had the correct morphology.

You might be thinking — that’s it! That’s why they can’t get pregnant! His swimmers don’t want to party with Lauren’s egg, we FINALLY solved the mystery. Well, kind of. It was the first thing out of the past 2 years that made sense as to why we couldn’t get pregnant. But his numbers weren’t really that far off from “normal.” In regular couples, who aren’t infertile, on average only 4 sperm have the correct morphology. 4/200…which equals 2 percent. (when you break it all down like this, it’s amazing that ANY of us are actually here! Being pregnant really is a miracle!) And Dr. Huang made a good point. He said in another sample, there might have been 1 or 2 or more that had good morphology because in nature there isn’t zero like there isn’t 100%. We’re all somewhere in the middle. But based off of all of our results over the past 2 1/2 years, it felt like we were finally getting somewhere. The hardest hurdle next was knowing that we couldn’t get pregnant on our own. We needed help from the fertility doctor, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. We needed help. And when you realize that and move on, another hurdle. We need help to get pregnant, and we have to pay real dollars to get there. EEK!