IVF Here We Come!

So When Dr. Honea brought up IVF, I remember saying, so are we going to do that next week since i'm about to ovulate? hahahahahah I was so naive! IVF is about a 45 day ordeal. I started by taking Birth Control Pills for about a month. Seems counterproductive right? They want your cycle to be suppressed before manipulating it to exactly what they want it to be. After the pills, we started with one injection a day called Lupron. Now my sweet hubby is in Paramedic school and is a Firefighter so I honestly trusted him completely to give this shots and make sure all the needles, dosages, etc were correct. He was a complete rockstar. I was worried about the needles becasue I am the biggest baby on earth when it comes to shots. I would rather take medicine for a year than get a shot. Well that was before fertility....you get used to a needle REALLY quick. So back to Renan....each night he would give me a shot and after about 2 weeks we went to giving 2 shots of Lupron and Menopur/Gonal F a night. As weird as it sounds, it kind of became a little nightly bonding ritual for us. When he gave me the last shots he looked up at me from kneeling down by my stomach and said, " i'm kinda sad this is our last night" Sounds crazy but I knew exactly what he meant. It was bittersweet to no longer have this seceret time where we trusted and loved on each other for those few minutes each night. We went for an ultrasound for about 3 days staight to monitor how many eggs were being produced in each ovary. It was ALOT and as the weeks went on, I was starting to feel discomfort in my ovaries because they were filling up with all these eggs. I had heard horror stories of girls being all bruised and swollen and bloated from the shots but I really had none of that! I felt very thankful. Well they scheduled the egg retrevial for a Thursday and we arrived at ART and I know we were both nervous. They walked us back to the OR and I put on my gown, and laid on the bed and had an IV put in my arm. As they wheeled me in, it was absolutely freezing in the OR so I started shaking uncontrollably. The sweet nurse started rubbing my feet to warm me up. It made me calm a little knowing what sweet understanding nurses I had encountered at ART...most of whom had been through this themselves! As she started to put a little sedative in my IV, they started playing Rock and Roll music over the room. They said that Dr. Allemand needed it to preform his procedures. As I started to drift off, Rebel Yell started playing and I commented on what a great karaoke song it was. Afte that, I remember nothing! I woke up to my sweet husband and a nurse over me offering me a sierra mist and some crackers. Ren got some funny videos of me being incoherent and some cute pictures on me in my scrub cap and gown. They wheeled me out and I dont remember much of the ride home and I slept for awhile that day. I was in some pain, but it was more discomfort than anything else. Just alot of pressure and some bloating. I would describe it as a bad period pain. By Sunday I was feeling pretty good. That brings us to today. Tuesday the 26th of November 2013. Today we transferred 2 of the most beautiful embryos I have ever seen. Not that I have seen alot of embryos, but these were pretty good. When they did the egg retrevial, we harvested 14 eggs, 6 of those became embryos. Today Dr. Honea came in and showed us the embryos they were to transfer to me. She said they were excellent embryos and it was rare that they saw them that good. She gave us a picture of them to keep. We started the procedure with Ren right by my side in his gown and scrub cap! I was so glad to have him there. He got to watch as Dr. Honea took those two precious embryos and placed them inside my uterus. That was an extremely cool moment. When it was over, she asked if we minded if she prayed over us....UH...OF COURSE NOT!! We held hands with Dr. Honea and her nurse Brandy and she thanked God for the gift of technology that allowed us to do this and for us to be in his Will. I couldn't have said it better myself. I will be honest....I have felt somewhat numb throughout this whole process. The thought of us getting pregnant after trying for so long with no result seems far fetched. I have heard SO many stories of people doing multiple rounds of IVF with not results and no reasons why. I don't want to be the naive excited girl who thinks this is going to turn out just like I hope it does. So many things could happen and even though everything looks in our favor, God may have other plans for us. Before Renan and I stepped out of the car, we bowed our heads in the Brookwood parking deck and told God that if He wasn't in this, we didn't want to go. I asked him to prepare our hearts for either outcome with this and to give us peace in the process. I truly hope my heart is prepared to handle which ever answer I get when I take that pregnancy test. All I can do at this point is put it in the Lord's very capable hands and trust. To say that is hard for me is an understatement, however I have grown SO much in my faith through this process. I will speak more to the ways we have seen God show himself in the small things and the big things through this journey in my next post.

Starting with ART Fertility

So our first appointment with ART was SO overwhelming. We both got mulitple vials of blood drawn, ultrasounds, met with financial counselors, and met with Dr. Honea. We put together a plan to start on the drug Letrozol to help me ovulate better. The Letrozol was very easy with no side effects to speak of. I wanted to be as conservative as possible stepping into this because I honesly could not believe we actually had to be at a fertility clinic....it just didnt seem that serious! Anyway, we took the letrozol and decided for 2 months to not do the IUI, but to give a "natural" try. When that didn't work, we moved on to trying the IUI. My doctor was not avaliable on the day I had it done. I laughed thinking that I could have just gotten pregnant with another man(the doc) in the room and my husband no where near me! haha After 2 of the IUI's and 2 failures on that, Dr. Honea brought up IFV. To me, this sounded so incredibly drastic. IFV was for people that had real problems. In our case, Dr. Honea said we have "unexplained" infertility. Everything is fine with Ren and all seems fine with me too. In my mind, this tells me that it will just prove the power of God because it will happen in His time and His time only. And I wouldn't want it to happen one minute sooner.....even if I do get very impatient. So IFV....Let's back up to 7 months ago when I started a new job with Weight Watchers as the Territory Manager literally the same month we started at ART. After looking into my insurance, we discovered that my insurance pays 100% for IFV as well as all the drugs that go along with it. This is basically unheard of. You are looking at a minimum of $17000 for ONE round of IVF if you are paying out of pocket. Can we say Blessing?? So because of this incredible blessing, we decided to go ahead and jump on board with IFV. I guess for us, it was a much easier decision to go ahead with it, because we did not have to worry about where the money was coming from. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about that, but I am Praising the Lord and counting my blessings.

Adventures in Fertility

I always thought keeping up with a blog would be too time consuming. With me being the lazy gal that I am, it did not appeal to me in the least! However, so much has happened in the past few months that I figured I better start keeping up with this so that when my scatterbrain starts to forget, I can look back. Basically for the past year and a half Renan and I have been trying to start a family. Now Renan is one of the most unselfish people I know with a HUGE heart. He has been ready to be a Dad since the day we got married. I however asked him for 3 years to enjoy our time as newlyweds before we went down that road. The truth is I was terrified. Don’t get me wrong, I have always thought I would have children, but even at 25 I still felt SO much like a kid. I was selfish, loved my “me” time, wanted time to be spontaneous, travel, spend money frivoulously…..the list goes on and on. Our first few years of marriage were awesome. Sure we had some huge knockdown drag out fights over ridiculous nonsense, but we travelled to serve on Mission in Brazil three times, vacationed, made new friends. It was overall a blast. I loved having my best friend in my house all the time. Well when 3 years rolled around, my sweet caring husband reminded me of my promise I made to start trying for children! I tried to put him off with a myriad of excuses, but my time was up. We started casually trying right before we left for Disney World in April of 2012. I dont know if I ever voiced this to Ren, but in my head, I was still terrified. We couldn’t afford a baby, I still wanted to be selfish, I still WAS selfish, I had lost 25lbs and I didnt want to ruin my body, I didnt want our relationship to change because I LOVED what we had. But I went along with it and figured if it was meant to be it would happen. That first month, I was actually suprised to find I was not pregnant. I figured becasue I was feeling so NOT ready that of course it would happen. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t somewhat relieved. Well months went on and still nothing. After about 9 months of trying, I spoke to my OBGYN who put me on Clomid to help me ovulate. We did that for 3 months and it gave me horrible HOT flashes so bad that I felt I was going into early menopause! After 3 months of them telling me they didn’t think I was ovulating, I realized, they don’t really know Jack about how to GET someone pregnant. They only specialize in how to care for you after you are already preggo! So I was referred to ART Fertility Specialists in Brookwood Hospital. More to come……….