IVF

Alas,

I have been trying the IVF. A whole new experience. Not so fun.

For those of you who have no idea what this is, I'll give a quick explanation. (The teacher in me just loves to explain things!)

When a couple is having trouble making a baby, for whatever reason, maybe the woman can't get pregnant or is having repeated miscarriages, or they are just getting older and watching the clock tick faster and faster, IVF is a way to take things into your own hands and increase the odds that you will have a pregnancy.

The procedure stimulates the growth of the eggs in the ovary, the doctor goes in and takes out as many eggs as grow big enough, then injects the sperm into the eggs to make embryos, then after a few days the healthy embryos are placed into the uterus and hopefully pregnancy happens.

If you are suspect about the health of the embryos you can choose to have each embryo tested before it is put in to see if there are chromosomal abnormalities. I am going to do this because I have already had 2 miscarriages that were the fault of abnormal embryos, as well as 2 chemical pregnancies, also probably the fault of chromosomal abnormalities.

Firstly my husband and I had to do lots of blood tests, I needed a sonogram, he needed to have his sperm analyzed, I needed to get my immunology looked at and adjusted a bit. The fertility doctor had to check to see how many resting follicles that there were in my ovaries, he saw 9. (not a lot) Secondly, I started to take injectable drugs. For the last 9 days I have been taking 6 shots a day into my stomach (given by myself, 3 in the morning and 3 in the evening). One of the drugs is to stop ovulation and the other two drugs is to stimulate the resting follicles to grow. Basically my ovaries have been feeling constipated, which they are!

Today, we went in to see how the follicles were progressing. Alas, there are only 5 that are of a largish size and that will probably be retrievable. The expectation is that maybe 1/2 of those will become embryos when all is said and done. When you are 36 as I am, 2/3 of the eggs have chromosomal abnormalities, so when you do the math, there may or may not be any healthy embryos made at all.

We were hoping to have twins and be done (a very scary hope I know, as twins are supposed to be tons of work) but it is now looking like we'll be really lucky to even have one healthy embryo to put in. And once it is put in, who knows if it will take root and grow or not.

So, it was a frustrating morning. We're trying not to think of the statistics and likelyhood of things not working when the numbers are so low and praying that there will be at least one healthy embryo and that it will be successful.

I'm restless, hoped writing this would make me work through things more in my brain.