The past couple weeks have been a complete mess, to say the least. 

On the 23rd, I went in for bloodwork and another scan. While we were unable to find anything other than a tiny fluid collection, my hcg level did do it's doubling thing up to 535. My RE called to say that I had a choice to make. It was probably too soon to be seeing anything on ultrasound but, with an embryo that's been out of the freezer this long, it probably isn't viable anyway. I can choose to take the methotrexate shot to terminate or wait it out a few more days. With doubling numbers, I don't know how anyone could decide to terminate. So I chose to wait.

We went back in three days later on the the 26th for more bloodwork and scanning. To our surprise, we were able to see that the tiny fluid collection had grown to 3.3 mm. There was no sign of a yolk sac yet, but I was starting to have a little bit of hope for this embie. This was the first time in 26 days that we'd been able to really get an eyeball on this little one. And more good news came that my hcg doubled again to 1,080. You would think it would be reason to celebrate, right? Nope.

When my nurse called later that afternoon, she instructed me to stop all medications. She said that, with no yolk sac, this embryo could not survive. I heard what she was saying... all the instructions... all the meds to discontinue... the next hcg check where we'll hope for declining numbers. I heard it, but I was repeating "no, no, no, no" in my head while she was talking. I told her I respectfully decline to accept their medical advice. I could not stop my medication without waiting to see what happened to this little blob we'd been watching. She confirmed with the doctor that they would give me two more days. Two measly days for this embie to get its shit together and start looking like it's going to make it. Straighten up and fly right.

Here is where things got really difficult. My husband wanted me to stop everything. He felt like we had been through enough. I was torturing myself by continuing this madness. He said he was sick of stabbing me with needles for the past 3 years. He was done with all the tears, all the waiting, all the devastation. He wanted to stop, close this chapter of our lives, and put this whole mess behind us. And he was right. He was 100% right. But I saw it from a different angle.

When my nurse had called earlier that day, she referred to this embie as a "fluid collection." They were calling this a chemical pregnancy--not able to be seen on ultrasound. And for some reason, that really bothered the hell out of me. I knew this blob was my embie... I knew it wasn't just fluid. I wanted that confirmation. I wanted to be able to say that we saw it... it grew...we watched it grow more... it was real. How ridiculous does it sound to say it out loud? But I felt like this was the only time I would have with my embryo, and I wasn't going to give it up. I know it's not going to make it, but it's mine, and I want to see it again. My husband agreed we would wait the extra two days.

I went back in on the 28th, a Sunday. The little sac grew from 3.3 mm to just over 5 mm. However, we were still unable to see any sign of a yolk sac. The doctor spent a solid 15-20 minutes of working with the ultrasound machine, adjusting all the controls, working different angles, trying anything to get the best picture possible. He even had me switch rooms to try again on a machine that was slightly newer/more sensitive. But nothing. He said that he wanted to be 150% sure that there was no sign of anything developing inside the sac, and he was confident there was not. He also spent some time checking my tubes/ovaries/cervix again and still couldn't find anything of concern outside of my uterus. So he felt I would be okay to try to miscarry naturally. I thanked him when he was leaving for looking extra hard for me. I could tell he was a little emotional about it too. I wasn't just another patient to him that day.

That afternoon they called to say that my hcg rose from 1080 to 1690 in 48 hours. So they wanted me to stop all meds and come back in two days for another u/s to be sure nothing appeared in my tubes. The nurse, not my usual nurse, said this growing spot "could still just be a fluid pocket" and not my embryo, which really had me about ready to lose all self-control. I know it's not fluid. And I think it degrades everything I've been through to tell me that this is fluid. But I felt confident at this point that stopping was the right choice.

Yesterday I had another ultrasound, which confirmed for me once and for all that this was our embryo. The doctor, as soon as he picked up our blob on the screen, said this is definitely the embryo. He said the shape had filled out, it had continued to grow, and it was clear that our embryo was not a fluid pocket. I knew that there was no chance for survival of this little bugger, but I felt this moment of joy to know that I was looking at our embryo. I was right. I knew it. I told them so.

Later that day, my nurse called to report that my hcg had increased to over 1800. Because the numbers were still climbing, they scheduled me for a D&C. I'll go in for that next week, although I have started bleeding. Hopefully, I won't need the procedure.

July has quite possibly been the most difficult month of my life. We transferred this embryo on June 30th, and every minute of this month has been part of some sick roller coaster ride. But it was also a crash course in strength, patience, and persistence. I'm proud that we made it this far, and I'm SO proud that it made our little family stronger instead of tearing us apart. We're not sure what will happen for us next, but man, we put up one hell of a fight.

Hello??? Anybody in there? It's me... out here standing at the gates of pregnancy. If I could just have a hint... a sign... something letting me know if I'm going to make it in? Remember me? I miscarried on Mother's Day? A little courtesy wink or nod letting me know what's happening here would be great. I think I've earned at least that. No?

It's Day 14 of Pregnancy Purgatory, and I believe I'm starting to lose my mind. It's been two weeks since we received the news that our first beta was too low to be a healthy pregnancy. But we've been holding on to a microscopic shred of hope because our numbers started jumping... 14, 15, 40, 120. They're climbing, so only time will tell where this thing is going.

I go back tomorrow, Tuesday, for my next bloodwork and ultrasound appointment. I've been really good about keeping my level of hope in check. But it's getting more difficult. Today, I found myself being far too hopeful.

For the past 2 weeks, I've only been filling my pill box with enough medication to make it to the next appointment. I've anticipated that each appointment would bring horrible news and I would be instructed to discontinue medications. To my surprise, that has not happened yet. But today, I noticed that I filled my pill box for the week without realizing it. I am starting to assume that this pregnancy will make it... that I won't be instructed to stop my medications tomorrow. I can't tell how I feel about this.

I know that hope is a good thing. It's positive energy, and I believe positive energy brings more positive energy. But when you're on the losing end of hope for so long, you just sometimes feel that hope is for suckers. And I don't want to be suckered again. It hurts like hell.

So, here I am with a full pill box and another beta staring me down. Screw it. I'll err on the side of hope this time.... Just this once. But if I don't make it through these gates tomorrow, I'm staging a sit-in.

While in pregnancy purgatory over the past four days, I've received lots of support from friends and family in the usual varying forms. There's been lots of talk about God's plan, which falls on my completely deaf ears. (I refuse to believe that a God would plan and intend for infertility to happen to good people while stories of child abuse abound--including a mother who recently ate her baby. If that's the plan, someone needs to go back to the drawing board.) 

But I kept hearing one bit of encouragement that really had me confused: prayers for the strength to keep trying. We've now been through eight consecutive failed cycles of IVF. We have no idea why embryos implant and then cease to develop appropriately. We have no idea why PGD-tested embryos go in, but never make it out alive. They're sucked into the black hole vortex of my uterus, never to be heard from again. And we just don't get it. 

Right now, we have two genetically and chromosomally normal embryos sitting on ice waiting for us to decide what to do next. (Well... first we're waiting to see what happens with this struggling embie that's half-attached. THEN we're waiting to decide what to do next.) And I can't help but ask myself if the only way to be "strong" is to try again. Can't I walk away and still be strong? Can't I throw in the towel and resign myself to enjoying the beautiful life that I currently have and still be strong? Can't I just stop making lemonade? I think so.

Strength is so typically associated with persistence, the ability to overcome, and refusal to quit under any circumstances. But strength should also mean the ability to admit when a struggle is starting to suck the life out of everything else that matters. Strength is being able to look at a challenge and say that it's not worth the cost. Strength is staring in the face of infertility, the thing that keeps you from what you want most, and saying I don't want to fight anymore. Truce.

So, here we are. Pulling together a truce agreement. Trying to pick up all these heartbroken pieces and put them back together in a way that makes sense. In a way that makes us stronger than all of this loss. It's hard. It's going to continue to be hard. We've known nothing but IVF for the past 3+ years. But we're ready. We're calling a truce.

I'm very lucky when it comes to the 2-week wait (or 2ww for those of us who prefer infertility hieroglyphics). My wait following the embryo transfer isn't exactly a full two weeks. It's actually only 9 days before my RE has us come back in for the beta to test for pregnancy. That gives me five fewer days to obsess, panic, and analyze every pinch, twinge, cramp, or swell of emotion. I'm very lucky in this sense, but damn, waiting any length of time sucks!

The 2ww is amazingly capable of slowing time to a careening halt. From the moment you leave the recovery room, the seconds begin to tick away with the lethargic speed of a dying snail. Clocks, in some sort of conspiracy to drive you mad, dawdle the hours away as if they were sipping lemonade on the docks of Key West watching the sunset. Doesn't time know I'm going crazy over here???

And, in typical neurotic 2ww fashion, paranoia sets in about everything that could possibly go wrong. Failures of cycles past come knocking each day to remind me NOT to:
1) Use the restroom at Target--it causes miscarriages;
2) Lift a 15lb. bag of dog food--it causes chemical pregnancies;
3) Scrub gunk off of the tile floor in kitchen--it causes miscarriages;
4) Think negatively about another driver on the Parkway--it makes embryos disappear;
5) Eat, smell, or even look at chocolate--it causes chemical pregnancies.

Anything I was doing during or around the time I found out an IVF cycle was a bust is added to the list of things I can't do. And 9 cycles in, it's hard to keep track anymore. 

I know it's irrational. I know none of these things actually caused my cycles to fail; but when there's no rhyme, reason, or rational explanation, you cling to what you've got. When your RE has explored every avenue and can only respond with a bewildered (yet compassionate) shoulder shrug, you wonder if there wasn't something funny about that Target restroom that day.

So now that I've poured out my rant on things that have gone horribly wrong, I'm back to reminding myself that thinking positive is way more beneficial. On the bright side, four days have passed. I have five more days left until my beta, and only 24 hours until I start obsessing over home pregnancy tests.

Happy 4th of July!

Today was transfer day! This afternoon, at approximately 3:15 p.m., we transferred two, beautiful, PGD-tested embryos. Now, we wait with fingers crossed to find out if one (or both!) stuck!

It's crazy how this day sneaks up on you, especially after a long, drawn out fresh ivf cycle. The build up is relatively painless, if you don't count the pain of the progesterone injections. And the timing is quick... just a few weeks from start to finish. There's no worrying about follicles or timing trigger shots. There's no painful recovery from surgery, no anesthesia, and no worrying about OHSS.

The one thing that is the same though--exactly the same--is the nervous energy, the desperate feeling that you'd give ANYTHING for these embies to stick, and the killer anticipation that follows as you wait for beta day. And that's where I am now... nervous, desperate, and anticipating a bfp in 9 days when I go for my beta.

Until then, I'll be chowing down on pineapple core and popping Benedryl like it's Pez. And, of course, trying to figure out exactly when to start the hpts. It would be nice to be one of those ladies who can wait until the beta, but I have the patience of a housefly. I'll POAS by the end of the week. 

Sticky thoughts!!!

I was looking forward to Cycle Day One again, but not like before. Before, I was almost giddy with anticipation. I felt happy to walk into my RE's office again. It felt like a fresh start... a happy beginning. 

This time around, preparing for our 9th IVF cycle, I'm feeling a little more beaten down and a little more damaged. I'm hesitant to feel excited about this again--and with good reason, obviously. I thought we had nailed it... pregnant for a whole 7 weeks. It was a devastating turn of events when things went wrong, and although I'm physically over it, I'm not quite sure how emotionally over it I am.

We talked about whether or not we should continue. We've reached that point where carrying on with another cycle sounds exhausting, and calling it quits brings the promise of a a deep sigh of relief--from us and from our wallets. But we have these 4 frozen embies waiting for us, and I know that if we let them go, I would wonder for the rest of my life if one of them could have been my daughter's little brother or sister. 

We can't quit now. We can see the finish line. If we make it through all four of the embies and come away empty handed, we'll at least know that we tried everything. And if it works, well, then we've won our final battle with infertility. But either way. there's no time for wallowing in sadness--we're racing biological clocks here.

So, we're trudging ahead and already a week into this next transfer cycle. I started Estrace last week to build my lining and, after bloodwork and ultrasound today, have been given orders to double the dosage. I'll go back in on Friday for another check to see how my lining is doing. We're anticipating that I'll be ready to start Progesterone at that point. 

It's happening so fast. My head is spinning. But, with a finish line in sight, I know we're doing the right thing. We're squeezing every freaking bit of juice out of this lemon and, hopefully, it will all be worth it in the end.

Well, here we are again-back at the start of another IVF cycle. It feels a bit like Chutes & Ladders... just when you think you're about to win the game, you land on that damn chute that sends you careening right back to the beginning. But we've dusted ourselves off and are ready to try again.

We met with our RE a few weeks ago to talk about what went wrong with our last cycle. He didn't have any real answers... just speculation about what could have happened. Unfortunately, not much about my reproductive system makes sense, so it's impossible to know for sure. 

It could have been that our embryo, although biopsied and deemed chromosomally normal, was mosaic-ed. So the cells that were biopsied happened to be normal, but the rest of the embryo was not. It could have also been that the embryo was forced away from the lining when a subchorionic hematoma ruptured. Very rare, but possible.


The important point of our conversation with our RE was that there's nothing we can do differently. We have now run every test that we can possibly run. I gave 15 vials of blood just before this appointment to look for clotting disorders, lupus, thyroid disorders, protein abnormalities... everything came back negative. I had another saline sonogram to check for anything suspicious in my uterus... everything looked great. Now, we just have to try again.


I'm on a cocktail of estrogen and progesterone right now to build my lining in preparation for my "endometrial disruption" on Friday. This 30-second biopsy-like procedure will hopefully create a healthy, white-blood-cell-filled lining when we start building things back up again after my period. 

My head is absolutely spinning after this weekend, but I should start with one very important piece of information: We're pregnant!

On Friday, my hubby took the day off of work to sit around here waiting for the RE to call with my hcg level. It was just before noon when my nurse called to say our first beta was a 129... far better than the pregnancy I miscarried 2 years ago (20-something), and even better than my first beta with my daughter (40-something).

We celebrated, called our close friends and family, and spent the next two days trying to digest that our embryo actually stuck. I still had some cramping that was coming and going, so although the numbers looked great, I was worried that something was going to go wrong.

This morning, I went in for my second beta check. We were shooting for a 60% increase, which would have put us just over 200. Well, the RE called to tell us that our beta completely doubled to 259! Another fantastic number, and another sign that things are going well. I think we celebrated even a little more today knowing that the numbers were increasing appropriately. 
We have one more early hurdle to get through: the heartbeat. When I miscarried, it started the day before my 6-week heartbeat visit. I just can't seem to shake the fear that it'll happen again. My husband keeps reminding me that that pregnancy was doomed from the start. The first beta was so low, the numbers didn't increase properly at first; we knew that we had a rough beginning, but then things started to get back on track. Our numbers started doubling, so we thought we were safe. But we were wrong. 

I know that things are looking great right now, and I don't want to stress my little jelly bean out. So, I'm trying to do some deep breathing exercises whenever I feel overwhelmed with worry. I try to cast the worry aside and remind myself that things are different now. Things will be better now. Things are better now.

Our next visit is a week from tomorrow, when we'll be looking for the gestational sac. I'm praying that everything goes well, and for now, I'm just enjoying every little side effect and symptom that comes along. (Coffee? Bleh...)

Less than 12 hours to go until I get to be first in line at my RE's office for my beta blood draw! The office opens at 6:00 am, and I plan on being there 15 minutes before. I made my nurse promise she would call me before anyone else. Nuts, I know, but patience is not my strongest characteristic. Persistence; yes. Patience; no. 

I'm feeling a little extra crampy today, which has me worrying, so I'm trying to drink lots of water. I could just be a little dehydrated from all of this warm weather we've been having. This is the sound of me trying to be positive, cause you know my mind is turning 1,000 mph with all the horrible things that could be going wrong. 

But on this Beta-Day Eve, I celebrated by taking my 8th home pregnancy test of this cycle. It's still positive, and still looking darker than the day before. My fingers and toes are crossed for a strong beta number. Then we can let out a little sigh of relief... at least until we start worrying about the next hurdle in this journey.

The POAS (pee-on-a-stick) madness continues around here! Here's today's test, looking even darker than yesterday's. I think this is pretty promising, although my hubby is hesitant to get too excited. At least today he acknowledged that this is, in fact, a positive pregnancy test. Progress.

I'm starting to break out like a teenager now, so something is definitely happening with my hormones. As annoying as the blemishes may be, I'm welcoming every symptom with open arms... treasuring it even! Six consecutive failed ivf cycles will make you cherish the strangest things. :-)

I have an unopened 3-pack of pregnancy tests in my closet. I swore that I would return them if I got my bfp before I needed them. But, guess what! I'm not taking them back! I want to pee on them. And the prospect of getting a $12.99 credit is not going to stop me. I'm in the midst of POAS madness, and now there's no turning back.

So here's to hoping that tomorrow's test is just as dark!