IVF Update #13

This was supposed to be a happy post, but it isn’t. Warning: It might get graphic.

Friday, Aug 5^th we went to Idaho Falls to get blood work done to find out if we were still pregnant with the two embryos that we had transferred. Not expecting to hear the results for

several hours we decided to do some errands while we were in town. Daniel was getting his hair cut when my phone rang. It was the doctor’s office. I silently panicked, then answered the phone. My nurse started talking and from the tone of her voice I just knew she was going to say it was negative. But then she told me it was a positive test result! We really were still pregnant! I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing. And then once I started breathing again I went right into bawling my eyes out. I couldn’t believe it! I was so happy!! She told me that they look for the HCG levels to be around 100 and mine were at 300! That was a good sign that possibly both embryos made it!

I was so excited to tell Daniel! He was so giddy when he found out. And for the next few days we were secretly planning everything. We wanted twins, but we were even fantasizing about having triplets.

We told my family the amazingly good news. We made plans to tell Daniel’s family on Sunday, Aug 14^th because we would all be together for a family reunion. And then we were going to announce it to the world on Monday after we had our first ultrasound that would tell us how many sacs there were. We know that being IVF my pregnancy is always high risk, but we just wanted to tell everyone the good news.

It was morning on Saturday, Aug 13^th, I was sitting on the couch talking with my sister-in-law about the coming family reunion. After we hung up I stayed on the couch looking up some information on my phone. And then I felt it… It wasn’t the same ooziness or leaking that came from my vaginal pills; it was a gush of blood.

I stood up and ran to the bathroom. There was blood all over my underwear and legs. Clots and chunks were coming out too. I yelled to Daniel. He asked if maybe I was just spotting, which could be normal. When he came in I saw his face and he knew exactly what I did deep down: We were having another miscarriage.

After cleaning up we hugged and cried. We were still holding on to the hope that this was a fluke or that there could still be one embryo still inside. I asked him to give me a priesthood blessing. He called up his dad and his brother, Ben, who lives close by, to come over and help give me a blessing. I’m grateful that they did. I was shaking; my whole body was shaking and I couldn’t stop crying. The whole time I was receiving the blessing I kept wanting to hear something to the effect of “you are still pregnant, you are healed, you will still have a baby…” But those words were never said. I was given comfort and strength. I was able to calm down and be comforted. As Ben and Daniel gave me a blessing I could feel their tears falling on my head. I knew that Daniel was in as much pain as I was.

We talked to our nurse and she told us to lay low, drink lots of water, take my medicine as normal and wait until Monday when we had our ultrasound scheduled. I continued to bleed and also I started cramping. This was not a good sign, but I was still hoping that there was still one little embryo holding on while the hell in my body swirled around him.

By evening the bleeding had slowed to just dripping and I hadn’t had any clots come out since 1 or 2 PM. I really thought, “Okay. This is good. Maybe we will still be okay.” The next morning, Sunday, everything was about the same as the night before. We were packing and getting stuff ready for the reunion. I had told Daniel if I was still feeling crappy then I didn’t want to go. But that morning I had been okay-ish so we decided to still go. Then around 10 AM I started cramping really bad, so I laid back down and hoped everything would be fine.

I was till just spotting, so we packed up the truck and went down to his parent’s house to get the jet skis for the reunion. As he was fueling up the jet skis I felt it again - a gush of blood. I ran into his parent’s house (they had already left to go to the reunion luckily). More bleeding, more clots, and then came the embryo sac. My heart sank. I knew that this wasn’t just my uterine lining shedding off. I took pictures just in case the doctor wanted to see it and so I could show Daniel (gross, I know, but don’t judge me until you have had to deal with this). I didn’t cry, I think I had shed all my tears the morning before.

After bleeding and having cramps for 2 hours things started to slow down. Daniel and I decided that we were either going to be miserable at home waiting to go to the doctor the next day, or we could go to the reunion and still be miserable, but at least have a distraction and family support to get us through to the doctor’s appointment the next day. So we drove to Island Park. Island Park was beautiful. We stayed in a beautiful cabin. It was fun to be with family.

Monday, Aug 15^th we drove to Idaho Falls for our ultrasound. Daniel and I were both on edge. We so badly wanted them to tell us that there was still a baby in my belly. We waited at the doctor’s office for an hour past our scheduled appointment. We were going crazy and may have gotten a little more than snippy at the receptionist. We were stressed and we needed answers.

We told the ultrasound tech that we were pretty sure that we miscarried this weekend, and you could tell that she really hoped she could tell us good news. We watched the screen as she checked everything out. Daniel realized that since she hadn’t told us that she could see a sac that it meant she was stalling, not wanting to give us the bad news.

 We are no longer pregnant.

We faxed the ultrasound over to our doctor immediately and he told us to get some bloodwork done to check my hormone levels. My HCG tested at just under 2,000, so we go back in on Thursday to have it checked again to make sure that it is going down and that I don’t somehow have an ectopic pregnancy.

This is not what we wanted. I really thought that since we had gotten to almost 6 weeks that maybe it would work. It hurts. Sure there is the bleeding, the cramps, the crying fits and hormone rollercoaster, but it is my heart that hurts the most. It hurts to see my husband aching. He tries to act normal, but he’s not fooling anyone: this is hard and it is hard to handle the stress of it.

Yes we still have frozen embryos. That will probably give us hope in a few months; if we can convince each other to put ourselves through this agony again.

But for now we need to mourn our loss. It is a devastating blow that breaks our heart so much.

Thank you again to everyone for your love, support and donations. We really wanted this to have a happy ending. Thank you for sticking with us and loving us. 

IVF Update #12

We never officially updated the GoFundMe page or our blog about our embryo transfer. We had posted stuff on Facebook, but I decided we better have the whole story here.

Ever since doing blood work and getting the go ahead on the transfer I had to start taking progesterone pills – vaginally, twice a day. Last year we did progesterone shots. It was a big old needle (like the size that we give shots to the cows and horses with), and it had to go in my butt/hip area. Daniel had to administer these for me because the angle was too awkward for me. We were kind of excited to do these vaginal pills instead of the shots, but now I’m not so sure. I ooze all day, it is smelly, it’s kind of awkward and it needs to be at exact times. I feel gooey and gross all the time. And after the transfer I start doing 3 a day. So fun…

On Sunday, July 24 we drove down to Utah. Luckily Daniel has a very sweet cousin that let us stay the night at her house. We had a 9:30 AM appointment on Monday, July 25 for our frozen embryo transfer (FET). For the FET I don’t have to take any drugs or anesthesia (glad about that!); I just have to have a full bladder and we have to wear some awesome hairnets and hospital gowns.

Last year when we were doing the transfer I took the “full bladder” advice very seriously. By the time I had gotten changed into the gown I was bursting at the seams, but the nurse said to hold on because they needed it full. Well, unfortunately for me the doctor was running late. I had to lay there, with my legs up in stirrups, and my lady parts just exposed, and I’m about to pee myself. And the urge to pee got stronger by the minute…20 min later the doctor comes in, starts putting stuff inside of me and pushing on my belly. I honestly don’t know how I was able to hold my pee.

This year the transfer went much better (and I didn’t come with such a full bladder)! The doctor was coming in just to do our FET. When we got there our nurse told us that they thawed out two embryos and they both survived and looked well. In the picture that we have of them you can notice that one is farther along/thawed out faster, but the nurse assured us that they were both in a good phase. So we quickly changed into our hospital attire and got all set up for the transfer.

Everything is very official. The embryologist has to come in and confirm both of our identities (Daniel gets to be at the bed next to me for this one). Also, we have to confirm that the name on the petri dish is ours. I’m grateful they do this because I don’t want any sort of mix up! That would be awful! Then the nurse does a belly ultrasound to see if my bladder is full. This time mine wasn’t. Oops. They gave me a water bottle to drink and said they’d check on me in five minutes. So there I am again, lying on the bed, half naked, with my feet up in the stirrups. Thankfully I didn’t need more than the five minutes to get a full bladder. There are 2 reasons for the full bladder: first, it helps straighten out the uterus so that the catheter can go in smoothly and to the correct place. Second, it helps get a better ultrasound visual of the catheter.

Now that my bladder is ready and we’ve confirmed who we are, the doctor sanitizes me, clamps me open, swabs around inside, and then inserts the catheter. While he is doing this, the nurse is doing a belly ultrasound on me. The ultrasound shows the catheter going in and the doctor uses the image to get the catheter in the correct place.

Then the embryologist, in the lab in the next room over, displays our petri dish on the TV screen, we verify it is ours, and then we get to watch him pull our two embryos into a straw. Obviously we are seeing it magnified, because they still are teeny tiny. He then brings the straw into the operation room and hands it to the doctor. The doctor then inserts the straw into the catheter, which is inside of me. He pushes them in as we watch on the ultrasound image. You can actually see two teeny, tiny white dots that are our embryos.

And that’s it. They are done, and for now we have twins inside of me.

The nurse takes me to the bathroom because they know that after sitting there with a full bladder and my stomach being pushed on from the ultra that I definitely need to pee. It is funny though, my mind says “No! Keep your legs crossed and don’t let those embryos fall out!” And my body is saying “Pee! Pee! I need to pee!” Eventually my mind realizes that I’m being irrational and nothing is going to “fall out” and the fact that I really have to pee.

We change back into our normal clothes and we are sent on our way. I’ve been doing research on how to have a successful IVF and a lot of what I read said that studies have shown that doing activity immediately after transfer will increase your chances of staying pregnant. That isn’t super easy for us because we have a 4+ hour drive home. But just a few blocks away from the clinic was this cute little garden/park. We strolled around it, enjoyed the peacefulness of it and said a bunch of prayers for us and our little embryos. Then we got in the car and drove home.

Then the waiting game begins…Don’t worry, we will let you know what the outcome is.

Aren't we so sexy when we make babies? Fingers crossed that these two little embryos stay in and grow into health twins!

IVF Update #11

Still on schedule!
We had an ultrasound and blood work yesterday and the results came back good! That means we will drive down to Utah for embryo transfer on Monday the 25th.

IVF Update #10

Can you believe it is July already? This summer is flying by!

We are back doing ultrasounds and blood work again. We were supposed to do one on July 2^nd, but that was the Saturday before the 4^th of July so there wasn’t going to be anywhere open that I could get work done. Our nurse told me to keep taking my medicine for two extra days and we’d have to push back our ultrasound to July 5^th.

To add to the stress of having to postpone our ultrasound, the clinic we normally go to was already doubled booked. So I tried another clinic I’ve been to before and they weren’t even open on the 5^th, so I had to schedule it at a new place. I know this probably wouldn’t be stressful to other people, but for me it is! For one I’m just really good at stressing (I get it from my mother), and two, I’ve got a really crazy body (tilted uterus, cysts on my ovaries, my right ovary likes to hide behind my left…) and it is hard for people to get good pictures and measurements.

The appointment went pretty good. I also had to get blood drawn to test hormone levels. Then we are supposed to wait until the nurse called with the results before we start our new medication. She called that evening and said that she was unsure of what to do with us because we don’t fit into “normal.” The doctors want your ovaries cyst free. Well, if I accomplished that it’d be a miracle because it’d mean I was cured of PCOS (which has no cure). The nurse said that for us they’d be okay with very small cysts and the fewer the better. My right ovary has the small cysts, but still a lot. Then my left ovary has some huge cysts. I have several measuring between 2 and 5 CENTIMETERS! That is like the size of a golf ball! Normally cysts (or follicles) are measured in millimeters, not centimeters. 2-5 cm is the size of an ovary, and I have cysts on my ovary that big.

But the good news was that my hormone levels came back good. My estrogen needed to be below 70, and mine is at 34 (which probably explains my mood swings lately, yikes!).

So our nurse didn’t know what to do because normally if females have cysts that big then there is concern of them ovulating. But I don’t ovulate and my estrogen is so low there is definitely no concern of ovulating on my own. So she didn’t think that they were hormone driven, but wanted to wait until the doctor had a chance to review it.

However, our doctor is in Finland, which is a 9 hour time difference so we would have to wait until Wednesday to see what he said. Our nurse said she’d know very first thing in the morning so we could get started on the new medication. 1:00 pm rolls around and she finally calls us. Never mind that now I’ve had all night and morning to think of the worst case scenarios – having to have surgery to remove the giant cysts, or not being able to transplant this month because we’d need to wait for the cysts to go down in size – like I said, I’m good at stressing.

Turns out the doctor said it should be fine since the cysts aren’t hormone driven. They will just keep doing blood work to check my hormone levels are staying consistent.  So we are still on schedule to transplant on July 25^th in Utah (unfortunately we’ll have to go to Utah because the clinic in Idaho Falls is only open when the doctor comes up once a quarter).

I know that the 25^th will be here sooner than expected. July is going to be a full month with our birthdays, family reunions, friends and family visiting, getting ready for church girl’s camp, getting ready for our new teaching jobs, studying for tests and trying to go camping, boating, or 4 wheeling as much as possible. Being busy hopefully will help me not stress so much about doctor stuff.

IVF Update #9

The waiting game has ended!

I have done a lot of resting and recouping this week. I knew I’d hurt, but I didn’t know I would hurt this much and for this long. Not going to lie – I have been going stir crazy stuck in the house, but every time I try to go somewhere my body reminds me that I hurt and I don’t have the energy, so I need to chill out. Thankfully, every day I feel better and I will be 100% soon.

The doctors called on Monday night to let us know that out of the 31 eggs retrieved 27 of them were able to get fertilized. AWESOME!! We were very excited about that news.

Day 3 (Wednesday) after the egg retrieval the doctors check the embryos to see how they are growing and give them a score of poor, fair, good, or excellent. All 27 of the embryos survived and got ratings between fair and good.

On day 5 (Friday) the embryos are checked again. If they have grown into blastocysts, meaning that the embryo has matured and the cells are getting too big and they being to hatch out of its outer shell, then they can be frozen or transferred (aka- implanted back into the women’s uterus). If an embryo isn’t matured enough on day 5 to freeze, the embryologist will grow them to day 6. If the embryo grows well enough it will be frozen, if not, it will be discarded.

In our case we will be freezing all of them that we can. When we are able to, according to my body, we will thaw some embryos out and transfer them back into me. The earliest we would be able to do this is near the end of July. All the other frozen embryos will stay frozen until we decide to try again. So most likely I will never have to do the egg retrieval part of IVF again! Yay! That is happy news to us because we feel like the retrieval is the roughest part.

Our nurse called us Friday afternoon and told us that 12 embryos were able to be frozen! That is good news to hear! She also told us that they will keep growing the rest of the embryos and see if any more can get frozen on day 6.

Saturday morning we got a call saying that they were able to freeze 4 more embryos. 16 total frozen embryos! That is great news (okay, okay I do wish that we were able to freeze all 27 of the embryos, but we can be happy with this). Also, all but one of them were Grade A or B. Last year the two embryos that we put in me were only Grade C. So this time we’ve got good, strong embryos.

Daniel and I want to do a frozen transfer as soon as we can. We will start doing ultrasounds and blood work around the 4^th of July. I am already on meds, but will be adding a few more as the month progresses. Then we will plan on a transfer for late July.

We will still occasionally do updates, but there really won’t be too much to tell until we are ready to transfer. Thank you again for your love! We are amazed at the money you raised for us; what a huge blessing! Thank you!

IVF Update #8

There is good news and bad news.

The good news is that we were able to retrieve 31 eggs yesterday! That’s got to be a record amount!

The bad news is that I did get hyperstimulated and I won’t be able to do a fresh egg transfer; I will have to wait 4 weeks and do a frozen transfer. And I am in an incredible amount of pain.

Other bad news is that Daniel’s sperm wasn’t good quality yesterday (which is a shocker because usually the doctors are floored at how healthy his sperm is).  Because of this the doctor called us yesterday and said they would have to do ICSI. Intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is where the embryologist selects a single sperm to be injected directly into an egg, instead of fertilization taking place in a dish where many sperm are placed near an egg.

Now we wait to hear from the doctor today to see how many eggs got fertilized. I’ve got my fingers crossed for all 31!

Here are the details of yesterday’s events:

We drove to the doctor’s office at 7:30AM Sunday morning. They immediately started getting us ready for surgery. I made sure to tell the anesthesiologist that I am sensitive to anesthesia and it makes me sick. He said that they would add some anti-nausea medicine in my IV to help with that.

Then they whisked Daniel away to collect his sperm and I went into the surgery room. There were 5 nurses/doctors around me, and I’m just lying there nervous as heck, in my hospital gown and blue booties and blue hair net. I’ve got one nurse strapping my feet into the stirrups. One nurse is arranging blankets across my lap and legs since I am now exposing myself to the cold air because of my legs being spread open by being strapped into the stirrups. Then I’ve got one doctor putting in my IV for anesthesia. Another doctor sticking heart monitors on my chest. A nurse is covering my mouth with an oxygen mask. I’m lying there watching all of them doing a hundred different things, them telling me to just relax (as if!), and then I’m out.

The next thing I remember is being in the recovery room with Daniel sitting next to me holding my hand.

Everyone comes out of anesthesia different I’ve realized. A few years ago when Daniel had a surgery he was extremely polite when he was waking up from being put under. He kept telling the nurse “thank you” after everything she said or did. It was pretty cute. But me – I’m just an idiot who is clueless to what is going on. I just wanted to go back to sleep, but all these nurses kept coming in and asking me questions. I couldn’t get myself to just wake up. My left eye wouldn’t stay open because I was so tired. I don’t really remember this, but Daniel said that when the nurses and doctors came to talk to me I would hold open my left eye with my hand. Hahaha! He said I looked super creepy and weird.  

Then I got the shakes really bad; like my whole body was shaking. They asked me if I was cold and I said no (which I also don’t really remember). But I was shivering so hard that they couldn’t ignore it no matter what I said. The nurse brought in this awesome machine that is a heater with a long tube and you just put it into bed with you and it blows the perfect temperature of heat. It was awesome and I totally want to own one! I would tell Daniel to move it from one side of the bed to the other and I eventually stopped shivering.

Our doctor stopped by to tell us that he was able to retrieve 31 eggs. He also said that my left ovary was hiding my right ovary (mine like to crowd each other out, which make it difficult to see both. It happened last year with IVF and occasionally it will make my ultrasounds difficult as well).  He said that because it was difficult to get to he had to poke through my vaginal wall multiple times to be able to get to all of the follicles. He said to expect a lot of pain because of that.

Also, since I had so many follicles and they were hard to get to the surgery took 3 times as long as normal. It typically is a half hour procedure, but it took me over 1 ½ hours. Daniel told me that the anesthesiologist had to run out to get more medicine because instead of the normal 2 vials I had to use 5. That could have something to do with why I was having a hard time coming out of it. I didn’t puke though! So props to the anesthesiologist for that!

After I was able to get up and get dressed, they gave us some prescriptions and sent us home. They warned me that I would be in a lot of pain and told me to get lots of fluids and bed rest. On the drive home the doctor called and told Daniel about his sperm and them having to do ICSI. I really hope that is works out and that we will have lots of embryos to freeze.

They weren’t kidding when they said I’d have a lot of pain. It feels like my abdomen and pelvis got hit by a train. The medicine makes me dizzy and drowsy. I have major pain; I am so bloated that I looked like I could be 5 months pregnant. You quickly realize how much you use your core for every movement. Even a hiccup or fart hurts, and sitting up on your own in practically an impossible act.

Luckily I have an amazing husband who spent the day helping me out. He would help me sit up, fix my pillows, warm up a rice bag, and get me medicine and water. He even passed on going to his brother’s house to watch NBA finals, just in case I needed some help. And, because I was the most comfortable in our recliner chair in the basement I decided to sleep in it for the night and Daniel slept on the couch next to me. He is seriously the sweetest.

Today I continue to rest. I do feel better compared to yesterday, but I am still feeling in pretty rough shape. At some point the doctor should be calling us to tell us how many eggs they were able to fertilize. So fingers crossed that all of them did!

We are bummed that we don’t get to do a fresh transfer. You get yourself mentally prepared for it because that has been the plan the whole time. It was going to be nice having it all done at once and have the rest of the summer to play. But we will do what the doctor says. Since I was getting hyperstimulated I had to take a different “trigger” shot than originally planned so that I didn’t go into severe hyperstimulation and have to be hospitalized. This shot makes it hard for your body to carry a pregnancy. Also, being hyperstimulated isn’t a good environment to carry a pregnancy. So we will let my body rest and hope that we can freeze some embryos to transplant later.

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers! Keep them coming because we still need them!

Sorry for the incredibly long post! Also, sorry if there are any errors; I’m going to blame it on me being tired and drugged. 

IVF Update #7

It’s been a week full of doctor appointments. We had one on Monday, Thursday, Friday, and will also be going Saturday and Sunday.

Yes, we are that high-maintenance that they have to do ultrasounds and blood work every day. The doctor has been a little worried as he monitored me because I have so, so, so many follicles and am now in high risk for hyper-stimulation. Also, in the past two days my estrogen level has increased exponentially. This all happened last year, so we weren’t real surprised, but it is good to keep an eye on because we don’t want to screw anything up.

There is some physical pain associated with all of this too. I’ve got my bruised and tender belly, and on Wednesday I started having abdominal pain. After the ultrasound on Thursday we are guessing the pain is from how big and heavy my ovaries are from all of the follicles on them. It hasn’t been so fun. Doing ultrasounds every day adds to the ovary pain too.

But the good news is that we will be doing EGG RETRIEVAL ON SUNDAY (way to bury the lead, right?). We took our “trigger” shot tonight and we will retrieve first thing Sunday morning. It’ll be a good Father’s Day if we can make some babies - even if it isn’t the fun way.  ;)

It is still amazing to me that any of this is even possible. Modern medicine is really a miracle!

Keep us in your prayers! We want everything to go smoothly: lots of eggs retrieved, all of them able to get fertilized, and then do lots of healthy growing. And it’d be nice if I didn’t get sick from the anesthesia, but that would be a first. We will keep you updated on how things go on Sunday.  

IVF Update #6

Just wanted to do a quick update for everyone. We’ve done 2 doctor visits, but we still need more injections and time.

On Saturday morning we went to the doctor. We had blood work and an ultrasound done. During this ultrasound (all of my ultrasounds are trans-vaginal, aka the ultrasound wand goes inside of me) the doctor is looking to see how big my follicles are. Follicles hold the eggs and when they mature they will burst and release the egg (ovulation). With IVF they want the follicles to mature, but not burst, because they want to harvest the eggs manually. They can control this by one of the injections I’m taking.

Since I have PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome) I have lots and lots of follicles all the time. So on Saturday when the doctor checked I had about 30 follicles on each ovary (a “normal” female will have about 5 on each), but the follicles weren’t maturing very fast. This is no big surprise to us because this was the case every single time we did injections last year. We usually take the medicine twice as long as others going through IVF. My biggest follicle measured at a 7mm. To do egg retrieval the doctor wants the follicles at 19mm.

After the doctor appointment on Saturday the doctor gave me one more injection to take every night. This shot is brutal. It stings like crazy going in, then for the next two hours it is a big lump in my stomach, red all over, and itchy/stingy. Then when I wake up in the morning it is tender and bruised. Not so fun. When I took it Sunday night I injected it even slower and I applied an ice pack to the injection sight. This helped it not bruise, so that is good.

Went to the doctor again this morning; they like to monitor closely so that we don’t miss our window of opportunity. Not much has changed. The follicles are slowly getting bigger. Had one or two measuring at 11mm and a few more were in the 7-8mm range. So I’ll take my 3 injections every night and go back to the doctor on Thursday to see how things are moving along.

I know that we have been thanking everyone for your donation, but we want you to see exactly why it is such a HUGE help to us. This picture is of the injections that I take every night – the cost of just one day’s dosage is $325 (that is including a 50% discount that we qualified for. Normally it would be $650 per day! We didn’t know about the discount last year, so we were paying full price for six months). Thank you all again for helping us in this round of IVF!

IVF Update #5

This week we started our injections. It is a different medicine than we took last year, and it is kind of nice because I don’t have to take as much of this new stuff. For now it is two shots in the stomach every night – and still taking my daily cocktail of pills. We will do injections for about a week, and then do bloodwork and an ultrasound to see where we are at.

Daniel and I were talking about how it is going a lot better this time compared to last year. If you think about it though, you would say “of course it is!” Last year I was literally giving myself shots for 6 months!!

Injections for 6 months! No wonder we spent so much money and were physically and emotionally spent as well! And to think that people would still tell us that there was more we could be doing and that “it’s totally worth it” – as if they even had any clue what it was like to experience infertility.

Obviously we didn’t take injections that long just for one round of IVF. We had our first consultation with the doctor in Jan. 2015. We decided to try doing IUI (insemination). So in Feb. we tried for our first IUI attempt. The injections were too weak to get me to mature my eggs, so the doctor had us take them for another week. It still wasn’t working and so they decided to cancel the cycle, give my body a rest and try again in two weeks.

That is the hard thing about infertility medicine; there isn’t one answer. It is different for every patient, and the same patient can react differently at different times. We tried a 2^nd IUI, but it didn’t happen as well, this time because I had too many eggs. After that we tried a 3^rd time, starting it as an IUI, but expecting the possibility of it becoming IVF depending on how my body responded. Man, oh man, did my body respond! We were getting ready to drive down to Salt Lake to do IVF because we had too many follicles to continue with the IUI. Just before we were getting ready to leave, the doctor called and said “We just reviewed your ultrasound from today and you are so overstimulated (aka – lots and lots of follicles) that we are extremely worried that you will get hyperstimulated. Take this shot to cancel your cycle, and watch for symptoms of hyperstimulation.” Yeah, those symptoms: 5-10lb weight gain in one day, sever nausea and diarrhea, shortness of breath, abdominal pain, kidney failure, twisted ovary, internal bleeding and you can die from it. I was totally freaked out!!! I was acutely aware of every pain I felt. I’d wake up at night thinking that I had twisted my ovary from moving around in my sleep. To sum it up I was a train wreck. Luckily though it was all just pains and nothing serious.

We were either brave or dumb because after all of that, the very next month, we said, “Let’s try IVF again!” That was in July of 2015. The doctors had the injections dialed in a little better this time around. We successfully made it to the egg retrieval, got 11 eggs. 8 of those were fertilized; 5 of which were growing correctly. Had 2 implanted, and the rest weren’t viable for freezing. I miscarried the 2 that were implanted and we decided to take some time off to recover.

So, as you can tell from that whole saga, we are liking doing this one month thing much better than our 6 months of ups and downs last year. I can handle the stinging of the shots and the tender belly afterwards since it is just for this month.  

Thank you again for helping us to try to make a family. Not stressing as much about the financial part is a huge relief. Thank you so much!

IVF Update #4

One step closer!

Friday afternoon we had our bloodwork and ultrasound appointment. I have done so many of these over the years that it is just routine now. I have scar tissue on my arms from the countless needles drawing blood to test hormone levels or to run other tests on. The ultrasound techs and I are on a first name basis. It’ll be weird when I actually get pregnant and get to do normal belly ultrasounds instead of these vaginal ones that I’m accustomed to.

Our appointment was at the end of the work day, so our nurse didn’t call until 6PM with our results. She said that my uterus lining was thicker than normal (normal for everyone else) and she wanted to ask the doctor if I should hold off on the medicine that I was supposed to start taking that night. I told her that last time we did IVF that my lining was thick as well, so it really isn’t that abnormal for me. She looked back at my chart from last year and saw that it was 17mm thick last year, and this time it is 10mm and I’m still menstruating so it will most likely get thinner still. My bloodwork results weren’t back yet, so the nurse said she or the doctor would call me late tonight to let me know if I should go ahead with starting the medicine.

6 hours later…at almost midnight, I finally hear back from the nurse! At 10:30PM – 11PM I had texted and emailed the nurse asking if she found out if I should be starting the medicine because I kind of needed to know, soon. We were staying awake waiting to hear back. Those of you who know us, we are not night owls and we were tired from a long week, so we really just wanted to go to bed! Finally the nurse called, she was super apologetic and sweet (so of course we weren’t upset with her). She said go ahead and start the medicine and we will plan on starting injections next week.  Last night I took my new medicine; 12 pills, which added to my usual 20 pills made a grand totally of 32 pills in one day! Oh, I’m so glad that 10 of those pills were just a one time thing and I’m really only adding 2 more pills to my daily dose.

This week was our last week of school. It was also the week that Daniel’s family takes the cows out on the forest for summer grazing. So every day this week, as soon as we got home from work, we would change into our dirty clothes and help sort and move cows. It makes for a long day waking up at 5:30AM to go to work and then not coming home again until about 10:30PM. But now summer is here, and we get to relax and focus on doing IVF.

I know we say it every time, but THANK YOU! Thank you so much! We will never be able to adequately express how much help you have given us. You are amazing and wonderful people and we love you very much!

Working with cows

Last day of school - lots of good memories

IVF Update #3

The side effects come marching one by one...

We were hoping that we would be side effect free until we started injections, but alas, we were wrong. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise being that I'm taking 20 pills every day.

I started with being bloated and an upset stomach. Next came fatigue and nasty craps. By mid-week I was feeling nauseous. And to top it off, the whole time I have to deal with my vaginal suppository oozing pink and white - gross.

Physical side effects are manageable; I like to think I have a high pain tolerance. But then we unknowingly boarded the emotional train. All aboard! I was getting grumpy with Daniel; I knew it was unreasonable, but I couldn't stop myself. I also started overreacting to irritating people. Hopefully I managed to not overreact openly.

But I want to end on a good note. One of the vitamins that the doctor told me to take is Melatonin. Melatonin is to help you sleep.

My whole life I've struggled falling asleep. Even as a kid my parents would try to play soothing music to help me sleep. Ever since I started taking Melatonin, right before bed, I've been able to fall asleep quickly every night. I still can't fall asleep as fast as Daniel, but he could win championships for fastest person to fall asleep.

So for anyone out there that struggles with sleep, try some! You can buy it at any grocery store or vitamin shop. And it comes in a gummy, so that is a double win!

Thanks again for your support! It is amazing how many people care about us and are rooting for us. We love you!
If you would like to donate you can click here!
Don't forget to share our campaign on Facebook!

IVF Update #2

Things are about to get real.
We finally got our calendar/schedule from the doctor for our IVF treatment. Our first ultrasound and blood work is scheduled for June 3rd.
This is the ultrasound that they check to make sure that everything inside is looking good and that my blood shows good starting levels of hormones. If everything checks out, then we start injections.
We had been stressed this week because we knew that we were supposed to be starting some more pills to induce a menstrual cycle, but the doctor hadn't given us the prescription or a calendar of when we should start taking things. Finally we were able to get a hold of our nurse and got the ball rolling. I'm glad we have done this before because we know what should be going on.

Remember, if you want to donate to us you can click here to go to our Go Fund Me page.

IVF Update #1

We are so humbled by all the support we have received already! We've raised a big chunk of money and have a ton of people sharing on Facebook. Thank you!! Let's keep it going! Go to www.gofundme.com/dannoanddarcy
So this is our first update. It's nothing big, but we promised to keep you in the loop.
Our doctor gave us a list of vitamins, supplements, and meds to be on before we start injections. This is to help prepare our bodies to respond as best as possible to IVF and get the best embryos we can.

Go Fund Me

Seriously, we feel so awkward making a Go Fund Me account, but we've finally accepted that we need your help. We have so many supporters on this journey and we are so very grateful for each of you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!


https://www.gofundme.com/dannoanddarcy


We plan on posting frequent update of our IVF treatment process this June. So stay tuned and keep your fingers crossed that this time it works.

An Overdue Update

I have sat down to write a post at least a dozen times over the last year and a half, but nothing seems good enough. I'm not quite sure what I should say, or how to update anything.


Lets start with WE STILL ARE HOPING TO ADOPT!!


It took a few months to heal from our failed adoption. We still are friends with the mother and it is nice to see pictures of the beautiful baby boy growing up. Some days we still notice the hole in our heart, but that hole just means that we loved.


Things had been quiet on the adoption front until Oct 2015. A girl had been talking to us about adoption. She was due around Christmas and we just thought that would be the best Christmas miracle to bring home a baby. We even made it to the finals; she was deciding between us and another couple. Unfortunately for us she ultimately chose the other couple. There has been other contact with family or friends of women who were considering adoption, but none of those ever panned out. But every year we get our home study updated, hoping that maybe this will be the year.

This past year we also went to a fertility clinic in Utah. At first we were hoping to do insemination (IUI), but it became apparent that in vitro (IVF) would be the only possible chance we would have to conceive. Seven months of giving myself injections in the belly, emotions jumping all over the place, physical pain, stress, and huge financial burden barely begin to describe our IVF experience. Finally in July the doctors we able to harvest 11 eggs, 8 of which got fertilized, only 5 survived the growing period, implanted 2 Grade C embryos (poor quality), and 0 were viable for freezing. Then a month later I miscarried. I'm not going to lie, it was rough going through all of that and still not have a child. Since then we have still been on fertility meds, and we are planning on giving IVF another shot this summer.


Through all of these experiences I am grateful for an amazing husband and the strong marriage that we have. And I am even stronger in my faith of God and his love for me.