Anniversary

Today is DH's and my 8th anniversary. We'll be going out for dinner tonight and I'm trying to shake myself out of the lousy mood I'm in. I wish I could celebrate holidays for what they actually are without having them overshadowed by thoughts of how it's yet another anniversary or birthday or New Year's without our having a child.

We've been dealing with IVF for well over half our marriage now. I think that, for the first 2 1/2 years of our marriage, we remained blissfully unaware that we had an infertility problem. DH didn't want to start trying until after around 2 years had passed. He was still trying to get established in a career and wasn't earning enough for me to stop working. He also wanted to have a large enough house for children and we were only living in a 2 bedroom condo. at the time. My job was very stressful and involved long hours and a 2 hour commute to Manhattan by train each day. Meanwhile, I was getting very nervous about my advancing age. I had never wanted to be an older parent and had always hoped to finish completing our family by the age of 35.

I finally managed to talk DH into my at least stopping bcp's (which were also making me miserable). At first, I wasn't charting ovulation or doing anything like that. I guess we just figured it would happen before too long without any planned efforts on our part. When nothing happened after a number of months, I suspected I might not be ovulating and went to see my Gyn. I can't even remember what she did.....I think she ran some blood tests (which were all normal) and basically said keep trying and come back to see her in 6 months. During that time frame, DH got a job in FL. I left my job and we moved. We decided that I wouldn't work and we'd focus on having children, after which the plan was that I'd be a stay at home mom.

We bought a 5 bedroom house in FL. We wanted to make sure we had plenty of room for the children (yes, those were the days of optimism). I then wasted some more time with an OB. She tested my FSH and LH levels which seemed perfect. Beyond that, she didn't do much for me other than admonish me to learn to relax. I had been using an electronic fertility monitor and, even though I had long cycles, I was ovulating. We made sure we timed things perfectly based on the monitor but still no luck. I made an appointment with a RE at a fertility clinic. There were really only 2 fertility clinics within easy driving distance of our house. I picked the one that had the most attractive advertisement in the phone book. At the time I made this appointment, I had no real idea what IVF was or involved and I certainly didn't think we would be told we needed it. Amazingly, neither of the OB's I had seen previously had ever thought to mention the possibility that my DH might have an issue preventing our success. As it turned out, his count, motility, morphology, etc. were all extremely low. My Dr. at the fertility clinic told us that we would need to head straight to IVF with ICSI. Anything less would be a complete waste of time and our chances of conceiving on our own were about 1 in a million.

That was a tough blow to take. I was scared to death by the whole IVF process and it took a lot for me to commit to that first attempt. The whole thing was as bad as I had feared. Looking back, I think a lot of it was the fact that we had moved fairly recently. I hadn't made any friends yet. I didn't have any awareness of the message boards online that later became my salvation. On top of that, DH was totally submerged at work and just didn't have anything left in him to deal with me and my emotions being all over the place. I think the only thing that got me through it was the hope of it working. Since all of the testing on me had come back clear, we had been told we'd have a great chance of success.

I don't think either DH or I really thought about it not working. We were that confident.
I'm sure my expectations would have been substantially lowered had I looked up that particular clinic's success rates which were far from impressive. I honestly didn't even know or think to do such a thing at the time though. After that first cycle failed, I was so crushed and I had found the whole process so miserable, that I swore I would never do it again if our frozen transfers from the cycle didn't work. Of course, there are days now where I wish I hadn't changed my mind. I just couldn't do it though. Both DH and I wanted children badly and I didn't want to go through life wondering "what if?" What if I had just tried one more cycle? What if the clinic was the problem? I did some research and switched clinics. At this point, I've been to 3 different clinics and still don't have the answer. Does the threat of having "what if's" ever end? I still don't feel at peace with giving up.

Well, this little walk down memory lane has definitely not helped put me in a better mood!!

We have a transfer date

It looks like the transfer date will be May 21. My surrogate will need to get out there by the night of the 18th as my Dr. wants to do a 2nd lining check to make sure it looks good since she's having the original lining check done locally and he's not very trusting of other clinics measurements. She'll return home on the 23rd (after resting a full day and night in the hotel).

Her husband is going to travel out there with her. I wasn't going to go myself since it's not necessary that I be there, but have changed my mind. I decided I'll fly in the night before the transfer and leave the morning after. They do allow one person in the room with the patient during the transfer and my surrogate is fine with my going in. She actually seemed pleased that I'd want to be there. So, I'd really like to just see the embryos reach their destination on the monitor and to be able to speak first hand with my Dr. regarding how everything went. It'd just feel a little strange if the transfer was taking place on the opposite end of the U.S. and I wasn't even there. I'm not sure yet if my husband will travel there with me or not. It kind of depends on what he has going on at work and how expensive airfare is.

I've been feeling a bit of a high today after getting the exact date....the high that comes from knowing there is a transfer on the horizon. In between my imagining how I'll be one of those women who is able to claim miraculous success (and twins even!) after a gazillion failed cycles, I remember to be disgusted with myself. Haven't I been here before....way too many times? Have I learned nothing? The higher I let myself get, the further the fall (repeat to self a hundred times).

Surprise embryo

Well, today my coordinator called to tell me that we actually have 3 embryos frozen; not 2. I tried to tell her that wasn't possible. It's not like I wouldn't remember how many embryos we have frozen. There's not many to keep track of....it's a little hard to lose count of 2.

Apparently, she had looked at my chart and things just didn't add up so she researched things and talked with the lab and it turns out there was one Day 3 embryo back in my July cycle that they didn't biopsy because it wasn't looking so good, but it ended up turning around and making it to blast. It was frozen but not discarded with the blasts that tested abnormal as it never actually got tested. I have no idea how I was never told about it but, since it seems to work in my favor, I'm not going to complain.

So we have an "inconclusive embryo" (which I understand is basically the same as untested),
an untested embryo and the CGH normal embryo. I talked with my Dr. and he's willing to let me transfer all 3 to my surrogate. The downside of this is, if by some miracle she does get pregnant, we won't really have the full benefit of the CGH testing when it comes to not having to worry as much about miscarriage or doing invasive testing. I know, who am I kidding? It's not like we'll get far enough to be worrying about an amnio. Ha! I can't believe the thought even entered my mind there for a minute.

DH and I both admitted to one another today that we would consider doing an 8th fresh cycle if things don't work out with this transfer to our surrogate. I had been afraid to mention it to him for fear he'd think I had become insane and he was afraid to bring it up to me. It's crazy, I know. I just can't "move on".... partially because I don't know what we'd move on to.

CGH results

Out of the 5 blasts that were frozen, we have one "inconclusive" embryo. The other 4 were abnormal. I'm still not completely clear on how an embryo ends up getting an inconclusive result but the best I can understand is that, for some reason, the DNA was not able to be read from the cell they removed making the testing impossible. So, basically, "inconclusive" means untested.
The Dr. assured me that the fact the DNA couldn't be read is a technical issue and does not reflect on the embryo itself. Even so, what are the odds that the one embryo they couldn't test would be the only normal one out of the bunch? So, yeah, as far as I'm concerned we pretty much just had a cycle with all abnormal embryos and I have no idea if it was a fluke thing or if my days of having a few tested normal embryos per cycle are now over.

Fortunately, even though they usually will not transfer an untested embryo along with a tested normal one, my Dr. agreed to make an exception in our case since my surrogate can only go out there the one time for a transfer. And, since I haven't had success transferring 3 tested normal embryos to myself at this point, I think the untested embryo has a much better shot being transferred to her.

Now we are just waiting on my surrogate's DQ/HLA testing to come back and I'm praying she won't have a match with my husband. I'm not even sure if I believe in the whole DQ/HLA matching theory but I can't imagine going through with the ET if my Dr. told me there was no chance it would work due to a match. I would think it'd be extremely unlikely she'll have a match with him. She's had 5 children (one delivered for a couple as a surrogate) and each was conceived with a different man. And, of course, she did get pregnant for us once but miscarried due to an abnormal embryo.

No news means bad news

I'm not sure I was cut out for blogging....mainly because when things are going wrong it's sometimes too painful for me to sit down and write about them. As you can tell by the huge amount of time that's gone by since my last entry, a lot has gone wrong.

To sum up what's happened since my last post....

I did end up going ahead and transferring one of the normal CGH tested embryos to myself back in Oct. The result was a short lived chemical pregnancy.

Shortly thereafter, I transferred 3 blasts frozen from a prior cycle at a local clinic (so they weren't tested) to a gestational surrogate. She became pregnant with a singleton and things looked perfect at the first u/s. When we went back for a 9 week u/s a few days before Christmas, the Dr. asked me what was the farthest I had ever gotten. I told him a little over 8 weeks. He said, "well, this will be a new milestone for you if things look good." I said "yes, if things look good" and my husband said "STOP IT" in a stern voice (he thinks I'm too negative....gee, I wonder why?!). I was so anxious that I felt faint. As soon as the Dr. started doing the u/s, I knew something was wrong by the look on his face and the fact that he wasn't saying anything. Sure enough, the h/b had stopped. It was very similar to what had happened the one time with me and it was so hard to have all the same feelings come rushing back all over again. She had a D&C and I was relieved to at least find out that the embryo had several abnormalities.

My husband and I figured the next step was to transfer our one remaining tested embryo to the surrogate. The problem was both of us felt like we'd have better chances if we could transfer 2 tested embryos to her. It's such a big endeavor and expense to have her go out there to transfer one embryo. And, even though it's CGH tested, there is still a 20% chance an embryo that tests normal is actually not.

So, you guessed it, we decided to do fresh cycle # 7. We just returned from Vegas around 12 days ago. The cycle did not go well. I'm normally a high responder. I don't have PCOS and I'm never in the territory of huge numbers of eggs, but typically 20 to 30. Yet, this time, at my first appt. my E2 level was only 180 and there were only around 5 or 6 follicles as opposed to the 19 plus I usually have by that time and an E2 over 2,000. I don't know what happened except that 8 months had elapsed since my prior cycle and I'm now 38. Prior to the cycle, I had asked to increase my dose this time around but since my final E2 was 5,000-6,000 the times before, the Dr. didn't want to do that. I can't really blame him. Who could have seen this coming? The one thing I thought might have been done was testing at a local lab after a few days of stims. That way they could have caught the fact that I wasn't responding a lot earlier and corrected it sooner. By the time they discovered this, I had already done 7 nights of stims. Anyway, my dose was increased and I ended up having 18 eggs retrieved but only 14 mature and 11 fertilized. We ended up with 5 blasts to freeze that we're waiting for CGH results on. All 5 were Day 6 blasts (just like last time around) which is not encouraging to me. At any rate, I'm just praying 1 will test normal.

We had 2 out of 11 the first time we did the testing which means 9 were abnormal then 2 out of 7 the 2nd time which means 5 were abnormal.....so I'm very worried that all 5 that we have this time could easily be abnormal. Seeing how many abnormal embryos we've had in the past, I'm convinced we need high numbers to get a normal one or 2 and we just didn't have that from this cycle (and, yes, I know it's quality over quantity but I've tried the super low dose route once before to have less but presumably better quality embryos and no pregnancy resulted from any of them so the likelihood is that theory doesn't hold true with me; unless it actually is mainly an implantation problem which we won't know until we see how the surrogate does with tested embryos) .

My surrogate will be going to Vegas for a transfer in May.....at least of the one tested embryo we have frozen if none of the 5 come back normal.

Anyway, that's where things stand right now. I'd love to say something positive like "I'm sure things can only get better from here" but think I'd probably be kidding myself. :{

Things aren't looking good....

I could probably use the above title for 90% of my posts.

Last week, I found out that we actually had 17 embryos fertilized (apparently 1 more made it) and, of those, 13 were growing on target. Four were lagging and probably wouldn't make it. I was really happy with that report because by Day 3 the last cycle we did, we had 11 embryos growing on target and all 11 of those made it to blast. Of those, only 2 were competent and capable of creating a healthy pregnancy according to the CGH testing. So, of course, I got my hopes up that we might have 13 blasts which would give us a great shot at 2 normal ones, if not 1 or 2 more than that.

As usual, my optimism was short lived. I found out a few days later that only 7 embryos made it to blast to be frozen. Last time about half our embryos made it to blast by Day 5. This time they all took until Day 6. I suppose that, in and of itself, that's not necessarily a problem. One of my embryos that tested normal last time around was a Day 6 blast. However, I asked for the embryology report on the 7 embryos and things look even worse than I thought. One of the embryos was 10 cells on Day 3. Since it was dividing too quickly, the Dr. said it's likely to be abnormal. Two of the embryos weren't even expanded as of Day 6 and they should have been. One embryo has over 20 percent fragmentation which is not a good sign. So, the way I see it, I really only have 3 embryos that have any remote chance of passing the CGH testing as compared with 11 last time. Needless to say, things do not look promising.

I have a phone consult with Dr. S. today. I guess I'm looking for some kind of explanation of why this cycle went so poorly in comparison with the last one considering I was on the exact same protocol. I don't think I did anything different lifestyle-wise although, as you can imagine, I've been driving myself crazy trying to think of any possible little thing I might have done differently that ruined things.

I'm feeling so frustrated and scared.....scared that this really is never going to work no matter how long I persevere. This was my 6th fresh cycle. One was canceled right before the trigger ....a bad call by a Dr. who got worried about OHSS. So, I guess I could say it was my 5th fresh cycle in terms of not having success but my 6th if I'm looking at how many times I've gone through it and exposed myself to all the medications. On top of that, I've done 4 FET's. I may have already passed the point of excess. The thing is, the first clinic we went to didn't do well with my case so I feel that cycle really doesn't count. The 2nd clinic canceled my first cycle due to the OHSS fears. Then, the cycle after that, the Dr. put me on a ridiculously low dose of meds. It took me forever to stim. and I had far fewer eggs. The embryos we had seemed to be good quality but they usually do appear to be on the surface. Then, the next fresh cycle my meds. were upped some and I had a better response. The problem there is the Dr. opted to freeze 10 of my embryos on Day 2. I haven't used those yet. He left another 8 out to go to blast for the fresh transfer. On Day 5, we had 1 blast and 2 morulas and the rest were still growing. We transferred the 3 and, of the others, 2 became blasts by Day 6 and were frozen. So, I have 12 embryos frozen at that clinic. The reason why I didn't do those transfers before moving onto another clinic was because the Dr. there refused to let me use viagra to treat my lining. I didn't feel comfortable transferring with a lining of only 7. At the moment, it looks like the plan is to get a surrogate to transfer those embryos to. My fifth fresh cycle and first in Las Vegas went really well; the best ever. I finally found like maybe I found the solution. And, even though 2 out of 11 blasts being normal (only 18%) was far below what one would expect even at my age, I was happy with that because I suspected it was the first time we've ever had normal embryos to transfer. I did the fresh transfer a few months later and it worked. I thought maybe my dream was finally coming true. Wrong again. Transferring the normal embryos resulted in a missed miscarriage at 8.5 weeks leaving me uncertain if it's me or the embryos that are the problem. Maybe neither was the issue and it was just a case of bad luck with the embryo implanting in too high a location and lack of blood supply. The thing is we'll never know. At the very least, I had hoped to get an answer from the last cycle regarding why this wasn't working and I don't feel like I have it.

Back from Las Vegas....and waiting

We returned from Las Vegas on Saturday. 28 eggs were retrieved. 23 were mature. 16 fertilized.
This is not as good as our last cycle in which we had 31 eggs, 24 mature and 21 fertilized. I had 11 that made it to blast to be frozen last time and 2 of those turned out to be normal after CGH testing.

I'm feeling less than optimistic. I know these would seem like good numbers to most people but, considering that of the half of our embryos that made it to blast last time, only 18% were actually capable of creating a pregnancy, that means I'm on target to get to get one normal embryo this cycle at best. Don't get me wrong. One is certainly better than none. It's just that I was really hoping for at least 2 so I could try a transfer for myself again. If we only have 1, I'm really going to feel like we have to use a surrogate because I can't take chances with it.

I triggered with an E2 in the 5000's but am feeling okay and may even attempt working out today. I need to do something to get my mind of things. I should get a Day 3 report at some point today and I'm very nervous about it.

Back from Las Vegas....and waiting

We returned from Las Vegas on Saturday. 28 eggs were retrieved. 23 were mature. 16 fertilized.
This is not as good as our last cycle in which we had 31 eggs, 24 mature and 21 fertilized. I had 11 that made it to blast to be frozen last time and 2 of those turned out to be normal after CGH testing.

I'm feeling less than optimistic. I know these would seem like good numbers to most people but, considering that of the half of our embryos that made it to blast last time, only 18% were actually capable of creating a pregnancy, that means I'm on target to get to get one normal embryo this cycle at best. Don't get me wrong. One is certainly better than none. It's just that I was really hoping for at least 2 so I could try a transfer for myself again. If we only have 1, I'm really going to feel like we have to use a surrogate because I can't take chances with it.

I triggered with an E2 in the 5000's but am feeling okay and may even attempt working out today. I need to do something to get my mind of things. I should get a Day 3 report at some point today and I'm very nervous about it.

Here I go again

I guess I'm not as good at blogging as I thought I'd be. Two months without an entry. One might get the impression that I actually had things going on in my life (other than IVF). Ha!

I'm currently on lupron in preparation for what will be my last fresh cycle. Unfortunately, it's going to require traveling out to the clinic in Las Vegas again; something which I'm dreading. I've had enough of Las Vegas to last me for my life (of course, my hatred for it may have something to do with the fact that we are always out there for IVF procedures and never to enjoy ourselves). We'll be doing testing on the embryos again and, since it can take up to 6 weeks to get the results back, the embryos will be frozen. If there are any normal ones, then either myself or a surrogate will be doing a FET at some point. I may actually try transferring to myself one more time, but only if we have more than 1 to work with.

Other than that, I'm just extremely stressed because my cat Kobi (who is my best friend!) has been having some health issues. We've known for awhile that he has kidney stones and he's been doing ok but at his last visit to the vets we learned that he has a level 4 heart murmur. Now, the vet had discovered a Level 2 murmur last year and we had an echo done which looked okay. The fact that it has gotten worse though is concerning and I found out we did not have the echo. done by a veterinary cardiologist last time around. It was just an internist and it's possible he might have missed a problem in its early stages. So, now he's set up for another echo. on Tues. I'm just praying everything will look okay. He's only 6 1/2 and I've been counting on him being around for many, many more years. Honestly, I don't know how I could have made it through all these stressful years of infertility and IVF treatment without him. I do love my other cat, Sasha, as well but just don't have the same kind of connection with him. Kobi is my baby.

When this next cycle is over with, I fully intend to try to enjoy life for awhile. I've had it with IVF. I just feel so bitter lately. We've spent so much money and, even worse, I feel like I've completely wasted years of my life and we have nothing to show for it. I know it's my own fault. Maybe I should have drawn the line long ago, but I just didn't want to live my life thinking "what if"? And, I guess for a while I deluded myself that I'd be able to look back on all of this with my baby in my arms and think how much it was all worth it. It's looking like that's not going to happen.

Hmmm.... now I see why I blog so little. I end up depressing myself!

Should have known better than to hope

Well, as of this morning's ultrasound at 8 weeks 5 days, there was no longer a heartbeat and
the things had stopped growing. Ironically, I had started to feel more calm about things and like there was a chance things might work out. I should have known better than to let my guard down.

I have no idea what happened. The heartbeat was very strong at the last ultrasound. The OB said that, since the embryos were tested for abnormalities prior to transfer, that was an unlikely cause. He thought that maybe the bad location resulted in a lack of blood supply but I guess I'll never know for sure. It makes things very complicated because I don't know whether I need a surrogate or not on a next attempt. I'm really starting to feel like my body is hopeless when it comes to carrying a pregnancy even though none of the Dr.'s have been able to find anything wrong with me.

I'm still in shock. I can't believe that after all this time and effort we're right back where we started again.