The aftermath

So tomorrow is my follow-up appointment with Dr. D to check on how I am doing and discuss moving on to my FET.

The misoprostol for the missed abortion was an anxiety filled event, but I am still happy with my choice, and luckily I had several friends who gave me advice, listened to me worry, and helped me anticipate what would happen. I took 4 pills vaginally Friday morning after the bad ultrasound - passed 2 clots with cramping, but no bleeding. Then 4 more pills Saturday morning - nada. At this point I called the resident at the hospital and begged to try one more dose to try and avoid the D&C, which he obliged, so I took 4 more pills Saturday night and only passed about 4 clots with no real bleeding. I was rather distraught that the whole process hadn't worked and scheduled a D&C for Friday, with the hopes that maybe things would still occur naturally before then. Thankfully on Monday I started to bleed bright red blood and a lot of clots, which lasted through Friday (4 days total), so despite my efforts for this to take place on the weekend, I was bleeding a lot at work. However, by this point I was mostly just relieved that the bleeding had started because I knew that I had not bled enough over the weekend.

I have taken 3 hpts over the last 10 days and my hcg is definately decreasing. With the first test the test line was as dark as the control, and now with the most recent test the test line is light enough that I would consider it positive (if I really wanted it to be positive, like 12 dpo), but is fairly light. I am hoping that in a few more days it will be negative.

My body seems to be a bit whacky hormonally. My face is breaking out :( and I just want to eat junkfood.

K and I have talked about what to do next. We are wanting to move forward and do the FET during our clinics next up-time, which I think would be in July, but we will find out for sure tomorrow. At this point we are leaning toward transfering both of the frozen blasts that we have. There are several reasons why we are considering this:

1) We want to maximize our chances that the transfer will results in a BFP and pregnancy. We would be overjoyed with either 1 or 2 babies. I know that are increased risks with twins, but I feel comfortable with the statistics given the quality of medical care in my area.

2) We only have 2 frozen blasts. Even if we plan to transfer 2, there is a chance that only 1 will survive the thaw.

3) If we only transfer 1, in the future we will have to do a FET with only 1 blast (Our shared-risk covers FETs for all frozen embryos, so we wouldn't start another fresh cycle till after transfering all of our frozen blasts). If it didn't thaw correctly we would have nothing to transfer, which would be really upsetting/frustrating and set us back several more months because we need to start another fresh cycle.

4) We paid for IVF out of pocket. Luckily we qualified for a shared risk program. If I don't get pregnant and carry past the 1st trimester with at least 1 of the 2 blasts we have left then we get our money back. We could then rejoin the shared risk program and retry IVF. Hopefully the next time my protocol can be maximized to result in even more eggs/embryos and we could consider doing PGD at that point if necessary. Obviously I would much rather get pregnant with this FET then redo IVF all over again, but even if I get pregnant I feel like my family won't be complete without several children, so I will need to do IVF again. If I have to redo IVF this year, then at least most of the costs will be covered, and hopefully we can get enough eggs/embryos that we wouldn't have to do it a 3rd time in the future. Transfering 2 embryos now will either result in pregnancy which will hopefully result in a baby or no pregnancy, at which point I would know that I need to do IVF again now, before I potentially relocate in a year for residency.

5) I am not sure about this last point and still need to research/think about it more. Just going off of my gut feeling, I feel that if I get pregnant with twins and one of them is chromosomaly abnormal and fails to grow after implanting but the other baby is healthy and continues to grow, the loss would be easier on me then having 2 separate pregnacies with 1 ending in a baby and 1 ending in a miscarriage, which could happen in either order. However, I do have a fear that if one is chromosomally abnormal then the loss could affect the other baby and I could lose them both. That is probably my greatest fear and the primary reason why I would consider transfering them seperately. My reassurance against this concern is that I have not seen this happen commonly on the blogs I read. I have seen many instances where one twin stops growing or dissapears from one early ultrasound to the next, but the other twin has always been ok.

My other question for my appointment tomorrow is whether or not I should take Metformin for my FET. I was put on it originally when I failed clomid and started femara and was left on it for IVF because they said it could help with egg quality, but I stopped it with the miscarriage because I couldn't motivate myself to take any medicine. I restarted it last night, but need to find out if there is a benefit to taking it with the FET? I will let you know how my appointment goes tomorrow.