FET #2 and on to CCRM

I keep trying to write this post, but then can't, because it's too discouraging. But finally the pain from the BFN it starting to subside, at least temporarily (before it likely roars its ugly head again,) and now that I'm filling out all the paperwork for our next consult, I know it is so helpful to have all my IVF information on here. So here is what happened with the FET:

March 8th - last day of bcps (had been on for 2 months prior)
March 11th - started period
March 13th - baseline ultrasound - lining thin, no cysts, start estradiol 2 mg tid
March 14th - 20th - awesome vacation with my husband, sister, and brother in law. Do develop hives on March 16, likely secondary to wet suits from scuba diving and start Claritin.
March 23rd - bloodwork estrogen 260
March 24th - hives gone, stop Claritin
March 26th - bloodwork estrogen 374, lining 8.5 mm but not trilaminar throughout. Start Viagra suppositories tid.
April 2nd - lining 9.5 and trilaminar. Start PIO 1 mL at 11 am.
April 7th - Lining looks great, transfer goes smoothly. However, counseled that our genetically normal embryo was rated as poor prior to freezing and is still only rated as poor now.
April 13th - 6dp6dt HPT negative, call CCRM to schedule consult
April 17th - 10dp6dt beta negative.

Today we had our consult with CCRM. We talked with Dr. S, but the less famous Dr. S at CCRM. He was very friendly and positive. He wants to investigate a few things before moving forward (me getting a karyotype and checking K's sperm fragmentation) but he thinks with the right protocol (undecided at this point) and their awesome lab, we have a good chance. He said it would be very unlikely for someone my age to have no normal eggs, but he also thinks something else might be going on with K, since he does not think the translocation is the source of his 0% morphology. We are planning to go out to CCRM in early June. Maybe if we are lucky we can do our day 3 labs that same cycle... I'm not sure if that is possible before I've been seen in person. In the meantime my RE here can order my karyotype.

Retrieval, Fertilization, and Biopsy Results

Sorry for the delay but here is how things went:

Retrieval went well. It was on a Tuesday. Kevin said it only took half the amount of time it took last time and Dr. V said that my ovaries "felt" healthy based on the resistance she had while retrieving the eggs. I woke up to great news - 23 eggs retrieved! She was worried about OHSS however and had me take my one leftover Ganirelix when I got home and start Cabergoline for 8 days. I felt crampy (but less than last time.) However, I think Thursday was the roughest because I went back to work Wednesday and by Thursday I was barely waddling. K went out of town for a marathon and thankfully my aunt came from out of town to take care of me and E, since he was too heavy for me to lift. We had a great time.

The day after retrieval I got an email saying that of the 23 eggs 16 were mature, 3 were immature, and 4 were empty zonas. They attempted ICSI on all of the 16 mature eggs. 12 fertilized to a 2 PN which is the normal first stage of fertilization, 2 fertilized abnormally to a 3 PN stage, and 2 did not fertilize. So we had pretty good maturity and fertilization rates. On day 6 I hadn't heard from the clinic, but I saw a charge go through on my credit card from Genesis Genetics so I was pretty hopeful that that meant there was something to biopsy. I called the clinic and finally got a call back a few hours later that 2 embryos made it to biopsy. We elected for a batching option with instant results through Genesis that is a set price for as many cycles as it takes to get a normal embryo. I was very nervous with only 2 embryos, but one of my good IVF buddies kept my spirits up. I was told results would take 7 days, but after only 2 days I had a message while at work that my results were in. I had to wait a few hours to get in touch with the geneticist at my RE, but I finally got a call back. The first embryo had an unbalanced translocation that is consistent with K's balanced translocation :( but the second embryo is genetically normal! It was the best news in months!

We couldn't do a transfer right away because my clinic requires 1 month of birth control prior to transfer. We also have plans to go out of the country on an adults only trip in March, so we decided to wait until after our trip for the transfer. I started birth control with my period after IVF and will stay on birth control till March 8th, when I will stop it. I go in for labs and an ultrasound to make sure things are good to go on March 13th. If things are good I will start oral estrogen. We are planning for a regimen similar to the FET that I got pregnant with E. Then I will go in for a lining check on March 23rd. If things look good I will start progesterone in oil when appropriate for a transfer on March 31.

They gave me the option of any day March 31-April 3 for the transfer, pending things going as panned. If we did April 3rd it would mean a due date of 12/25, which was my due date for my first pregnancy/miscarriage. If things worked out it would feel like a good redemption, but if things went badly I think Christmas would become even more painful, so I decided to avoid that day.

Monitoring appointment 3

1/9: 1 vial Menopur bid, 75 Follistim bid, and 10 units micro dose Lupron bid
1/10: 1 vial Menopur bid, 75 Follistim am only, and 10 units micro dose Lupron bid
Ultrasound 10 measured follicles on right 13-20 mm + several smaller, 6 measured on left 13-19 mm. Estrogen 3249.

I had my monitoring ultrasound and the doctor said the follicles looked packed in! (I believe in a good way, as in there were many.) She said I might be ready to trigger tonight, but was also willing to let me stim one more day based on my estrogen result. I saw quite a few 13 mm sized follicles on my ultrasound today, and I want to give them a chance to reach 15 mm - the minimum size for maturity - so I asked to stim for one more day. Since follicles grow about 2 mm per day one more day should be perfect for us to hopefully get a few extra eggs. The largest follicle was only 20, so it would only reach 22, and follicles don't get over mature till over 24 mm, so we should still be safe there. I voiced this to the doctor, who agreed. Even though my Estrogen ended up coming back at 3249, she said it's ok to stim one more day, but we will hold Follistim tonight and tomorrow and just do Menopur. She thinks that's enough hormone not to deprive the follicles, but decrease my chances of OHSS. My estrogen will likely be above 4000 at trigger tomorrow, which they like to keep it below due to OHSS, but she is ok with that since we are not doing a fresh transfer (getting pregnant with a fresh transfer worsens OHSS due to beta-hcg.) So our plan for the next few days is:

1/11: 1 vial Menopur and 10 units micro dose Lupron in am, HCG trigger at 7 pm
1/12: Blood draw to check HCG level to ensure adequate level
1/13: Retrieval. Show up at 6 am.

Monitoring appointments 1 & 2

1/2: 10 units micro dose Lupron bid
1/3: 150 Follistim bid and 10 units micro dose Lupron bid
1/4: 150 Follistim bid and 10 units micro dose Lupron bid
1/5: 1 vial Menopur bid, 75 Follistim bid, and 10 units micro dose Lupron bid
1/6: 1 vial Menopur bid, 75 Follistim bid, and 10 units micro dose Lupron bid
First monitoring ultrasound: lining 2.5 (was just finishing my period), all follicles under 10 mm, ~30 on right, ~20 on left. Estrogen 411.
1/7: 1 vial Menopur bid, 75 Follistim bid, and 10 units micro dose Lupron bid + Humira in pm
1/8: 1 vial Menopur bid, 75 Follistim bid, and 10 units micro dose Lupron bid
Second monitoring ultrasound: lining 9, R ovary: 13, 12, 12, 11, 11, 10, many under 10, L ovary: 10, 10, 10, 10, several under 10. Estrogen 1338.

It looks like things are going well this round. I'm much happier with my estrogen. I think it might get pretty high by retrieval, but hopeful that will be in indication of many follicles, and many mature follicles. I am going to continue the same dose of meds and return for an ultrasound on Saturday. The follicles are still small but they all are growing, so hopefully it will be a nice, slow, steady increase. There is still time for those under 10 to catch up.

On Estrogen levels I've done a bit of reading, since I was worried with my low levels last cycle. From what I've read the goal is for Estrogen to reach 2000-4000 before retrieval (though I'm not sure if that is the level on day of trigger vs day of actual retrieval). Also there is a handy dandy equation that reflects expected Estrogen levels and number and size of follicles:

E2 = 291 pg/ml + 180 (x) + 64 (y) + 18.7 (z) 
where x, y and z represent follicles measuring >17 mm, 15 to 16 mm, and <14 mm respectively

I've also heard on average a mature follicle will produce ~200 pg/ml of estrogen. So far I'm just feeling a little uncomfortable in my lower abdomen already and had a little GI upset today. Otherwise, I'm feeling pretty happy and hopeful today.

Trying again

I went in for my baseline ultrasound last Friday and everything looked good (lining ~4 mm, 30 antral follicles on R, 20 on L) so I started microdose Lupron that morning (10 units bid). Saturday morning I added in Follistim 150 mg bid, and tomorrow I add in 1 vial or Menopur bid and reduce Follistim to 75 mg bid. I go in for my first ultrasound to check how things are going on Tuesday morning. The main changes this cycle are doing microdose Lupron instead of antagonist, and doing just Follistim for two days before adding Menopur, which is what I did for my first IVF cycle.

I feel hopeful but also like there is so much standing between me and another baby. In my head I will do this round and if we can at least get to the point of having blasts to test, I would be willing to do it again if there aren't any that are normal. If we don't get any blasts then we will have to seriously think about what to do next. We would likely try going to a clinic that is well known for PGD, which would include traveling... but I know I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to give this cycle a full try, I just feel better having a contingency plan. I was hopeful enough (or more likely concerned about finances enough) that I had them send me the FET meds with my fresh IVF meds all before 1/1/15, since I had met my deducible last year and by some miracle my current plan covered my medications. So hopefully I will get a chance to use those FET meds in the next few months.

Well that was a complete failure

Of the 13 eggs (or a baker's dozen as K called it), 10 were mature, 2 were immature, and 1 was clearly abnormal. Of the 10 mature, 8 fertilized. There were doing ok on day 3: 3 or 4 grade B and 3 or 4 grade C (I can't remember if each was 3 or 4 because I was so upset because I only heard this after they told me everything had failed). However, on day 5 none were blastocysts. When they rechecked on day 6 they all had died except one very poor quality blastocyst which "fell apart" when they touched it to try to biopsy. I am devastated. I was worried we might not have any genetically normal embryos on PGS, but I never thought we wouldn't even have any embryos to test. I am 26 and K is 28. His morphology increased from 0% to 4% and he has been taking supplements.

The clinic says they aren't sure what went wrong. I talked to both doctors and heard slightly different information. The first said that they sometimes see embryos go downhill after 4-5 days if it is a sperm problem. The second was worried my UC might have effected my egg quality.

There are only a few differences between this cycle and last:

1. UC
After E was born I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. My symptoms weren't horrible, but they weren't under control until about 2 weeks before starting IVF. I am taking Hum.ira. Maybe my UC effected my egg quality. Hopefully, now that my symptoms are under control my egg quality might improve. I am going to start taking supplements for egg quality. I searched the CCRM supplement list and am going to take:

DHEA – 25mg x 3/day
Myo Inositol 2gm (twice a day)
Melatonin 3mg (at bedtime)
Co Enzyme Q10 (200 mg x 2/day)
Omega-3 fatty acid 1000mg (once daily)
Vitamin C 500mg (once daily in the AM)
Vitamin E 200IU (once daily)
L-arginine 1000mg (twice a day)
Pycnogenol 100mg (once daily)

2. Met.formin
My last IVF cycle I had been on 1500 mg met.formin for ~4 months. This time I was only taking it inconsistently few 2-3 weeks. I was really really nauseous on the bcp for IVF, and I thought the met.formin might be contributing so I didn't take it as often. I had my hormones checked and they did not show a typical PCOS pattern, so I figured I didn't really need the met.formin. However, now I am back on the 1500 mg and will take it everyday.

3. Medications
The main difference in medications was 1st cycle I did follistim only for 3 days then added menopur. I took them both together at night. This time I started menopur and follistim on the same day and took menopur in the morning and follistim at night. I also took about twice the total amount of injections this time (150 follistim vs 75 per dose and used 11 total vials of menopur vs 5), since we were trying to get more eggs. We got 13 vs 11 last time. Also, I used 4 vials of ganirelix vs only 1. I felt they were on the fence on having me trigger on Friday vs Saturday. They had me wait (I think in hopes of having my estrogen rise more, since it still was only 800), where my first Drs had me trigger at a similar stage - part of me wonders if we waited one day too long to trigger (I forgot to ask the Dr this)? I asked the doctor if we used too much drug, and she said no because we still had a healthy total number of eggs and my estrogen was not too high. She says that I required more medications for only slightly more eggs may be a sign of decreasing egg quality, but still my overall dose isn't as high as some women use/need. However, one concern is that my estrogen was never very high and was somewhat low considering my follicle size. Because of this she wants to try a micro dose Lupron flare protocol to cause higher FSH/LH/estrogen and hopefully recruit more follicles and have healthier follicles.

Based on all these things my plan is to give my UC more time in remission before we try again and give the supplements and met.formin time to improve my egg quality. I have heard you need about 3 months. At this point based on my schedule I could work in another IVF try in between January 12 - February 8th (which would give me only 2- 2.5 months) or March 9 - May 3rd (which would give me 4-4.5 months.) The only problem till waiting till March is if we do have success in creating blastocysts that we can biopsy and freeze, based on K's translocation they estimate only 20% will be normal. We could have no normal embryos and would need to cycle again. However, we move out of state again at the end of June and my May schedule is not really amenable to another IVF cycle. We could possibly squeeze in another cycle in June, but then would have to return to the clinic at a later date to do the FET or have the embryos transferred to a different lab closer to where we move for the FET. I'm not really sure on what to do at this point. Do you think I can improve my egg quality enough in 2 - 2.5 months or should I wait 4 - 4.5 months?

Another thing to question is if we should do anymore testing on K. One doctor suggested testing for sperm DNA fragmentation, but even if it is fragmented there isn't much was can do. They can do a testicular aspiration to get sperm, but there is not much evidence on this improving outcomes. Plus, we were told that many of K's sperm with unbalanced mutations probably don't make it out of the testicle (this his lower concentration), so if we aspirate we could get an even higher percentage of abnormal sperm. If it was super fragmented I would still want to try again with his sperm, since we know it worked once. It's hard to give up on his sperm or my eggs at this point since our first IVF was successful. I hope we can figure things out.

We also have considered talking to our original clinic, but it would be incredibly difficult to get back there to cycle (as it is 6 hours away.) The only way it would work is if I could do monitoring here, which I'm not sure they would agree to, and only go back for retrieval. At this point I am willing to give this clinic one more try. If we have complete failure again we would not try at this clinic a third time. There is no other clinic other than the one I am at for several hundred miles, so we don't have another close option.

Any suggestions or opinions on what we should do?


 

Retrieval

Retrieval was this morning at 7 am. They retrieved 13 eggs, which I am happy with (but doesn't everyone wish for more.) We will find out tomorrow how many were mature and fertilized.

The bad part is that I don't feel the best. I already had a sore throat and cough before retrieval. Now I am also very crampy and when I cough my shoulder kills me - I'm not sure if it is referred pain or what. I'm definitely more uncomfortable than I recall being after my last retrieval. The doctor today had to push the retrieval needle through part of my cervix, which caused bleeding, and she had to put a stitch in my cervix.

I'm trying not to stress too much. It's hard not to start doing math. I have 13 eggs but not all are mature, not all will fertilize, not all will make it to day 5 to be biopsied, and not all will be genetically normal. I hope in the end I will have a few healthy, genetically normal embryos to transfer.

IVF Days 7 and 8

IVF Day 7
Estrogen 482, Progesterone 0.2
10/30 Menopur 75 and Ganirelix AM & Menopur 75 and Follistim 150 PM
Starting to feel a little bloated and uncomfortable

IVF Day 8
Estrogen 824, Progesterone 0.5
10/31 Menopur 75 and Ganirelix AM & Menopur 75 and Follistim 150 PM

Plan is for trigger tomorrow night and retrieval Monday morning
11/1 Menopur 75 and Ganirelix AM & trigger with HCG at 8 PM

IVF Day 6

10/28 Menopur 75 AM and Follistim 150 PM
10/29 Menopur 75 and Ganirelix AM and Follistim 150 PM
Follicles: R: 6 13-16 mm, L: 4 13-16 mm
Estrogen: 431, Progesterone: 0.4

IVF Day 4

10/23 Baseline ultrasound: R: 33 follicles, L: 20 follicles, lining 2.7 mm
10/24 Menopur 75 AM and Follistim 150 PM
10/25 Menopur 75 AM and Follistim 150 PM
10/26 Menopur 75 AM and Follistim 150 PM
10/27 Menopur 75 AM and Follistim 150 PM, Ultrasound: ~10 7-10 mm on R and ~5 7-10 mm on L, Estrogen 147

Round 2

So I know I am a horrible blogger and disappeared for the last year. Things with my pregnancy went well other than horrible nausea till ~26 weeks (However, Zofran helped sooo much). At 36 weeks and 5 days I gave birth to my perfect little boy, who is no longer very little anymore. He had to stay in the hospital 1 week due to an infection, but has been very healthy since then.

I finished medical school and we ended up moving for my residency. We will be in our current location for 1 year and then a different location for 3 years. I looked ahead to where we move next and realized there are no IVF clinics nearby, so we are in the process of starting IVF again. We met with the local clinic and told them about K's brother's translocation. They ran genetic testing on him and discovered that he carries the same translocation, which we both sort of expected given his low sperm morphology and counts. So we are going to do PGS.

I go in tomorrow for my baseline ultrasound, and if everything looks good I will start injections tomorrow. All the meds are lined up on my kitchen table and in the fridge. My new doctors are planning on being more aggressive than last time since we will not do a transfer right away, which will decrease my chances of ovarian hyperstimulation as there will be no beta-hcg, and because we need more eggs to have more blastocysts to test with PGS. Once they retrieve the eggs we will do ICSI and PGS on the day 5 blastocysts. They send a few cells to a lab out of state and freeze the day 5 blasts. Once we know our results, we will plan when to do the FET.

I still read all the blogs I used to read - almost everyday. I'm impressed with those who have kept up their blogging. I'll try to be better this time :)

Trick or Treat

We had our 20 week ultrasound yesterday and everything went great. Most importantly all of baby's organs looked healthy and were in the correct locations - normal heart and brain, intestines inside the abdomen, diaphragm looked complete, kidneys not too bright. It was amazing to see that the fluttering sensation I feel is when the baby kicks off one side of the amniotic sac. We also were able to take a peak between babys leg and are so excited to anounce we are having a little...

Boy!

Now the night before our first ultrasound I had a dream that I delivered a baby boy and had originally thought I was having a boy, but K and all of my family though the baby was a girl so they slowly convinced me otherwise. We were suprised and very happy to find out that baby is a boy (even though we would have been equally happy with a girl). Knowing the baby is a boy just helps make everything a little more real and helps me imagine what our life will be like as a family of 3.

We're still here

Hi loyal blog followers. Thank you for all of your inquiries as to how I've been doing. I am sorry I have been so absent. I kept wanting to update you, but I've been anxious to post... I kept waiting to feel more confident in my pregnancy, and that has taken a lot of time. That's not to say I haven't been enjoying my pregnancy, it's just that infertility and loss makes early pregnancy very difficult. Even after seeing our little baby twice, I was scared that we might lose him/her.

The good news is everything is going well. We had our first OB appointment at 12 weeks and were able to see our baby again during the ultrasound for the nucal transulency measurement, which baby measured great at. I was honestly very suprised (even though I knew baby would almost certainly be ok because I heard the heartbeat on doppler that day) when the ultrasound started and baby looked like a healthy, human baby.

We enjoyed annoucing to our family and friends shortly after our appointment. It was so exciting to be able to share such happy news with everyone. Then last week we made an announcement on facebook, because we have a lot of extended family and friends that we keep in contact with through facebook (and also to inform my classmates, without me having to tell everyone individually when they look at my growing stomach.)

I will try to do a better job in blogging for the rest of this pregnancy. I am 16 weeks today and have my next OB appointment on Monday. Then at 20 weeks (on Halloween) we have our anatomy scan to check all of baby's organs and hopefully to see if baby is a girl or a boy. I think at that point I will finally be able to breath a bit more easily. Each day is better than the next, and I honestly never thought I would be 16 weeks pregnant.

I still read your blogs everyday. My heart breaks with your loss and waiting, and celebrates with your good news. I am rooting for each and every one of you.

I've been outed!

Today at least 10 individuals learned of my pregnancy. Here is how it happened: today was the first day of my otho rotation. I've been worried about ortho because I thought the lima bean might lead me to a. pass out in the OR or b. run out vomiting. But alas, neither of these scenarios happened. I joined my team in the OR partway into a case after orientation, so I hadn't met anyone yet or even had the chance to consider discussing my pregnancy in private. I did scope out the OR for any sources of radiation, and everything seemed safe. We were doing a total knee replacement and were getting ready to put in the replacement joint when one of the residents ask, "You aren't pregnant, are you?" Oh... why yes in fact I am. So I turned bright red (I'm sure) and stuttered out "Actually I am." It turns out the cement they use to fix the joints isn't safe for pregnant individuals, so I was kicked out of the OR and set to clinic, where the remaining resident asked me what happened so I had to inform him (and the 2 nurses and 1 other medical student who were also in the room) that I was pregnant. I was able to rejoin the team for the remaining 2 surgeries of the day, and I feel safer in the OR now that everyone knows I'm pregnant so they will let me know if I ever need to leave, but it's not the way I was planning on sharing my exciting news with the first 10 people outside of the few select individuals who already know. The whole thing does make me worried about our scan this Thursday, because if something is wrong I will either have to tell them or continue to let them think I'm pregnant for the next week. But I will try not to worry myself with that! I'm thinking healthy baby, good heartbeat, appropirate growth thoughts.

2nd ultrasound: 6 weeks 6 days



I slacked on my blogging last week - sorry to keep you waiting. The second ultrasound went well. The baby measured on track and had a heart rate of 137. After the ultrasound I was told that I had graduated from the IVF clinic and should set up an OB appointment. What?! I'm all for being positive, but I can't believe that I'm ready to join the land of appointments only every 4+ weeks.

 

I think there must be a whole lot of fertile people in my city because the earliest I could get a new OB appointment is at 12 weeks 3 days (Sept 9th). This was after I had explained how we did IVF and I was very nervous and wanted to be seen sooner rather than later and the nurse told me they usually see patients between 7-11 weeks. So I am pretty bummed about waiting so long.

 

 

I am still incredibly nervous. I received an email from my resolve group asking when I would be 12 weeks (which is generally when you "graduate" until the pregnancy is completed) and it totally caught me off guard. Me, make it to 12 weeks? I still am taking this pregnancy on a day-to-day basis. I look forward to the future, but I'm always hesitant, waiting for the next scan.

 

In my head 8 weeks is the magical number where I will feel more comfortable (although I'm sure I'll always be scared until I have a baby in my arms). My sister-in-law who had so many miscarriages said that 8 weeks was the latest she had a miscarriage, but she also had a missed miscarriage where the baby died at 8 weeks and didn't know till her 12 weeks scan. I am 7 weeks 5 days today. I'll be 8 weeks on Friday. I feel like I will need an ultrasound after I make it to 8 weeks in order to become more comfortable. I am just so scared of missing something, like in my last pregnancy when I thought everything was ok and it wasn't, or in my sister-in-laws pregnancy where the baby had died but she didn't know.

 

I got really anxious yesterday thinking about how we had to go 4.5 more weeks until our next ultrasound and had a bit of a panic attack. I called the clinic today and after a lot of explaining and insistence, the IVF clinic agreed that I could come in next Thursday (8/15) for another scan at 8 weeks 6 days.  I feel a lot more comfortable with this schedule. This way we will have 2 weeks between our 6w6d scan and 8w6d scan then just 3.5 weeks till the 12w3d scan.

 

I know I will have to get more comfortable with less visits / ultrasounds, and I am sure I will to a degree. It will be a lot easier once I make it to the point where I can feel the baby moving or have a visibly growing belly. But at this early stage of pregnancy I don't have any signs as to the status of our little baby and I worry about him/her.

A birthday wish

It was my birthday yesterday. When K and my sister asked what I wanted for my birthday I told them all I wanted was for my baby to be a healthy and keep growing for 34 more weeks - a very big request I know! Hopefully that birthday wish will be granted, but in the meantime K bought me lovely earings, and my friends gave me thai food, cupcakes, cookies, and a DQ blizzard :)

Our next ultrasound is this Thursday. I am feeling more hopeful due to increased nausea - it is way more intense than it was last pregnancy at this point, which I find reasurring even though I don't feel well. I am hoping that it is a good sign the little one is growing.

In other news I have developed my first reaction to a progesterone injection. I woke up this morning and where K had injected me the night before I had a red, itchy, nodule. Per the advice of my IVF expert friends I have applied cortisone cream and am trying to massage the area. K said that last night oil came out when he pulled out the needle, so I don't know if the oil migrated out of my muscle and into my subcutaneous tissue???

Little Legume

Thank you all for your love, support, and prayers during this nerve wracking time. This morning we had our first ultrasound. The ultrasound tech was amazingly kind and understanding. She must have read my chart because she knew that I would be anxious. She started off by saying we wanted to see a gestation sac and yolk sac today and if we saw a fetal pole that would be extra. As soon as she put the ultrasound probe in she let me know that she saw a great looking yolk sac and a baby with a heartbeat! Baby measured on track for 5w6d and had a heart rate of 93. The Dr told me that the heart rate is on the low side of normal, but ok since we are so early. The baby's heart only started beating recently and the SA node (electrical center that sets the rate of the heart) is still immature. In the first few days the fetal heart rate can be lower than what we would expect in a week. Here are some pictures: 

 



This one shows the fetal pole. Babies heart made him/her wiggle with each beat. I wish we had taken a video!

 

This one shows the baby (arrow) connected to the yolk sac.

There is dispute in my family on the proper legume nickname we should call him/her. K says Snap Pea, my sister says Lima Bean. I think Little Legume is pretty cute :) The ultrasound tech even said baby looked like a cute Bean.

Today we are feeling much more comfortable with this pregnancy. This morning I was on my knees praying in the bathroom when I woke up. We hope the Little Legume continues to grow and flourish. We have a followup ultrasound next Thursday to ensure he/she is growing appropriately and to check the heart rate.

I know a heartbeat still isn't a guarantee, but it was reassuring to see today. I still am scared, but I want to enjoy this pregnancy by focusing on living in the moment.

I hope each and every one of you gets a chance to see a little heart beating inside of you. You each deserve it so much. Sometimes my heart aches when I think of all of you and the pain we all are going through. I don't have any answers but I will continue to root for you, pray for you, and support you until you get a take home baby.


Anxiety

I am  having a hard time remaining calm this pregnancy. After I lost my last pregnancy my whole world came crashing down. I believed that we had made it through the hard stuff; that a pregnancy would equal a baby. But now I know things aren't that simple. And it sucks. I feel like I have been robbed. Robbed of my dreams of how I imagined my children would be conceived, and now robbed of my dreams of enjoying my pregnancy.

I am having hard time even thinking of myself as pregnant.  I logged onto fertilebook and saw a pregnancy announcement from one of K's friends, who I am not that fond of to begin with, and I felt pure jealousy. I couldn't muster up any happiness for them, and it made me feel lousy. I was jealous that they were in a secure enough place in their pregnancy that they could announce it on face.book. Jealous that they were pregnant - at which point I tried to remind myself "you are pregnant too." But I couldn't over come the feeling.

Despite this, I will be destroyed if the ultrasound is bad on Thursday.

I don't want to have to do IVF all over again... But we have no more frozen embryos, so we will have to do IVF again if this pregnancy doesn't result in a live baby in 35 weeks. And if we have to, we will do it all over again. I would go though IVF many times over again for a baby.

I don't want to have to do IVF again... because if I have to go through it again it means we lost another baby. I want this/these baby(ies) that are growing inside of me. I wanted the baby that was growing inside of me 3 months ago. I can't help but wonder what life would be like if we hadn't lost our first baby. We could have been the ones posting on facebook this week.

Midwest Infertility and Adoption Conference

I'm going to be joining Kim from No Good Eggs at Resolve's Midwest Infertility and Adoption Conference in Minnesota in September. The Conference is on Saturday, September 21, 2013 in Golden Valley, MN and covers topics from adoption, to paying for IVF, to donor embryoes:

http://www.resolve.org/Regions/midwest/midwest-family-building-conference.html

I know some of ladies live nearby, so you should think about coming to meet me :)

I am trying to wait patiently for my ultrasound on Thursday. I haven't felt the best the last few days. I've had a lot of headaches and nausea, which I'm trying not to get too excited about, but has been somewhat reassuring. I hope that it is a sign my little baby/babies are growing.

I was praying about my babies the other day while K was driving and when I looked up we were passing a car with the license plates "BFP." Maybe a positive sign?

In sad news, my blogging friend Suzanne just found out she is losing her miracle baby. Please visit her blog to offer her some love and support.

Could it be happening again?

My first beta was great on Friday at 142, but the second beta 72 hours later was only 318.  When I saw the number my heart dropped. I knew it hadn't risen enough. I'm terrified. Last time it rose at a similar rate and the pregnancy wasn't viable. I prayed that it would be obviously good, so that K and I could begin to embrace the pregnancy. It's hard not to compare numbers, but in the blog world most of the women I see get pregnant with IVF have doubling times of 30-48 hours... I was worried the clinic would say it was ok, when I didn't think it was, but the clinic called and left a message. My doctor is worried and wants to do an early ultrasound on the 25th. So, now I'm worried that they agree it is troubling. I came home from work and just broke down. Could we have gone through all of this again just to lose more babies?