| I’ve debated sharing my story, partly because I am on the other side of IVF with a positive outcome. I realize how lucky we are and how others are not – I almost feel guilty knowing some walk away completely empty handed. I decided to share because I know when I was in the thick of RE appointments, IUIs, IVF procedures, and waiting for our transfer, I just wanted all of the success stories I could find. Success stories gave me hope, but I didn’t see many stories like mine. So I want to share and possibly give someone hope.
When we first made an appointment to see an RE, it was after about nine months of trying for baby number two. Baby number one took a full year and a chemical pregnancy before we had a positive test. I always assumed getting pregnant would be quick and easy – all of my friends just “pulled the goalie” and “saw what happens” and boom – pregnant after one month…maybe two. So when baby number two was taking a while as well, I assumed there was an underlying issue. We both started testing and all of my tests were coming back normal, but my husband’s swimmers seemed to have an issue. His count was in the normal range, but he was on the very low side of normal. We found out we were dealing with Male Factor Infertility. We spoke about our options and decided to move forward with an IUI – this would take his best sperm and put it right where it needed to be for them to have to do the least amount of swimming as possible. I assumed since the sperm just needed a little help that this was going to be our magic pill, so when the IUI didn’t work, I was devastated. So naturally after a failed second, third, and fourth IUI (with Clomid for me thrown into the mix to give the sperm more targets), I was feeling completely defeated. We had discussed the option of IVF in the past, but I never thought I’d be signing myself up for it. But here we were. My favorite quote is, “The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.” Meaning if we wanted a baby and the old fashioned way wasn’t working and IUIs weren’t working, then guess what…we’re doing IVF.
Our doctor suggested that we do a mock cycle as to not “waste” our only embryo and just blindly transfer using their typical protocol. We started in March and I prepped as I would for a frozen embryo transfer by taking pills and doing the progesterone in oil shots as well as progesterone suppositories. Instead of doing a transfer, he took a biopsy of my lining and sent it for testing. The testing would assign a cycle day and confirm if the timing would be perfect for our embryo to implant. Well, the timing was off so we switched up my medicine and did another biopsy and the timing was still off. Next we tried a natural cycle, which means that I ovulated and then used progesterone suppositories and did another biopsy. The doctor was very optimistic – he’s had great results doing natural cycles and thought for sure this would be my protocol. Again, the timing wasn’t good. It actually yielded the worst timing of my mock cycles. We met with our doctor and decided I couldn’t continue to do mock cycles…he would review the results of each cycle and adjust the meds and timing and we’d hope his final calculations were correct. At the end of July we were finally transferring our little embryo that could. Everything went as smooth as it could have, but before the doctor walked out of the room, he turned and said we had a little more than a 50% chance of this working. And I just remember still trying to be optimistic…at least it was better than 50%!
I couldn’t wait and I tested after six days because I HAD to know if this worked. I took my test and it turned positive pretty quickly, I just cried – my doctor did it! The months of mock cycles that seemed like a waste at the time, the friends who started trying for a baby well after us and were already holding their babies (sometimes two), the shots and pills that made me sick, the tears, the testing and bloodwork, the bills…it was all worth it. This entire process gave us the baby that was made for our family and now that he’s seven months old, I could not imagine any other baby completing our family the way that he has. I realize not everyone walks away with a happy ending and my heart breaks for those families to go through all of this and have nothing. But if you’re lucky enough to come out of the other side of this with a baby, it is all 100% worth it. I am so thankful that my doctor wanted to do the mock cycle because our story would be completely different had we just transferred without the extra steps. IVF seemed like a huge mountain when you first start. I’ve always been terrified of needles, hell, I’m still terrified of needles! But if you just focus on one day at a time, you can do it. You take a few minutes out of your day between eating dinner and doing dishes to measure out your medicine and inject…then you’re right back to life and doing dishes and hoping for a miracle at the end of it all. We named our son Callan, which means brave little battler. We thought it was perfect for our little guy…from 25 eggs to one embryo that made it.
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We tried naturally for two more months and then started my stims for the egg retrieval in January and I got 25 eggs! 25!!! We would have SO many chances for babies incase our first or second transfer didn’t work. But then the numbers started to decrease….13 were mature…9 fertilized…5 made it to freeze and testing…only 1 was normal. One. We literally had one chance at having a baby because we could not financially afford to do this again.
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