WELP… here we go…
Never in my wildest nightmares would I of ever thought I would be writing this blog.
The truth is, I was under the impression FOR A VERYYYYYY LONG TIME that making babies was easy.
You always hear of people getting pregnant on their first month of trying or even getting pregnant without even trying at all. The truth is, that’s not the case for everyone…and unfortunately, not the case for Carl and I.
For as long as I can remember, I have ALWAYS wanted to be a mom. Remember those worksheets you filled out in elementary school that said, “When I grow up I want to be a ___”? Well, mine said mom. Always. Probably because I have the best mom in the world (SHOUT OUT FAYE, I LOVE YOU MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF)
Becoming a mother is something I knew was going to happen for me, I just never imagined the journey would be so difficult.
It always brought me comfort thinking that I had already had my “BIG BAD THING” happen to me in life. You know, that life shattering event that turns your life upside down and shapes who you are for the rest of your life? Well, that was my traumatic health journey. For some reason, I’ve been holding onto this thought that maybe, JUST MAYBE, (and hopefully) because I went through that shit storm at such a young age the rest of my life would play out in peace.
LOL boy, was I wrong.
Truth is, you don’t become exempt from other shitty things happening to you just because you’ve had your world turned upside down once. No one is immune to the hardships of life.
Carl and I’s infertility story started in 2019. We started trying for a little beb summer of 2019, just a few months before our wedding (yes I know - not traditional but there is no room for judgment here). After a couple months of trying and not getting pregnant, I took matters into my own hands and the control freak within me got to work. I ordered every book there was on getting pregnant, ordered an ovulation detection bracelet (called the Ava bracelet), and bought a surplus of sticks you pee on every morning to tell you when you’re ovulating.
When a few more months passed with still no baby dean, I went to my OBGYN. She prescribed me a medication which induces ovulation, called Clomid. At this point, my period was super irregular and I was having a horrible pain on my right side so, I sought out a second opinion before jumping right into taking the medication.
****** (PRO TIP: don’t feel like you have to take a medication or follow advice from your doctor JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE A DOCTOR – if you have a pit in your stomach about it, seek out a second opinion) …
<<our intuitions are there for a reason>>
…which led us to Dr. Le at IVFMD, a fertility clinic.
At my first appointment, he discovered a huge cyst on my right ovary. He said it was prob due to stress… surprise, surprise. If you know me, you know that I have to remind myself to CHILL TF OUT multiple times throughout the day.
His treatment protocol for the cyst was to start me on birth control in hopes of shrinking it. As you can imagine, I was suuuuuuuper frustrated with the fact I was going to have to START a medication that was going to prevent me from getting pregnant, when all we wanted was to do was GET PREGNANT. Lucky for us, one month of birth control did the trick and the cyst was gone. BOOM!!! However, during that month, we had a few more discoveries that lead us to make the decision to go straight to IVF (in-vitro fertilization).
It honestly wasn’t that difficult of a decision for Carl and I to make. Our doctor told us that IVF was the best option for us to ensure a baby so, we went for it. The whole process actually went pretty quickly once we made the decision to move forward.
We were so lucky that Carl’s insurance at the time covered most of our treatment costs. Our cost breakdown went something like this:
- $9,500 for treatments (ultrasounds, visits, blood work, egg retrieval surgery, egg fertilization, and embryo transfer)
- ~$3,000 for medications
- $500 for anesthesia for the egg retrieval surgery
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
- For a ROUGH TOTAL of $13,000 (YIKES, right????)
Our insurance covered all of the $9,500 except for $1,600 of it so, we were able to SAVE A TON. We are also so beyond grateful that my parents helped us out with some of the rest!!
I will say, I did my due diligence on other clinics in the area to compare cost and IVFMD had the most reasonable prices that I had come across.
Now let’s get into the actual process of IVF. Keep in mind, everyone’s process and protocol is different so don’t focus too much on the details of my IVF cycle, but I want to share our full experience.
Here is the breakdown of the process-
HORMONE INJECTIONS – EGG RETRIEVAL SURGERY – FERTILIZATION – EMBRYOS
We did the injectable medications for 12 total days our first round of IVF. These are called STIMS.
NOTE- If you are trying to conceive and have joined multiple Facebook groups like I did, I HIGHLY recommend you get acquainted with the “trying to conceive” and “infertility” lingo. It’s literally another language with all of the abbreviations and code words and can be SUPER overwhelming at first.
The STIMS are injections you inject into your belly to stimulate (hence, STIMS) your ovaries. Typically, our ovaries have a few follicles on each ovary each month and one follicle that is most mature produces a mature egg, which then gets released when you ovulate. During IVF, we take the injections to make ALL of our follicles grow mature eggs. This brings your chances of getting a live birth at the end of your cycle much higher. If you can see in the illustration below, it is very common to lose a significant percentage with each next step that you do – this has been the case for me BOTH TIMES. *SPOILER ALERT* I’ve now gone through two full cycles of IVF.
**if you’re going through IVF or any fertility treatments go visit this website: https://www.fertilityiq.com/ivf-in-vitro-fertilization - IT WAS SO HELPFUL in walking me through every step!
During your round of STIMS, you add another shot to the mix (about 5-7 days in) that prevents your body from ovulating on its own, so that all the eggs make it to egg retrieval day! Then the day before your egg retrieval surgery, you take what’s called a trigger shot. This gives the eggs you’ve been growing the little push they need to make sure they are mature and ready to be collected during surgery.
On average, doctors aim for about 15-20 eggs to be retrieved after your injections. I had about 12 follicles measuring “mature” at my last ultrasound, which was AMAZE. We were so pumped.
I went into the surgery nervous, OBV, but excited…only to be woken up to horrible news. I can remember talking to my nurse in recovery after my surgery and asking how many eggs they collected. She said 3.
THREE. Yes, you heard me right.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REST OF THEM?????? I was balling my eyes out trying to fully wake up, process this devastating information, and then seek answers. Yes, I made a scene but I truly couldn’t control it.
Essentially what happened was my trigger shot (called Lupron) didn’t work. It happens very rarely BUT IT HAPPENED. AND IT SUCKED.
From there, they fertilize the eggs with the sperm. We chose to do ICSI – which is where they actually inject the sperm into the egg, as opposed to just letting them fertilize on their own in a petri dish!
Out of the 3 eggs, we had 2 fertilize and now it was time to WAIT 5 looooong days to see how many matured into EMBRYOS (honestly, the waiting is the worst part of the entire process).
5 days later we went into my clinic. They told us that one of our embryos didn’t make it but we would be transferring the other one THAT DAY, but it didn’t have a super promising grade. (it was 1BC - the first number correlates to how much the embryo is “hatching” out of its shell, and the letters correlate to the grading of the fetus and placenta)
That day we did what’s called a FRESH transfer (where the embryo is transferred into the uterus fresh, as opposed to frozen) with our one and ONLY embryo. Prepping for this procedure includes MORE MEDS – estrogen and progesterone!
10 days after that we got the news-
I WAS PREGNANT!!!!
YESSSSSSS you heard me! I remember getting the call from my nurse and hearing the words I’ve always wanted to hear – “ELISE, YOU’RE PREGNANT!!!!!” and then peeing on a million sticks to confirm the good news. It was quite literally the best day of my entire life.
Which was then soon followed by the worst day of my entire life – the day I found out I was miscarrying…
BLOG TO BE CONTINUEDDDDDD…….
