Monday, February 23, 2015

A Long Story Short

Since this is my first post, I think I should go through a little history. My husband and I got married in 2010 and started TTC in 2011. When we first started talking about starting a family my husband wasn't quite sure he was ready. I remember him saying, "let's just take our time". I told him it doesn't happen immediately....and here we are almost 4 years later.
We tried naturally until 2013 when we went to our ob/gyn for help. We did some lab work, an ultrasound, and HSG which were all normal. I was prescribed clomid and after 2 rounds we conceived which sadly ended in a miscarriage at 10 weeks. After we got the green light to TTC again we tried 2 more rounds of clomid. At that point we decided to start seeing a RE. All together we have tried 4 rounds of Letrozole with IUIs which all ended in disappointment.
Our IVF journey started last month. Our RE started me on Gonal-F and Menopur which I took for 10 days.  The whole process actually went a lot smoother than what I had expected. I didn't have many side effects, the shots weren't terrible, and the ultrasounds and lab appointments didn't seem to interfere with work. The egg retrieval went well and my RE ended up retrieving 20 eggs. The egg retrieval did cause a lot of bloating and cramping, I'm happy I had the weekend to recover. It was so great to get phone calls every couple of days to hear about our embryo's progress. We decided to transfer 2 embryos and were able to freeze 6.
Of course the two week wait was dreadful! I was on bedrest for 2 days and off work for the whole 2 weeks due to a lifting restriction. My first beta was 122 but my progesterone was low at 11. I was already taking progesterone suppositories but I was prescribed PIO. My second beta was 272 and my progesterone ended up going to 30.7. At this point I was nervous about my pregnancy and trying not to feel excited because of my previous miscarriage. We already had a trip planned to go out of town and as much as I didn't want to go, we went. I had labs drawn while on our trip and found that my HCG did not double as expected. The rest of my trip was ruined and all I thought about was HCG levels! We did an extra lab draw when I came back in town which still showed slow doubling. The day of the lab draw I started experiencing spotting and mild cramping. After work I decided to lay down, take it easy, and rest. The day after (last Tuesday) I started having cramps, bright red bleeding, and I knew something was wrong. I was able to get in for an ultrasound the next day and we were able to see the gestational sac, but it was empty. The doctor had thought there was a tiny yolk sac and that we had either miscarried or that it was just too early to see much. They rescanned us on Friday which revealed that the gestational sac was gone. At this point we are unsure what our next steps will be. My RE wants to do tests for blood clotting disorders and address the recurrent loss. We'll see her again next week to hopefully get a plan in place.