Friday, September 25, 2009

IVF #5 failure phone consult

So I had a phone consult with my RE to discuss our recent failure. He said he was surprised given my age (still under 30 -- though not by much anymore :-( ) that I had such poor embryos. He said usually he only sees such poor embryos from women over 40. So he basically had only two ideas for us:
1. They just tried a new protocal for one patient (last week, so they don't yet know if it even worked for this one patient). Basically, there's a study that shows that if you use lupron instead of the hcg shot to make you ovulate, you won't hyperstimulate. So the RE wants to do this with me and not give me the bc pills and lupron initially.
The other thing he would want to add is to do pgd with the ivf. He said he usually only recommends this for women over 40 or if there's a history of pregnancy loss (since it's expensive and insurance doesn't cover it) but in my case he'd want to do it since he thinks there may be an issue on the male side that we don't know about. It could be we're just thinking pcos and so we think we know the problem and keep trying ivfs, but the reason the embryos are poor, is due to the male side of things and he said with pgd at least we'd know if the bad embryos are because of me or because of dh.
2. His other option was an egg donor. He said he hates suggesting it to someone so young, but he doesn't see an issue with my uterus and that may be our best option at getting pregnant.

So that was our "great" news -- from the doctor that gave us a 65% chance for each IVF cycle working, even though we already had 3 ivfs. So much for optimism.
We have a consult with another RE, since four REs is not enough, right? And we started looking into adoption. So even though this is our "break" it really doesn't feel like one, but I don't think I know how to have a break. I can't really stop thinking about all this, so I can never really have a complete break...

Sometimes I feel like I need a complete break not just from fertility treatments but from life as well.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

IVF #5 = Failure

So this has been a pretty bad month for us. The cycle was pretty bad from the beginning. They ended up doing retreival much earlier than they would have wanted since my estrogen was over 6000. So I ended up with 8 eggs, 5 fertilized, but all were poor quality. They were going to put back 2 and I asked for 3 and the dr said, "Sure, why not? We'll be lucky if even one of these work." So, it wasn't a big shocker when I got the negative result, but of course it hurts anyway. We found out the bad news a week ago. I'm still having issues with it. I don't want to do another IVF. I think 5 failures is enough for me. I was literally ready to jump off a building most of this month. But DH wants me to do more. He's not ready to give up hoping. Of course I'm the one that needs to go through most of this... So anyway, we decided to take a long break (at least 6 months is the plan, don't know if we'll make it) and reevaluate later. After the break, he said if I agree to do more IVFs, we can start the adoption process. Of course I only got him to say that by threatening to leave him if he won't let me adopt, so it wasn't really a win. I just want to know that one day I will have a child, and that one day won't be in ten years. (We're also talking about possibly looking into egg donors, which neither of us is too happy with. He prefers it to adoption, but is still hoping we'll get a miracle and have a baby with both our genes. I think I might prefer adoption, since I'm scared I won't be able to handle being pregnant with someone else's baby for 9 months. And I'm worried it'll hurt me seeing a baby that's DH's but not mine and having everyone make comments about how much it looks like me... And at the same time I also think there may be issues with my uteris and I'm not really ready for more miscarriages. But I guess I'd do it anyway for DH.) So that's our story. Assuming I actually don't end up killing myself within the next few months...

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Starting IVF#5

I'm currently doing the birth control/lupron thing to start IVF #5. I'm really not so hopeful for this... What's the chance of IVF #5 working when the proceeding 4 didn't work? I wish I could just give up and stop all this. At what IVF number do I decide I had enough and I just won't have kids of my own?

Monday, June 15, 2009

I can't even miscarry normally...

So today, almost a week after my beta went down to 25, it went up to 67. And still no bleeding... Thursday I'm having an ultrasound, so they can see what's going on and if I'll need a d&c. Great. I can't get pregnant normally and I can't miscarry normally either. I just want this cycle to be over with already.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

IVF #4 = Chemical :-(

I went in Sunday (I should have gone in saturday, but since I'm a Sabbath observer they said I could go in the next day). The beta was very low -- at 32. They were still hopeful that maybe it would double and it would be fine. I went in today and my beta dropped to 25. It's definitely a chemical. :-(
I guess I should be happy since this is the first ivf I've had that was positive at all, even if only for a few days... But easier said than done. :-(

Now I've had a miscarriage, an ectopic, and now a chemical. When will I get a pregnancy that works?

Sunday, May 31, 2009

IVF #4 update part 2

So there were two good embryos that they used for the transfer and eight others that were so-so. They decided to wait to day 6 to see how those looked to see if they were worth freezing. They didn't end up freezing any of them so I guess they weren't good. :-( So out of our 25 eggs, this is our 1 and only try! Wish us luck!!!

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

IVF #4 Update

So this cycle took forever-- they kept raising and lowering the amount of follistim I was on since my estrogen kept changing drastically. There were a few points where they almost cancelled the cycle since it went so high, but thankfully, we did make it to the retrieval and without hyperstimulating! The retrieval was on this past Saturday. Tomorrow is the transfer. We had 25 eggs and 15 embryos as of Sunday. I have no idea how many are left or the quality but hopefully we'll have some good ones for tomorrow! This is the most we've ever had so I guess the > 1 month of follistim was worth something! Wish me luck!!