austin-moms-blog-ivf

My husband and I are recessive carriers of a potentially fatal gene. Every time I get pregnant, the baby has a 25% of adopting this gene as dominant – which would render the baby ill enough to pass away before their 1st birthday. Terrifying and unimaginable to me.

We had planned on doing IVF with our first baby, but got pregnant a few months after we married. We were blessed with a perfectly healthy baby girl, but there were a lot of tests and a lot of sleepless nights before we knew she did not adopt this terrible gene. This time around we didn’t want the suspense or surprises so we looked to science to help us usher life into the world.

We decided to undergo IVF for our second baby.

In Vitro Fertilization as described by the Mayo clinic, “is a complex series of procedures used to treat fertility or genetic problems and assist with the conception of a child. During IVF, mature eggs are collected (retrieved) from ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a lab. Then the fertilized egg (embryo) or eggs are implanted in the uterus.” I thought it would be a breeze. It absolutely was not. I had no idea what my body and mind would go through.

This is a tiny snippet of our IVF experience:

  • Before any procedure is done, pay 1 zillion dollars. Not really 1 zillion, but it sure felt like it. See ya later, fun spending
  • Order medication that after coupons are applied, costs 1 trillion dollars. This medication was ordered from a special pharmacy and had to be constantly refrigerated, and since I didn’t want to carry around a cooler with ice packs, See ya later, travel.
  • Begin hormone shots. I administered my own shots twice a day at the EXACT same time (as per orders) 8:30am and 6pm. No matter what, I had to be home at those times. Grab some belly fat and stick the needle in. The first round of hormones tricked my body into menopause. The nurse said, “Oh yea, it may cause hot flashes, headaches, you may not be able to sleep.” No big deal.
  • A few days later, after living with a constant headache, another type of hormone shot was added. Two shots in the morning, two shots at night. These shots helped my ovaries develop (mature) and release multiple eggs. The side effects for this were, headache, stomach pain, stomach bloating, bruising and nausea. Check, check, and check.
  • After about a week, my belly was bruised from all the shots and I started to feel like I had weights in my body. Walking started to hurt. My doctor told me that my ovaries had grown from almond sized to golf ball sized. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, right? But it is.
  • I felt CRAZY with so many hormones coursing through my body. I would go from 0 to 60 or 0 to “I want to stab your eye with an ice pick,” in 5 seconds flat. It did not feel good. A normal estrogen level for someone my age is 210 and my estrogen level the day before surgery was 4,500.
  • After about two weeks of shots, and about 10 trips to the blood lab and about 10 trips to the fertility center, it was time for the big day, the egg retrieval – full on surgery. Hospital gown, hospital cap, anesthesia, the works. During the surgery, they poked holes in my vagina and ovaries to retrieve the eggs. HOLES!
  • Recovery from the egg retrieval was a MONSTER. It took a full week to get WORSE before my body started to heal. I didn’t even know bodies did that. After the surgery my ovaries continued to swell for 6 days – making it very difficult to breathe, move, or carry my toddler. I was on the brink of crying, or crying … for a week. I gained about 10 pounds of fluid in just a few days. I was crawling out of my own skin.
  • About a week after the surgery my swelling began receding and another week later I dipped my toe back into feeling “normal.”

I had a really tough time and didn’t share it with many people. But every time someone listened, or offered their luck or prayers or excitement, it was solid gold. One time I reached out to my neighbor who had been through IVF. She sat and talked with me and saved the day. I found comfort in her words and her company.

IVF is laden with emotional and financial stress, pressure, expectations, and most of all, the hope of creating and carrying life.

If you know someone going through IVF, just be there for them, no magic words are necessary. Hug them, send them your wishes, and tell them you are thinking about them. Connection lifts us – even in the midst of uncertainty.

Status on our IVF journey: We find out TOMORROW if we are officially pregnant. But I already have three different jars of pickles in the refrigerator, so we’re just assuming we are. 🙂

1 COMMENT

  1. I cannot have children without IVF. I have one beautiful son and I am currently 12 weeks pregnant. I had 3 rounds of egg harvest/fertilization. None of the fresh transfers worked. My son is the result of a frozen transfer as is this pregnancy. We never had many embryos, but the last cycle apparently produced some good ones.

    Going through infertility is very hard. Someone described it as even worse as losing a family member and I think I agree. I am scarred and infertility changed me, even though I am blessed with a beautiful boy and hopefully a sibling later this year.

    Yes IVF is bloody expensive. The poking hurts (but wait till you get to inject progesteron for 12 weeks, those needles are way bigger then the ones used in your belly), the hormones make you crazy, but you get to be a mom!! I would literally have giving my right leg for a baby, so the physical issues seemed peanuts to me. The worst thing was the suspense, the hoping for a green light to keep stimulating those ovaries, for harvesting the eggs, for a phone call that the fertilization went well and for that phone call that you blood test was positive. And at that point for me hell really started, I had lots of bleeding and spotting through both pregnancies. First trimester is just plain anxiety for me.

    Anyway, I really hope your IVF was successful and that you are pregnant. But I think we should be grateful for the availability of this technique. And we should think about holding our newborn baby when we go through all of this because it’s so worth it!

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