Results are in...

Wow, mind blown. I had nearly an hour conversation with my Doc and she just rattled everything off. Four and half years of struggling with carrying a baby comes down to some blood test and here is the results - Anti-nuclear antibodies are elevated and Natural Killer cells pretty high and 3 muted genes causing blood clotting factors. Combine that all with high testosterone and low vitamin D, B6, B12 it means I don't carry a baby without tones of intervention. Basically it all means my immune system is attacking every embryo that tries to survive in my belly. So the treatment is to suppress the immune system. She said you do that with steriods and ivig. Its the IVIg that has me concerned. Its essentially a blood infusion through an iv. And she said you do this 6 times in the first trimester at $3000-$5000 a try. Insurance may or may not cover it so we are working on a pre-authorization for it which will take a few weeks. So more hurry up and waiting, right? lol! The news was expected. I felt this was the issue for a while but you have to find a doctor who believes in to even test for it. My RE does not and is pretty against IVIg since it is a blood product and still isn't officialy proven as giving higher results to patients in his opinion. But as I say, evey bit of medicine wasn't officialy proven in the beginning too. So it still leaves me doing some research and making the best decision for me and my hubby so nothing has been decided. If anything, insurance may be the final say becasue if it doesnt cover it then we for sure are not doing it. $18K is an awful lot of money after we are already soaring in what we have invested thus far. You have to decide when to fold too. So we will see. But in the mean time....4 1/2 years of never knowing and now we do. We have answers. It feels so good to say that. I am relieved, not crushed. On to the next step...waiting! lol

2 years of hurring up and waiting...

Wow! I can't believe it has been 2 years since my lat post. So much has changed while so much hasn't. Let's do some updating shall we! Invitro Results- The invitro was wonderful! We had 20 embryos come out and grew them a few days and ended up with 10 blastosis (or however you spell it). We put them into 5 tubes with 2 embryos in each. We had some fluid when they removed them so for the next week I was to frink tons of fluids. It was soooo hard. I barley drink a beverage a day let alone the recommended 8 big glasses. I tried really hard. The next weekend we put 2 embyos in and drove the 2 hours back home with me puking all the way back. At the time I thought it was just a crazy sideaffect of it, turns out I had too much fluid in my abdomin. The very next morning I went to the hospital and stayed for 4 days. I will say that driving up to the emergency room and giving them a discription of what was going on was super funny. I was struggling to breathe from the fluid pshing my lungs in and my belly had extended an extra 10 inches in the last month from all of this. I waddle to the wheelchair they extended to me and rolled me in to the admitting desk. They lady asked " How far along are you?" me - " 1 day". Their faces were priceless!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My husband then explained exactly what my specialist nurse told us to tell them. It was a very intersting 2 weeks to say the least. Turns out we did end up pregnant from that try. We did loose the baby at 5 weeks again. This made 4th miscarriage. We went on to do invitro 3 more times. 1 didn't take and 2 did. The 4th out 5 try, we did things a little different. I have been doing my own research for some time and talking to everyone I know. One of my friends who had lots of miscarriages also (but did have 3 babies)she had MTHFr which caused her to need to take a blood thinner to sustain her pregnancies mentioned she had to ask to get tested for this. So, I thought, I will do that. Got test, I do ahve a form of that. So I was insistent we try a blood thinner for the 4th cycle. Turns out, it did help some. Not enough though. I made it to 7 weeks. Although another miscarriage was heartbreaking, something different occured. This 6th miscarriage was different then all the rest. My numbers doubled and tripled and I had my first sonogram appointment to see the baby. It was the night before the sonogram when we were at a comedy club with friends and I started to bleed. With in the hour I had miscarried and it was brutal. It was the most violent one. I hve discribed it as though I was feeling great and my body found out I was pregnant and was like " get this f*****g traitor out of here!" The doctor sat down with us and said " I'm sorry, I don't know anything else to try." He was really upset because like us nothing added up. This brought on the research since the blood thinner got us a little further and I do not feel there is such thing as unexplained infertility, medically we just haven't caught up with the reason is all. So i have researched the crap out this. I didn't get any new info after almost a year break and we started to turn our talks to a surrogate. But then, someone responded to a post. Reproductive Immunoligist. They had said what i was discribing sounded like an auto immune issue. you see, a few years ago I went to infertility seminar trying to win a few invitro session. A woman there stood up to ask a question about her miscarring condition. I couldn't remember what it was called ( as at the time I didn't see any relavnce to a rare condition she had and me). I do remember hearing a discription like " since you and your husbands genetic makeup is so close, your body will continue to attack the embryo and you will miscarry everytime. You either need a donor egg or sperm to carry your self, or a surrogate to carrying yours. ) I have asked everyone I can think of about her for 2 years and I would have thought I made this up if my mom wasn't also there with me and she does remember it. Well, someone responded to me about what I was going through with seeing a reproductive immunoligist because it sounded to them that my body was attacking the embryo and not just a spontanious abortion. LIGHT BULB!!!!! I found one in Chicago Illinois. Only 3 hours from me. After looking for one, I realized there are not many out there so i felt really lucky!!!!! After filling out a long appliction and waiting 2 months for the appointment. I had it a month ago. 18 vials of blood and 2 hours of sonograming and discussing my fertility issues for a total of 5 hours of testing, I have my results with her tomorrow morning. I think ists safe to say, i am nervous and really excited and scared. I don't want to be told " sorry about your bad luck" while at the same time I want answers so we know where to go from here. Well, tomorrow we get that. Wish me luck!

7 Days to Retrieval

I can NOT believe it is now 7 days to this ovaries get emptied! Phew. Unreal to me. Y days they take out so many eggs and one of them could be my child. That is the strangest feeling to know that a tube will hold my future. I wonder if we should take a before and after picture? It will be roughly 10 days until they insert a fertilized egg back in so we we could take a photo right before they do it- ya know a not pregnant photo and then right afterwards a pregnant photo. Not too many people can joke that they knew which minute of the day they conceived, but we will. Just kinda funny to me. Ah well...

It has begun....wow

We went for orientation on Monday to figure out what the layout and dates of invitro would look like. Our cordinator flew threw all the meds like a pro. I just felt like my jaw had dropped to the floor! There were SO MANY. I guess I never put much thought into how much more involved it is then IUI (artificial insemination). I honestly didn't mind just walking a long...doh de doh, thinking it would be a breeze. It is not, at all. We already started some of the meds on that day in the office. The different types of meds will continue for the next 45 days ish. I am amazed a slightly in awe of keeping everything straight. I have given myself my shot these last 2 days. This is a HUGE triumph for me. I hate shots and the first and only time I tried it was a mess. My husband eventually had to come up stairs to help only to find my abdomen bleeding from 6 different puncture wounds from me "trying" to insert the needle. Didn't go so well I can say. So this time I figured, own it girl! This is the last of all of this so own as much of the shots as I can for the next month or so. It wasn't so bad, but not to discredit my new found purpose, these are the really tiny needles. The really long thicker ones I will be back to being a wimp I'm sure. Oh well. Man, I AM EXCITED!

Orientation on Monday!

Oooooohhh,the begining is near! Monday is our orientation for Invitro. I have already started taking birth control to set the periods up but I feel....eh. I am sooooo tired I wanted to sleep on rocks I pass by because they just look so comfortable. I need sleep! Kicker.... I get 10 hours a night, interruppeted by my snoring, but none the less 10 hours. I'm excited, anxious and nervous all in one. But, here we go.

where we are now...

One year ago the decision was to stop all fertility treatments and take a break...this months marks the end of that quest. It's been a very long year. I did pretty darn good with not getting real worked up with our struggle. Maybe just a few moments that I just needed to shed a few tears of "whoa is me" and then moved on. Not that bad in all. I think the worst minor meltdown was at the family Christmas party when my mother in law got so excited about all the kids opening their giftbags she put togther that she exclaimed to me "Oh you just need to hurry up and get me a grandchild." Tiger, that one was about a half our in the bathroom crying my eyes out! But, it wasn't meant to hurt me, she just had a moment of unbridled excitment...and not thinking.
So what's been going on with us, it's time to talk baby! We are set up to do invitro in the next 60 days. Our first pre-testing for a period starts in 2 weeks and from there, I can only assume it will get hectic with all the appointments and trips that need to be taken to make this a reality. Our fertility specialist has 2 offices, one in my town and one almost 2 hours away. Just so happens he does the retrieval process at the facility 2 hours away. So we will have 2 or 3 trips there and then the rest can be monitored from here in town. Today I am excited. Tomorrow I hope to still be excited. Taking this day by day until it occurs. As it approaches my anxiety increases. Thoughts flood my brain until I feel exhausted from just pondering. "Will this work?" "Will it work the first time?" "Did I do everything I could over the past year to help us make a baby so we didn't have to pay 12 thousand dollars to do this?" Even, "is it worth it?" If we get pregnant, then heck yeah it will be worth it, but what if we don't, then will I think about it as wasting $12,000? I don't want to be left empty handed. If this doesn't work we have considered adoption again. I think my husband is pretty on board if this doesn't take but then we are looking at another $20,000 for that. You have to wonder at which point is the financial burden too much. I don't want to get to that point. So, Today, I am excited. I hope to be excited tomorrow too. This was a pretty good update for a year in waiting.

I am feeling,I odn't know. Just blah tonight. I mean over all pretty decent. I have had an exciting week with work and exercise actually so not so sure why so blah. I played in our first co-ed softball game today of the season. We lost very enthusiasticly 20-5. ouch. I am on 2 teams so an hour after that we had a practice for the other and I am determiend to convince myself I lost at least 2 good pounds from all the sweating and running. Oh, my period started!!!! I was sooo excited to see that. I was beginning to worry about it getting too far off track again which would make it nearly impossible to try to conceive at home at all. Not that I am so sure we can do it without our special doc, however, I want to opportunity to try. Maybe the blah is some poor news for my mom. She is 53 years old and she and my stepdad are trying to adopt. The Haiti earthquake has sent her into a "save the children" mode and she is crusading through every adoption agency possible until she is approved to adopt. She is not looking for a specific "kind of kid". Meaning, she doesn't have to only save international children, or just American kids, she is an equal opportunity adopter! lol However, a child in desperate need of love they found in Honduras was yanked from hospital from his Mom and they don't believe she will be able to nurse him to health. So we are all praying for this child that his Mom can pull through for him or return him if she can't. But, Mom is a great mom. So...no matter the child, younger or older, she will be prefect for him or her and i have no doubt about it. This was a weird tale of information tonight for this post...it must be my blah mood.lol