My Journey Continued: The End

I finally got to do my IVF cycle a little over 3 years after I had first started trying to conceive.  The stimulation phase with the injectable medication went well.  It looked like I was making lots of follicles and my estrogen levels were nice and high!  I felt great on the new medication.  No fevers or flu-like symptoms, just that great sense of energy and well being that I had felt the first time.  The egg retrieval went smoothly, and I didn't feel a thing.  Afterwards, I felt like I had menstrual cramps, but that was about it.  We got seventeen eggs!!!  I was on cloud nine!  Surely one of those contained the baby I so desperately wanted.  The day of my egg retrieval, the medications from the compassionate care program mysteriously arrived.  I sent them back thinking how sad it was that I ordered their medications for hundreds of patients, and they couldn't be bothered to help me in any kind of a timely fashion.

Not all of the eggs fertilized, which is fairly typical.  The fertilized ones were allowed to grow in the incubators for three days.  On the third day, my husband and I came in to have 2 of the embryos put back into my uterus and see how many more we would have to freeze.  I knew the minute I saw my doctors face that something was wrong.  He explained that we only had 2 embryos that had survived.  One was a six cell and one was a 5 cell embryo.  Normally, embryos are between 6 and 10 cells by the third day, so one of these was definitely behind schedule and neither was going to make first in class.  They were also fragmented.  Fragments are tiny balls of material that get kicked out of the cells.  They are a sign that the embryo is unhappy and trying to get rid of stuff it doesn't like.  Highly fragmented embryos like mine do not have as good a chance of success as non-fragmented or minimally fragmented embryos.  Never the less, these two embryos did have a chance of being able to make a baby, so in they went.  It was a quick painless procedure much like the inseminations.

Next came the waiting.  I tried to be realistic (the chances were not great), but I also tried to be somewhat optimistic (what embryo wants to implant in an unhappy pesimistic mom?).  In the end, I gave up and tried my best not to think about it at all.  Two weeks later, the pregnancy test came back negative.  My doctor tried to cheer me up.  "We can try again", he said.  "OK", I said, but in my heart I knew that I was near the end of the line.

The next IVF cycle was even worse.  I had lots of eggs, but only one embryo to transfer, and it looked terrible.  I cried the whole way home.  2 weeks later, there was another negative pregnancy test, and I knew that I was done.  I had been fighting this battle for three and a half years and I didn't have it in me to fight any more.  I told my husband that we would just have to be a wonderful aunt and uncle, take lots of trips to exotic places, and get another puppy.  I almost believed myself, when I said it.  I decided to give myself 3 months without thinking about it, and then I would re-evaluate.  There was one more option, but it involved using another woman's eggs.  I was only 33 years old, and so that option would be open to me for another decade or so.  Even then, I wasn't sure I had the energy to go there.

7 weeks later, I woke up on a Sunday and realized that I had never gotten another period after the last IVF cycle.  Like any good infertility patient, I had a cabinet full of home pregnancy and ovulation tests.  I took a home pregnancy test, and it immediately turned positive.  I just stared at it.  It had to be a mistake.  I showed it to my husband, and he said "what does this mean?"  I was afraid to say it out loud.  "I think I might be pregnant!"  A blood test the next day at work confirmed that I was indeed pregnant.  My son, Samuel, was born 7 months later--a little early, but happy and healthy.  I was crazy enough to try again on my own to get pregnant a year after Sam was born, and I was again blessed.  This time it was a daughter.  They are my little miracles.  I cannot believe that I was lucky enough to have them.

Looking back, I definitely gained something from going through all of that.  It has given me a unique insight into my patients.  I could have read about the side effects of the medications or listened to patients describe what an egg retrieval feels like, but it wouldn't be the same.  I have walked a mile in my patients' shoes, and it has made me a better doctor.