We decided to keep things more private during our second attempt at IVF. For many different reasons, it just seemed like the best decision for us. Now that we have completed things, we feel it is time to share the details.
I want to say that it was May 10 when me and Aaron went to Jacksonville for IVF start day #2, but I'm not positive since everything is starting to run together. Anyways, on start days, I go for an ultrasound to make sure everything with my body looks good and ready for me to start all of my injectable medications. On this day, we found that I had a cyst on one of my ovaries. So, I could not start my meds until the cyst cleared itself up. I was super discouraged :( and pretty angry. Fast forward three weeks later and I had my IVF start day on Memorial Day and I was cleared to start my meds.
This round, Dr. Winslow put me on the highest dose of meds so that maybe my body would respond better, since I have a low ovarian reserve (not very many eggs). So, it would not be a fun IVF experience if I didn't have a breakdown about my trigger shot, now would it?! I am pretty paranoid about my medicines the whole time I am taking them, just ask Aaron. When it is shot time, I act like a freak and it is on! For the trigger shot, I get all worked up because this one shot makes or breaks the whole round of IVF...that's a whole lot of pressure! So, to avoid that drama this time, a dear and special friend of mine was going to mix my trigger shot up for me a few hours ahead of time, because it is the mixing that gets me all worked up. That afternoon, I decided to open up the package that had the vial of medicine in it that would be used for my trigger shot. BIG MISTAKE! I went into a panic because it looked different than my trigger shot did the last go 'round. I called my dear friend, I called the pharmacy, I called Aaron blubbering....and I cried about it ALL afternoon, even after all these phone calls! Not until Aaron gave me the trigger shot did I feel relief.
The egg retrieval was on June 14. When I woke up from the procedure, the nurses told me that they had retrieved seven eggs. And I cried. And then Aaron helped me in the car and I started crying all over again. I was SO discouraged that after the highest doses of medicine, they were only able to retrieve seven! That is three less than our first retrieval.
Dr. Winslow called me 48 hours later to let me know that of the seven eggs retrieved, we had three embryos. He wanted to do a three-day transfer. So, me and Aaron and Kristi went to Jacksonville on June 17 for the transfer. We transferred two embryos (this increases the chance that pregnancy will occur at all) and we were able to freeze the other embryo. The fact that we were able to freeze an embryo meant that the embryos we did have were of a little better quality than the first batch from round #1. We had to wait 14 LONG days before we could have our blood pregnancy test since our day 12 fell on a Saturday.
I could not believe it when Dr. Winslow's office called us and told us that it was positive. But, this was quickly followed by how low the HCG (pregnancy hormone) level was. So we went back two days later for another blood draw. This time Kristi's HCG level had just about doubled, but not quite. HCG levels normally double every 48-72 hours so the fact that Kristi's levels were rising slowly threw up a red flag. Kristi had to go back two more times over the next week to check her levels. On the last blood draw, her levels finally seemed to have risen like they should. So, they scheduled us for a 6wk ultrasound the following Friday. Part of me was thrilled that I might see our little baby on the ultrasound screen, but the other, bigger part of me, was scared to death that something would be wrong.
During the ultrasound, the doctor took his time, trying to make sure he didn't miss anything. At the end of the ultrasound, Dr. Freeman (Dr. Winslow was out of town) told us that he could not find anything on the ultrasound, just as we had come to figure out as we stared at an empty screen. Devastation seems to be the best word for how I felt. I felt so hurt and I wondered why God would lead us to believe that we were finally pregnant if only to knock us down AGAIN. Discouraged and frustrated and confused....these feelings seem to be my best friends as of late. They wanted to check Kristi's HCG levels before we left, because all along there was some speculation as to whether this was an ectopic pregnancy (when an embryo implants anywhere other than the uterus, but primarily in one of the Fallopian tubes). Then, we made the journey home. Bless Kristi's heart, me and Aaron were no fun to ride home with that day. We were just SO hurt and beat-down and discouraged.
Kristi had to have a repeat blood draw nine days later, which just so happened to be two weeks ago. We were shocked to find that the levels had went up quite a bit, still not where they should be for 7wks pregnant, but they had still went up a significant amount. In the meantime, Kristi had started having some pain on her left side. Dr. Winslow's office wanted to see Kristi the next day because her HCG level meant that this really could be an ectopic pregnancy. So, this of course sent me into a panic! I was so upset, worried that something bad was going to happen to Kristi all while she was trying to do something so selflessly for us. Just so you all know, ectopic pregnancies are extremely rare, 2% of pregnancies are ectopic and it is even less than that when undergoing IVF (lucky, huh?). If an embryo implants in a Fallopian tube, as it grows, if it is not caught in time, it can cause the woman's tube to rupture, which is very, very dangerous. An ectopic pregnancy cannot result in a viable baby.
Me and Kristi went to Jacksonville the next day. Dr. Freeman did aother lengthy ultrasound and still could not find anything in Kristi's uterus, ovaries or tubes. Typically, HCG levels need to be in the 1000s in order to see anything on an ultrasound. So, since Dr. Freeman could not see anything, he wanted to run some bloodwork and check Kristi's HCG level again. Since Kristi's levels had increased a lot more since the day before, Dr. Freeman told us that we should treat this as an ectopic pregnancy or at the least, as if an embyro attached and implanted but then stopped growing. That meant that Kristi had to have a methetrexate injection. If the injection did not work, she would have to have another one in a week. If a second injection didn't work, surgery might have been the next option. After the injection we came back home.
The next weekend after this, Kristi started experiencing worse pain on her left side. After calling Jacksonville, Kristi was told to go to the nearest ER just to make sure she was fine and that her tubes had not ruptured or anything. Now, that was a fun trip! Ectopic pregnancies are rare so that was fun to explain...and how many gestational carriers and intended mothers do you think an ER in south Georgia sees on a regular basis? Fun, fun times! Sarah, my sister, went with me since Aaron was out of town with the Youth from church, and it was a good thing that Sarah did go with me. We had met Kristi at the ER in Tifton. Throughout all of this, Kristi has had a cyst on one of her ovaries so the pain Kristi was experiencing was attributed to that. When we were discharged, me and Sarah trekked through the FLOODING rain (because there was not a cloud in the sky when we got to the ER earlier!) all the way to my car so that we could go pick Kristi up at the door. We were absolutely soaked! After we got Kristi in the car, Sarah got in Kristi's car to follow us home. We pulled out on the main road, meanwhile it is dark and flooding so hard that you can barely see the lines on the road, and I look up in my rear view mirror and see that Sarah doesn't even have the lights on! I panicked thinking how panicked she probably was since she obviously didn't know how to turn the lights on in someone else's car! So, we pulled over so that I could help her figure it out...and she did not even realize that she didn't have the lights on, she was too busy trying to work the windshield wipers :). We finally made it home around midnight that night. Kristi spent the whole weekend feeling like crap from the morphine they had given her at the ER and from the pain on her left side. Again, fun times :).
So, Kristi had two more blood draws this past week (the week after the ER extravaganza) to check her HCG levels and thankfully, her level is coming back down like it should. We are now at a stand-still as we wait for Kristi's HCG levels to get back down to zero. This could take up to eight weeks. Once her level gets to zero, we cannot do a frozen embryo transfer or our last fresh cycle of IVF until Kristi has had at least two normal menstrual cycles.
While we welcome this break for Kristi's body's sake as well as for my body's sake, it is still hard because it feels like it pushes us further away from our goal of a healthy, happy Baby Willis here on Earth. We, and that includes Kristi, never dreamed that this journey would be so full of misery and heartache. We never dreamed there would be so many ups and downs. But we know that God has a plan and that He has led us this far for a reason. We will press on even when we feel defeated and discouraged because God never said that things would be easy when trying to glorify Him. But, like so many things, this is a lot easier said than done!
I know that the longer the process takes for us, the easier it is for people to get bored with our "story" and even numb to it and honestly, it makes it easier for people to tell us what they would do if they were in our shoes. I know people are tired of the blog posts of disappointment and of hearing of our God-given desire for a child constantly. But friends....please do not grow tired in praying for Kristi and Aaron and me! It is through our faith in Jesus Christ and through the prayers of our brothers and sisters that we can even keep going. So please do not stop praying!