First Ultrasound 10/29

It looks like we have one beautiful singleton baby! We are thrilled! We are so grateful to have the opportunity to have a little bundle of joy in our arms in 8 months. This has not been an easy road for us, but we are quickly realizing that everything DOES happen for a reason, and we got the chance to go through this incredible experience where we were fortunate enough to witness every single step of the development of our future child.

This all started with injections and drugs to grow my follicles which house my eggs, to egg retrieval then fertilization, to growing them in an incubator in the lab, to transferring our 2 best embryos into my uterus, to now - where we get to see the very beginning stages of our developing fetus! In a normal pregnancy you do not get to witness these things. For this reason, we feel truly blessed. It hasn't been easy, but it's been MORE than worth it.

Today I am 5 weeks, 1 day pregnant. Here is the picture of our baby. I think it looks like Blake :)

The small black circle is the "baby", but right now it's just a Gestational Sac with a Yolk.

Our next appointment is Tuesday 11/2! Update coming soon. Thank you everyone for your love and support. We realize that we are still in the very early stages of pregnancy and we must proceed with caution, but we are so excited and can't wait to start this next chapter of our lives together.

Official BETA is in! 10/26/10

WE ARE PREGNANT!!!
To quote the Nurse who called me at 1:30 pm on 10/26/10, "Shannon, You are VERY pregnant! We wanted your beta to be at 100, and yours is at 1,000!"


I couldn't believe my ears! I was at work when they called. I called Blake the second I hung up with the Nurse and we celebrated over the phone. Finally we were able to soak it in and appreciate the moment. We were ecstatic!


Blake sent me these at work <3

Progression of Pee Sticks

Some women who go through IVF choose not to POAS (pee on a stick) before their Pregnancy Blood Test, otherwise known as their Beta test. I, however, am not one of those women. In fact, I am an obsessive pee-er! I started taking home pregnancy tests about 3 days after my Embryo Transfer. I recall taking at least one or two tests that turned out negative, and it was very discouraging for me, but I just couldn't keep myself from taking more tests! I'm not willing to admit how many I took... let's just say it was a few. Ok, that's a lie. I took a TON. I bought every brand under the sun, and I made multiple trips to the drug store to make sure I didn't run out.

4 days after my transfer I started seeing VERY faint positive lines. When I say faint I mean you practically had to pull out a magnifying glass to see these lines. You also had to catch just the right light to see them! They were so faint that I actually convinced myself that they did not exist at all. Blake kept trying to reassure me by saying "Shannon it says on the box, a line is a line, and that means positive", but I wasn't having it.

So, the peeing continued. Day in and day out, sometimes multiple times per day. I have never had the pleasure of seeing a "positive" on a HPT (home preg. test) in my life, so I still had a hard time believing that these ones might actually be positive!

This is what they looked like...

Anyone see the double pink lines, and the plus signs?? Faint positives!

About a week had passed since my transfer and I got to go in for some routine bloodwork. They are constantly checking my Progesterone, Estrogen, and HCG Beta to make sure that all of the levels are high enough to have and maintain a healthy pregnancy. At 8dp5dt, I went in for this bloodwork. The nurse told me that they wouldn't give me a reading on my Beta (to confirm pregnancy) until 14 days after transfer. By this time we were dying to know if I was pregnant! We saw the tests at home, but only the blood would give us accurate results. Later that day I logged on to my patient portal where they post information specific to my case. Much to my surprise, they had posted my Beta levels!! My HCG Beta was 72.7, which pretty much means I'm PREGNANT!! I talked to the Nurse that afternoon and they did not comment on my Beta, but said that everything looked great and I was to come in Tuesday, 10/26 to finally confirm pregnancy.

By this time we were finally starting to think that this could actually be happening for us! But just to be sure, I continued peeing on sticks every day :)   Eventually I got CLEAR positive tests! What a relief!

That is a bold line if I ever saw one!

 And it doesn't get any better than this!

Was this really happening for us?? We would confirm everything on Tuesday, October 26th...

2 Week Wait A.K.A. 2 Week Hell!

As if we IVFers haven't been through enough, the 2ww is nothing short of torture! They transfer these beautiful embryos straight into your uterus and then you think you're all set, but the part you don't think about is the awful waiting game that follows the transfer. I'm experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions right now. One minute I think I'm pregnant, the next minute I'm convinced that I'm not. The added stress doesn't do me any good, either. For now, all I can do is TRY to relax and wait for me Beta test. Just a few more days! I think? All this waiting has turned me into a crazy person. Just ask Blake.

Bedrest = Blogging Machine

It seems like today has flown by because I spent my entire day of bedrest composing this blog. Tomorrow morning I will be done with my 72 hours of mandatory bedrest! I hope those little embryos have snuggled in for a nice long ride. I'm already counting down the days till my pregnancy test, and contemplating when I should take a HPT. Hmmm....? 

BIG thanks to my darling hubby for taking such great care of me over the past 3 days :)

Embryo Transfer 10.12.10

Here we are. We finally made it! Will this be it for us???

8am arrival. 8:15 they instructed me to take a Valium and an 800mg Ibuprofen, and then we changed into our surgical outfits.

Finally it was 8:30am and Dr. Haddad arrived to have a brief consult with us about our embryos. He brought us pictures of the two best embies and said they were perfect! Those were the 2 that would be transferred into my uterus, and hopefully one or both of them would soon become our little miracles. They moved me into the operating room and this time Blake got to join us. Everything happens very quickly. I am awake for this procedure and we get to watch the whole thing on an ultrasound monitor. They get me all set up, the Doctor gets to work, and within minutes the Embryologist swoops in with our 2 Embryos in a catheter. Next thing we know...they're in! Easy as that.

For now, I am pregnant until proven otherwise! I continue on some medications that will help keep my hormones up and I am on mandatory bedrest for 72 hours. Bedrest should be a breeze for me because I LOVE laying around and Blake always takes good care of me. Hardest thing now is the dreaded 2 week wait...and so it begins.

Stay tuned to find out if we will get our miracle... For now, here's a picture of me with my 2 beautiful embryo babies. The dominant one in each picture are the two that he transferred.

Also, we were lucky enough to have 9 blastocysts that made it far enough to be cryopreserved, or frozen. Should we be unsuccessful, or simply decide to have more kids down the road, we can use our snowbabies!

The Egg Retrieval

Thursday, October 7th, 2010. A beautiful day in my book! No eating or drinking after midnight on Wednesday, and a 6:45am check-in time at the surgery center on Thursday morning... This may not sound exciting to anyone else,  but to us that Wednesday night was like Christmas Eve.

We arrived about 10 minutes earlier than we were supposed to and sat in our car until it was time to go in so we wouldn't look like crazies. The anticipation was killing us! How many eggs would they retrieve? How many would fertilize? So many unknowns, and yet we still knew everything would happen perfectly.

About 7:15am they got me changed into a gown and surgical gear and started my IV. By 7:25 I was on the table in their operating room, and seconds later I was out like a light. 20 minutes was all it took and next thing I know I'm waking up in recovery. Blake comes in to see me and the Doctor tells us they were able to retrieve a whopping 25 eggs! WHOA! Who knew that many eggs could even fit inside me!? We were thrilled!! They warned me that I would be very sore for several days since I had so many eggs, but that was no sweat off my back.

The next day we got a call from our Nurse telling us that we did VERY well and 20 of our 25 eggs fertilized. Suddenly it started to sink in...we had 20 potential "babies" in the lab. How crazy is that? Science is amazing. Thanks to our 20 little embryos, we were able to make  it to a 5 Day Transfer. Doctors will either perform a 3 day transfer, or a 5 day transfer depending on how many embryos you have to choose from. A 5 day transfer is the ultimate goal because it means that you have enough "high quality" embryos that are developing into blastocysts, and the Doctors are able to grade them and select the BEST ones to transfer.

How cute do I look?



July-September In A Nutshell

So, we got a BFN (Big Fat Negative) from our first IUI. Most clinics and RE's recommend trying at least 3 IUI cycles before moving on to IVF, however, based on our diagnosis and the odds that were stacked against us, we made the decision to move straight to IVF after one failed iui cycle.

Several weeks went by as my Doctor tried to prepare my body for an intense IVF cycle. They put me on oral contraceptives which seems quite contradictory, right? But they actually do that to help regulate your cycle and get your body ready for everything it is about to endure. They also ordered a diagnostic test called a Hysteroscopy. This is an invasive procedure in which they put you under general anaesthesia and "explore" your uterus for possible fibroids or other things that could prevent me from achieving pregnancy. My test went great and then we got the ALL CLEAR to get started on IVF...woohoo!

September rolled around, and along with it came a giant box full of the 12, count 'em, 12 new medications that I would be taking for this cycle!! 3 different injectable medications, plus a plethora of pills was just what the Doctor ordered. Sounds weird- but I was ecstatic to see these medications, and so excited to start my injections! On September 23rd we were finally able to get started, and we could not wait! This time Blake and I had to play Pharmacist/Doctor. Every night I had to mix my medications in a vial, draw them up in a syringe, and Blake had to give me the injections. We went through this strict regimen at 9pm every night for 12 days, plus monitoring appointments in the Med Center every other day. Talk about parking bills...ugh!

Some of the drugs I was on include Follistim, Menopur, Ganirelix, Doxycycline, Medrol, Hydrocodone, Crinone, and quite a few others. The combination of these definitely took it's toll on me. I was moody, emotional, bloated, and often very physically uncomfortable.... but in the end I knew it would all be worth it. Eye on the prize ;) These drugs cause your ovaries to produce more eggs than they would in a natural cycle and I often felt like I was carrying around melons for ovaries. Not fun, and not comfortable by any means!

From here we proceed to the much anticipated Egg Retrieval. After 12 days of stimulation, my ovaries were FULL of beautiful follicles, each of which contains one egg, and they were ready to be extracted!

Where it all began

Let's go back to July of 2010 where this journey of ours began. After 1 year of trying to conceive, both of us went through a number of fertility tests to diagnose the problems. Once we pin-pointed the issue, we sat down with an RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist) at Houston Fertility Institute, http://www.hfi-ivf.com/, to discuss our options. Almost immediately we made the decision to try IUI with injectables. IUI is In-Utero Insemination, and using injectables is the most aggressive way of producing the most/best eggs for a given cycle. All of the injections and medications really take a physical and emotional toll on your body, and it definitely wasn't easy for me! Blake had to give me an injection every night, and we had to go into the clinic for monitoring every other day. After 9 days of hormone stimulation we were able to proceed with the insemination. Our Doctor prefers to perform 2 back to back inseminations (Monday and Tuesday for us) to increase your chances of achieving pregnancy. We were very optimistic throughout the whole process, and after the insemination we had to endure the dreaded 2ww, a.k.a. 2 Week Wait. Throughout those 2 weeks I somehow convinced myself that I was pregnant. Keep in mind the medications do not stop after the insemination-- you continue supplementing your hormones with pills, suppositories, injections, etc. and all of these factors cause pregnancy-like symptoms. Blake and I were 99% sure that we were about to find out that we were pregnant! I did take a few HPT's (home pregnancy tests) and they all came back negative, but somehow I held on to a glimmer of hope. On the day of our scheduled pregnancy blood test we were so incredibly nervous. I went in and had my blood drawn, then we waited--AGAIN!  Hurry up and wait. We quickly realized that this is the reoccurring theme to this entire process. Late that afternoon I got a phone call from the Nurse, and I instantly knew that the news was not what we had expected. She said "I'm so sorry, but your results are negative. You can stop taking all medications now".

As you can imagine, this was heart-breaking for us. Devastating. We just KNEW that we were about to be parents...yet somehow, we were wrong. How could it be? It felt like we lost a child that was never even there. We allowed ourselves to grieve for a few days, then we decided to pick ourselves up and carry on with this journey. Clearly this was not going to be easy for us, and we didn't want to waste any time. We had another consult with our RE and he basically told us that the statistics of IUI were not in our favor based on our diagnosis. It didn't take but a second for us to look at eachother and say "We're not messing around... it's time for the BIG GUNS!" We chose to move straight to IVF, In-Vitro Fertilization, a much more intense, much more invasive procedure, but we were ready! And so it began...

Here we are on Halloween of 2009. Oh the irony!