In my previous post I introduced myself and told you of our journey into parenthood, my beautiful son is now 4 years old, he is the light of my life, he will be starting pre-k 4 in August, I cannot believe how much time has passed, he is such a good boy with a very outgoing and funny personality.
My sweet boy Jacob's 4 year portrait.
I never thought that I would have to endure the pain I endured for 26 months ever again, when I conceived my son I thought my pain was over, but that was far from the truth. Me and James began thinking about conceiving again when Jacob was about 1.5 years old, we knew how long it took us to conceive him so we said we would start when he was 2 in hopes of having our kids approx 3 years apart. I was hoping with the combo of vitamins and sleep apnea under control that we would have no more troubles. Well we started trying again January, 2010 just after Jacob's second birthday. We tried and tried over the course of 11 months and decided that it was time to have us both retested again. We bought our first home in August, 2010 and were more financially stable as I had become a professional photographer and opened my own business in December, 2009. James also had a better job and we were just better off, so we knew if needed, we might be able to consider treatment but we were still hoping we wouldn't need it.
All tests came back 100% fine for me again, and so it seemed James were much better than before, in November 2010 his counts were 55 million, so normal, but the shape (morphology), and direction they were swimming was not good, only about 20% of his sperm were normal shaped and barley any were swimming forward and they were swimming slowly, never making it to my egg. Still, we were told we could still conceive on our own because the counts were normal. I felt so positive after that appointment that I just knew we would conceive soon. Well 8 more months passed and we were not pregnant, in July 2011 we had James retested and were very saddened to see his counts back at 20 million, low again, the morphology even lower at 15%, though his motility was better, they were moving forward and at a moderate speed. The RE ordered some tests for James, blood work and an ultrasound, in the ultrasound it revealed that James had a varicocele, its a vein in the testicles that can heat them up too much and kill sperm. Our options were IUI (intrauterine insemination) which would give us a 10-15% chance of success per month and costs about $1,000, continue trying naturally with a 5-10% chance of success, IVF with a 60% chance of success, or a varicocele repair which gave us a 50/50 chance of it improving his sperm, we took the last option as insurance covered most of it. James had his repair in September, 2011 and we discussed that if the repair made little or no change or even worsened, we would move onto IVF, so we waited until January, 2012 to have him retested. Unfortunately most stayed the same or got worse, one aspect improved. The counts improved slightly, as well as the motility, the morphology became worse with just 10% normal shaped, it hit me hard, I knew we had to move on if we wanted to expand our family.
We knew the cost of IVF in Atlanta was one of the highest in the USA so we didn't know how we were going to afford the $16,000, so we were considering using a place in Florida which was a low cost IVF center, but the thought of having to drive 4 hours to get there and finding a sitter for our son and hotel stays, we didn't know how to make it work. So I started researching low cost IVF centers and to my amazement I came across a blog that mentioned a new office that opened in Atlanta in late 2011, it was a low cost IVF center starting at just $6,500 for IVF without meds! Approx $8,000-$10,000 with meds depending on how much you needed, I was shocked and so excited, we scheduled an appointment with Dr. Massey in February 2012 http://ivfga.com/ .
Dr. Massey reviewed our case, gave us the option of IUI and IVF, well we didn't want to spend $1,000's going through IUI every month to potentially waste it all on a 10-15% chance of success and having to go through that heart ache each month if it didn't take, so we agreed on IVF. James was much more hesitant to do IVF than me but nobody and I mean nobody can quite understand the pain a woman goes through when dealing with infertility than the woman going through it herself, men try to understand but never can, fully. James was tired of the depression and anxiety I went through every month to conceive so he agreed. We prayed hard about how we would afford this, though much less than the other centers out here, it was still a lot of money. I had been putting some money aside from my photography business for years in case this happened, so I had enough to cover half, we prayed for a miracle of finances and we received just that. We received much more back in taxes than expected and received a generous donation towards our medication that I am eternally grateful to this person for, we were able to come up with enough to cover everything in full without having to finance it, thank you Jesus!
I kept asking for signs from God that this is what we're supposed to do and he kept revealing them to me time and time again, so we moved forward. When I went in, in March 2012 to have an SIS done, they found a tiny polyp in my uterus and had to have it removed by a hysteroscopy before moving forward with IVF and since I couldn't get in until April 18th, our original May IVF got pushed to June. I had a hysteroscopy and d&c to clean everything out on April 18th and was put under for the first time. Everything was successful and came back normal, so we moved forward.
Now, to this current day, I began (hopefully my last for awhile) my period on Thursday, May 31st, I scheduled my CD 3 baseline ultrasound for Saturday June 2nd, my RE also wanted to do an endometrial biospy on me due to several small studies showing nearly double the success rates with implantation of the embryo's in IVF when this is done in the same cycle as IVF. While this procedure is normally done on patients who have had multiple failed IVF's, my RE said why let it fail? Why not do it to everyone starting and give them the best chance possible and hopefully not let them fail? I completely agree! This IVF is a one time shot for us, we simply cannot afford anymore with putting our son through private Christian school, so we want the best chance possible. Now I read some horror stories about endometrial biospy's online, scared me to death and I couldn't sleep the night before, well, I am here to tell you that it wasn't bad at all! It was a 1 minute procedure and I felt moderate cramps for 15 second, then it was done, nothing to it! I was nervous and lost a night sleep over nothing. So my scan showed that I had approx 19 follies waiting to grow and be fertilized, Dr. Massey said this was great and to be expected from a healthy, fertile, 29 year old, so I was pleased.
All my medications came a little over a week ago, this isn't so bad compared to what I've seen some ladies have to have:
We are doing a flare protocol, I began two of the meds yesterday on June 2nd, we're starting with 5 units of lupron in the morning a long with an 81mg aspirin, and a prenatal vitamin. In the evening we are doing 150 IU of follistim and dexamethozone once a night. Now I am starting on low doses because there is a high chance of over stimulating me, I am young with no fertility problems and lots of follies, we don't want any OHSS and end up in a canceled cycle.
I will say I was terrifed to give myself injections but once again, I scared myself over nothing, I've taken 3 injections so far since I started writing this and I can hardly feel them, nothing to it. We go back to the RE on Wednesday morning at 8:15am, eeek, thats early for me, but I am willing to do anything to make my sweet boy a big brother, he asks about a brother or sister often and it just breaks my heart, I keep telling him mommy and daddy are trying. Wednesday they will see how the follies are growing, may increase or decrease my dosage and possibly add menopur, we shall see, but until then, this is our life up until now, we pray daily that this will be successful for us and that the Lord will use our battle to help others!
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