How To Survive Infertility: Our Fertility Story-Part Five
If you’re still following along with our fertility story… Thank you so much! It really means a lot to me, probably more than you know. I promise the story does get better, and we are so blessed that it does.
Starting IVF
In January of 2021 we started our IVF journey. Our doctor “threw the kitchen sink” at us. He pulled out all the stops to give us our best chance. He prescribed Decadron (a steroid) and human growth hormone. Both help the other meds to be more effective, but I got some funny looks when I told people I was taking them. I was also on Menopur, Gonal-F, and Ganirelix, which all helped put my body into overdrive to make as many follicles as possible. Everything but the decadron was a shot that went into my stomach, and even though the needles were small I looked like a pin cushion.
I thought I was handling all the meds pretty well, I didn’t feel like they were making me crazy. BUT… one day Levi and I were in Costco. I wanted the frozen chocolate covered raspberries, but Levi reminded me we didn’t have an ice chest and we weren’t going straight home. So, I turned around, threw the bag of raspberries back into the freezer and slammed the door. Levi didn’t say a word. But he said he made eye contact with an older gentleman, who gave Levi a look like “best of luck buddy”.
Along with all those meds, I also took a handful of vitamins and supplements every day. In addition to my regular prenatal vitamin and baby aspirin, I took these Three Supplements That Are Proven to Improve Fertility . There were so many to keep track of I had to get one of those gigantic pill organizers to keep everything straight.
Egg Retrieval
We did our egg retrieval in February and we got five eggs. It was pretty uneventful and I was excited that we were able to get five.
One thing that stands out to me about that day, is my nurse. The nurse that had been caring for me pre-op was going on break as I was coming out of the procedure. The break nurse was there as the doctor came to tell me how the it went and how many eggs they were able to get. I’ll never forget, the doctor said “we were able to get five, and we’re happy about that. As she walked away the nurse looked at me and said “I got five when we did this and it worked for us”. I needed that bit of encouragement. I feel that it was a little note from my Heavenly Father saying everything is going to be alright.
The Results
We got the call the next day that all five eggs fertilized which was amazing! From there we had one day-five blastocyst and one day-six. That is the stage where they can biopsy the embryos and/or freeze them. We sent both for testing, and less than two weeks later we found out that we had one normal embryo.
I was at work when I got the call. I was trying to keep my cool but it felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. Bless her heart, the lady did not wait to tell me that we had a normal embryo. It was basically the first thing out of her mouth. She then asked me what I thought was “do you want to know the facts?” I said yes! Of course! I want to know all about it! Turns out she said “do you want to know the sex”. We had planned on waiting to find out, but I accidentally found out that our little embryo was a boy.
I called Levi to tell him the good news, and it felt like a weight was lifted off of our shoulders. We knew that we weren’t anywhere near the finish line of our fertility story. But, the odds of us getting this far had been pretty slim so we were celebrating the win for sure!
Thank you for being here!
xx
Mollie