IVF Report – Conclusions

Tell me something I didn’t know.

I got my IVF report in the mail yesterday. I don’t have it in front of me right now, but here are the basic points:

**They gave me a higher dose of stims than the average patient
**Despite this, my egg retrieval only produced 7 eggs (expected 10-14)
**All 7 fertilized (expected 65-80% fertilization) – better than expected
**None of the embryos developed “normally” – they were slow to grow and fragmented
**Since none of the 3 embryos implanted, they were not viable
**Conclusion – POOR EGG QUALITY CAUSED THE FAILURE

So, TW’s sperm is probably fine, since all 7 eggs fertilized. It is so shocking to me that this whole time, it was probably MY problem, not TW’s. For the last 4 years, until we met with the IVF clinic, no one ever pointed the finger in my direction. It is my rotten, cracked, stinky, old eggs.

I feel so screwed. So totally and completely screwed. The end of the letter stated that I am still a candidate for IVF (gee, thanks!) and that I have a 20% chance of having a live birth. That seems highly optimistic to me.

The only bright side is that my acupuncture treatments (supposedly) can help with egg quality after three months of treatment. My first IVF attempt was after only 2 months of acupuncture. Maybe there is something she can do to help. Once we go for our 2nd attempt, I will have 4 months of acupuncture treatment under my belt. She has also added some herbs that she has found to be helpful for egg quality.

I am already starting to have a mind frame shift, I can feel it. I am imagining my life without any kids, prepping myself for it. Because right now, it feels like the inevitable.

Checking in

I have been MIA, I know. I just don’t have the energy to keep up the blogging pace that I had been keeping up for the past few months. Things are very quiet on the IF front, taking a complete break (and a seeming hiatus from sex for that matter!!!). It is kind of bumming me out. I know I ovulated yesterday but I just didn’t have the energy to make a move over the last few days. So, even if there was a .00001 chance of conceiving naturally, not so much this month.

I am still waiting to hear from my IVF clinic. I e-mailed them on Friday and they got back to me right away, apologizing for the delay. I am supposed to hear this week. I hope they get their act together and write up the final report, explaining what the next steps should be.

A good friend of mine that I met about a year and a half ago in the IF internet world just lost her triplets. I AM SO FUCKING SAD. I just can’t believe it. She has been TTC for as long as I have, had 7 (or so) failed IUIs, a failed IVF and she was 6 months pregnant with triplets from her 2nd IVF. Everything was going so well. But about 10 days ago she said she was having early contractions and she went to the ER. They stopped the contractions and put her on bed rest. I heard from her one more time and things seemed to have calmed down, she was feeling confident that all was good. And then this morning I got an e-mail that all three were lost. She gave birth to one on the 13th and the other two on the 14th. She was able to hold and kiss each of them before they died. It is just so heartbreaking. I wonder — is it even worth going through all this? I don’t even know what to say to her, what can one say?

I am leaving for NYC on Wednesday and won’t be back until Saturday. So probably no posts until then.

I knew it!

My acupuncturist is a doll. She is 38 years old (39 in January) and she got married “late” in life, at 37. Since I started seeing her, I wondered whether she was TTC or not, knowing her age. The other night I had a dream that she had six children! It was a vivid dream and so when I saw her on Saturday morning, I decided to tell her. She said I was the third client that had dreams about her having kids or being pregnant…it is no wonder, it is all we talk about when I am there, so I can only assume other clients are the same. She is one of the few Chinese medicine fertility specialists in my town. Then with a disclaimer that she hoped she was not giving too much personal information about herself, she told me that she and her husband are TTC. She said that this month, she was SURE she was pregnant because her period was 4 days late. Instead of POAS she went to her clinic for a beta and it came back negative. She seemed really sad about it – and oh, do I know how she was feeling!!!  Anyway, she seemed relieved to be able to talk about it, and I gave her a pep talk. She has been trying for (only) 4 months, but I know when you first start, 4 months can feel like a lifetime. I wonder how hard it is for her to work with so many women struggling to conceive, women the same age as she is. Like me, crying in her office when my IVF didn’t work. She has a really positive attitude, but I could see she seemed a little worried. She said that her husband and she have decided if it doesn’t happen in the next 4 cycles, they will see a doctor. They have no idea if anything is wrong yet, so she is just going to assume that everything is fine. Ahhh. I remember those days. She gives her husband acupuncture treatments and is going to someone herself. She has been charting, etc.  

I hope it works for her. I truly, truly do.

I am here. I am surviving…

I am hanging in there. I actually feel surprisingly good. I think I have moved on, which is impressing even myself. I have some bad moments, but for the most part, I am ready to forge ahead. I think for a while my posts will be labeled “random babbling” because that is all I have to give right now. I hope you can bear with me!

Tonight I met Amy R. We met for coffee and she is just wonderful and smart and funny and kind, just like I knew she would be. We talked about IVF, IVF, IVF. As some of you may know, she did her first cycle in September and had a chemical. We are probably going to cycle at about the same time, after the holidays. It is nice to convert a virtual friendship to a RL friendship…I don’t have any friends IRL that are going through this.

My parents sent me a care package. The teddy bear that the evil chocolate lab puppy destroyed motivated them to send me a stuffed bear. Ironically it is a polar bear, which has some significant meaning, but my parents did not know this. About two years ago I thought I was pregnant. This was before we had done any testing, before I was a bitter infertile. We were just trying the “natural way” blissfully unaware. Anyway, my period was late. Very late. Like 10 days late. And I am like clockwork. For some reason I didn’t POAS, and in retrospect I have no idea why I didn’t take a test. The day I decided to take a test, I got my period (of course). And I lost it. That was a really hard day. That night I was reading the local paper and they were doing a series on global warming. The article was about the plight of the polar bear. I have always loved polar bears, I just think they are the cutest things. With the climate changing, the ice is melting much earlier than it usually does. Of course the polar bears have no idea about this, and decide to swim to shore as they usually do. However, they can only survive swimming about 75 miles at a time. And in order to get home, they now need to swim 250 miles. So the poor bears go for their annual swim, but at about 75 miles they are only 1/3 of the way there. And they die of exhaustion. They are finding polar bear bodies floating in the ocean miles and miles away from the shore. It is the saddest fucking thing. And I wondered – do they know they are going to die? Or do they just keep swimming, thinking that they will be there any minute? Do they keep swimming, hoping that they will see land and they will make it? I know I am putting human emotions and rational thoughts in an animal’s brain, but I can’t help it. That is how I am. In any event, this article just killed me. I could not get rid of the image of these poor bears drowning like that. And that night, I had a dream that my “baby” was a polar bear baby. It was swimming and swimming and could not make it to the “shore” so it died. That dream is still with me, I think about it all the time.

If you care about the polar bear like I do, please sign this card.