The beginning

The beginning of this journey began quite some years ago. After several failed attempts the natural way, the clomid way, the gonal-f way, and the IUI way, we moved forward with IVF.

This chapter of our journey will begin when we started the IVF cycle.

CD1 - March 12, 2007 the beginning. Our IVF cycle began with supressing the ovaries with a simple birth control pill. This pill continued until April 2, 2007.
CD3 - CD12 was the fun doxycycline.
CD13 - March 23, 2007 - A free day :)
CD14 - CD22, the start of additional suppression Lupron Shots. For the first 3 days I made a mistake and took 20u per day instead of the 10 prescribed. I thought for sure I would run out before I was supposed to. So the remaining 6 days I took the 10u per day.
CD23 - April 3, 2007 ----it all begins, still on Lupron 10u, we also did our ultrasound and bloodwork. Also, just one day after stopping the birth control pill......she showed (Aunt Flow). It was perfect timing.

CD23 became CD1 with her apperance and we were really starting to move now!
I continued the Lupron at 10u for 2 more days. Estridiol = <10.0 pg/mL
CD4 - April 6, Lupron decreased to 5u, added a mini HCG of 3u and Follistim at 200.
April 8 - Estradiol = 187.9 mg/mL
This continued until CD8 - April 10, Lupron and HCG still the same, Follistim at 150. Estradiol = 452.0
This continued until CD10 - April 12, Lupron and HCG still the same, Follistim at 100. Estradiol = 1026.1
April 13 - Estradiol = 1728.4
April 14 - Estradiol = 2622.2
This continued until CD 13 - April 15, No more Lupron, HCG, or Follistim!!! WOO HOO --- UHH OHH - it is time for the trigger of HCG at 8PM sharp.

CD14 - April 16 - Egg Retrieval - arrived at 6:30AM. They put me under and when I awoke it was sometime around 10AM. Dr Laufer greeted me by changing my name to Eve :) There were able to retrieve 25 eggs!!!

April 17 - we wait for the call from the embryologist.....finally she calls to tell us our Fertilization report. We used ICSI to fertilize the eggs. Out of 25 eggs, 24 were mature, 21 had fertilized. Now we wait until ET to see how many survive for transfer and freezing.
tonight we also being the Progesterone in oil shots 1ml every night until the first beta comes back.

April 19 - Embryo Transfer is scheduled at 11:15. This was quite the adventure. First the diarhia and the very very very full bladder. Finally we get to talk with the embryologist on the status of our embryos. They are very pleased with their growth. Only ONE, yes ONE stopped dividing at 2 cells, which they discarded as it stopped dividing. So we have 20 embryos that continued to grow and divide appropriately. This is incredible!!!!
She goes over their growth individually with us, and has choose 2 perfect 8 celled embryos for transfer. So we now have 18 to freeze.
The transfer is supposed to take about 5 mins.......not for me. Everything thus far was going to smoothly, something had to give.
First the speculum was too small, as my uterus is tilted and it was not the right size for Dr Laufer to adjust to see the opening of the uterus. So they started over with a medium one.....keep in mind my bladder is extremely full. And now the Valium is kickin in.
Oh yeah, now we are on the move with the new speculum and the cathater with the embryos is on its way to inside of the uterus, only Dr Laufer can no longer see via ultrasound the location he is to release the embryos.........my bladder is still filling! He removes the cathater with the embryos and returns them to the embryologist who removes them from the cathater to count to ensure they are both still there. Dr Laufer than drains half my bladder.
We start all over, a new speculum and again a new cathater for the embryos and here we go again! They are finally in their new home 11:41AM. I rest for 30 mins and then they allow me to drain the remainder of my bladder and my WONDERFUL husband and I are on our way back to our room. Except, I am now starving, so we stop at Olive Garden for lunch.
And yes again, the remainder of the evening was spent with diarhia.

The 2 week wait begins..........May 1, 2007 - the Quantative Beta HCG test. We are very pregnant! Beta comes in at 225. May 3, 2007 - Dr Laufer calls - definately pregnant Beta comes in at 460. Time for the ultrasound to be scheduled to do a head count.