The Head Count

So our short story on the head count. May 18, 2007 - we started out day very early with a 5 hour drive to San Diego for an ultrasound.

Just past the half way point we reach El Centro and I feel what seems like a bladder control loss - so I ask my wonderful husband to pull over the next exit with a bathroom.

He stopes at the McDonalds - I run into the ladies room to find that my panty liner is completly filled and overflowing with blood. I am now of course in a panic. Luckily there is a 7-11 just a few buildings away, we drive over to it and purchase sanitary napkins and i run into their rest room to put it on.

Back in the car, continue to journey to San Diego NTC. I call and get the voice mail, they are on the other line......I leave a message - "we are about 2 hours out, my appt is in 4 hours, however, i am bleeding quite heavily -please call me back with instructions"

less than 5 mins, they call - "Come directly into the NTC, we will see you as soon as you get here"

I lay back in the seat listening to You are my All in All from one of my Christian compliations.
Over and over, this song plays, my wonderful husband - just drives.
"You are my strength when I am weak, You are the Treasure that I seek, You are my All in All"

We get to the NTC - go straight up to the Infertility Clinic it is 11:30 - I get right into a room and ready for the u/s.
Beautiful pictures printed for us at 11:41 - There are TWO sacs, TWO heartbeats, and TWO Perfect Size Babies.
However, we are told, we must prepare with the amount of blood loss and the fact that there is still blood in the uterus that we may loose one or both of the babies. News we did not want to hear, but needed to know the truth.
I am put back on Progesterone suppositories and sent home. We are to come back in a week.

The Progesterone has stopped the bleeding!

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.

My Journey Begins

My journey begins on June 7, 2003 when Aaron and I get married.