three months after jack was born i felt ready to start trying for baby number two, but my doctor had very sternly instructed me to wait for a year. i'm still not sure if it's overdramatic to say she saved my life, but since the delivery had been extra eventful we followed the rules and waited. when the time came i expected to get pregnant quickly and was hoping for a christmas baby, but after six unsuccessful months we were referred to a fertility doctor.
at this point we were not expecting to entertain the idea of ivf at all. the expense coupled with the shots and the high level of medical intervention was not something i thought we would pursue. we would do the recommended rounds of iui's and if those weren't successful we'd look into adoption. after a few failed rounds we started reaching out to get information on private adoption, as well as foster care, but those conversations left us discouraged. none of the avenues we pursued seemed to be viable options for us, so we were back to considering ivf.
after a couple of false starts for various reasons, which left us waiting an extra excruciating month each time, we finally began our first, and what we expected to be our only, round of ivf. the preparation went much better than i expected. due to my intense distain for needles i thought donald would give my nightly injections, but in a surprising twist it actually felt easier to do them myself. 10 days and 29 shots later we went in for our egg retrieval. the sweet spot for the number of eggs you hope for is about 10-15, since there are a lot of steps to get from an unfertilized egg to a healthy embryo, and typically a significant percentage do not survive the entire process. we only retrieved two eggs, which was initially discouraging, but one of them surprised us and developed into a healthy embryo.
now we were in a spot we had not considered. had we gotten no embryos we would have accepted that as a closed door and ended fertility treatments. if we ended up with two or more we would have moved forward with transferring, but having just one was a different story. our hope had always been to have three children, and while technically our one embryo could split, it was highly unlikely. plus not all embryos survive the transfer and implantation process, and having only one left us with no safety net. so onto a second round of ivf we went.
even after the fact i find it hard to believe that we ended up doing two. i expected the second round to be much like the first, but that was not the case. the injections, which were now twice a day, started off fine, but became more difficult as the days went on. i had bruising i had not experienced before, and it was just overall more painful. this round was 46 shots over 11 days and i was really looking forward to egg retrieval day and a couple weeks off from all the medical things. the actual retrieval was much the same, down to the egg count which was once again two. we went home after and i laid down for a nap, expecting to sleep off the last of the anesthesia haze and wake up to play cards and relax on the couch as we had done before. instead i found myself waking up often with abdominal pain i hadn't experienced the previous time.
the biggest indicator that something wasn't right was my passing out twice, just minutes apart, and donald telling me i had been unresponsive. after consulting with the clinic it was determined that i needed to be evaluated in the emergency room. we expected a long afternoon and evening of waiting in the waiting room, waiting for tests, waiting for results, and ultimately going back home that night. but that's not what happened. as time went by i would periodically be in very intense pain depending on my position, and it was determined that i had a significant amount of internal bleeding related to the egg retrieval. the doctors recommended a laparoscopic procedure to remove the excess fluid from my abdomen, so i was admitted and had to endure my first covid test [which i had managed to avoid up to this point in the pandemic]. somewhere around midnight i was put under general anesthesia and almost a liter of blood was removed. it was a fairly quick recovery, and there were no lingering effects, but soon after we received the disappointing news that neither egg from the second round survived. this made us even more thankful for the one viable embryo we had, but it was still hard news.
while we still had reason to hope, we also knew the odds weren't in our favor. it was hard for me to be hopeful some days because i knew how precarious our position was. around this time donald's brother david surprised me with a "believe" hoodie from ted lasso. i obviously loved it because i love the show, but it came at a time that felt especially meaningful. from then on i wore that hoodie to every appointment [which was a lot of appointments] to remind myself to continue to hope, even though a favorable outcome was far from guaranteed.
the next step was the embryo transfer. it was october and i was anxious to get moving as soon as possible. we did a mock cycle first with some extra testing to confirm the combination of medications was optimal. then we got on the schedule for a transfer, only to be cancelled a few days before by unexpectedly high progesterone numbers. a new date was set, and the same thing happened again. eventually the clinic stopped making me wait for an opening in the schedule and said they would fit me in when my body was ready. we added one additional medicine to control my progesterone level and finally made it to transfer day on march 10th.
it was a relief to have finally made it to this point, but i was very aware that we had more checkpoints ahead before we'd know if we had a viable pregnancy. within the first week there are two blood tests, and the wait for the phone calls with those results is excruciating, to put it mildly. then the final step with the fertility clinic is an ultrasound one week later. ours was bumped up a couple of days due to a stressful bleeding scare, which we eventually learned was related to a subchorionic hematoma, but ultimately the result was good news. all together from the beginning of the embryo transfer process to the day i gave myself the final progesterone shot we logged another 92 injections in as many days.
at the beginning of this process i assumed the financial cost and the actual shots would be the most challenging aspects of this journey, but those paled in comparison to the agony of what felt like never ending waiting while on a never ending roller coaster. when we moved back over to our regular ob from the clinic one of the first things she said to us was that she was so glad ivf existed for those who need it, but she wouldn't wish it on her worst enemy. i couldn't agree more. we spent so many days waiting for a phone call or refreshing that blasted patient portal looking for a message that could bring a few days of relief, or bring everything crashing down. it was agonizing.
for us it was clearly worth it, because we would do it again in a heartbeat to have archie. but we're also aware that everyone doesn't get the same happy ending, so we do our best remember and be thankful every day for the blessing God gave us.
