You ever snap your fingers, and a year has gone by? Apparently we did, because my last entry was almost one year ago. For anyone remotely curious, I wanted to pass along a quick long-dragged-out recap of what’s occurred since the last entry. After tonight, updates will be much more frequent, because this has been a wild, wild ride.

Last fall was tough (see previous entries), and while we absolutely had a blast in the winter and spring, the dull ache of memories of “what could have been” lingered. We skied all over Colorado/Whistler/Big Sky, reconnected with old buddies and just enjoyed our time together knowing that biologic children would very likely not be in our future. After a Cinco-de-Mayo bachelorette fiesta in Austin, TX for one of my incredibly amazing and talented best buds (you know who you are), Justin and I felt it was time to maybe try IVF one more time.

I felt like we were attempting to restart the engine of a 1976 Mac Truck that sat for a decade (original Super Trooper reference). We wanted to get things going, but the enormity of it seemed…impractical. So once again, I interviewed a new IVF doc, decided to check in with the old IVF doc, and we made plans to figure out how to move our 10 frozen embryos around if need be. We were told to call when the next cycle began, and the IVF train would slowly start to move again. That was mid-May.

Well my next cycle was to begin the first week of June. That week came and went. I’d played this game before, only to discover we weren’t pregnant. Well a week after the week I was supposed to start, I took a pregnancy test (like I’d done plenty of times). Every time, there was a little spark of hope, but I knew a negative response would stare back at me.

This time, however, there was one extra little blue line. It was so absurdly faint, but it was something I’d never seen. There was still no excitement at this point, because although unique, we weren’t going to be one of those fortunate couples that “just got lucky.” I knew this wasn’t the way our story would happen.

But apparently it was. Three frozen embryos, four years of trying, 12 blood draws and an absurd amount of tears, something was brewing. Now before you begin the head nod with the knowing look that states, “Once you stop thinking about it, it happened,” just pause.

Part of the reason it took me so long to get back to this blog was because of the takeaways people would infer from our journey. Specifically, we do not want to be one of the tales you excitedly tell a friend, co-worker, family member or neighbor when they confide they are having a hard time conceiving. Hearing about someone else’s happy conception after couple-in-story just “relaxed, stopped thinking about it, and enjoyed one another” is utterly soul crushing. I guess it assumes there is some simple human element pointing to why she can’t conceive. Plus, you will not be the first person that has told him/her that advice.

Now that we have that out of the away, the future blogs will directly relate to how much fun this pregnancy thing is. For some this may be a walk down memory lane. For others, it may be a discussion on what’s to come. Whatever you use this for, enjoy it. There’s only one time through this ride, and if it helps someone else, we succeeded.

I woke up Thanksgiving morning at 4am and I cried.  Oh did I cry.  At this time of day, the sun’s rays did not yet illuminate the burnt amber leaves, and I was so incredibly grateful for this, because I did not want anyone, not even Justin, to see me do this brutally raw, ugly cry.

Earlier that day, we’d done a blood draw.  I know I mentioned a Friday draw on my last post, but since our next test was supposed to be on a Thursday (eg Thanksgiving), we were to do one on Wednesday and Friday.  So yes, I fibbed a little.  

This means that at about 4pm Thanksgiving Eve we got the call.  The nurse asked if Justin was there, which he was, because we just knew that at least one, if not both embryos had taken.  I’d felt a difference in my abdomen the last few days and by gut instinct knew there was something growing.  Plus, when she asked if Justin was there, something she’d never done, it confirmed my suspicions.  As she began, she started off with, “I’m so sorry.”  I don’t really remember a whole lot after that.  Blood level HCG wasn’t high enough…something, something.  

The only cliche way I can describe is absolute soul crushing.  I felt like my little soul, which I imagine as the green little things off the Little Mermaid, was just stomped on by a giant.  In a sick way, having to go to our first of three Thanksgivings just an hour later forced me to pull myself back together, and without that, I’d still probably be lying in bed.

And oh did I bawl Thanksgiving morning.  I cried for the four embryos that we would never get to meet.  I wept for what our new normal of childless looked like. I sobbed that my grandmother, who is in hospice, would not meet her great-grandchild as has been the legacy of the women in our family for a couple generations.  I wept for the feeling of bitterness and envy that will continue to arise when I see an infant or a pregnant woman, knowing there is a possibility I may never know that joy.  I cried for my husband, who specializes in providing healthcare for children every day and can’t have any of his own.  I bawled for just how incredibly lonely I felt.

For a time, there was a group of us that could not get pregnant, and I felt a small bit of comfort being in this group.  Now, I am on an island.  All of those women have either become pregnant naturally or most of them have done so through IVF.  And this idea of not becoming pregnant through IVF was not something I ever thought of as a potential circumstance.

I know things may look different in the future, and there’s the possibility that we may still get pregnant naturally, but right now, this is, without a doubt the most painful experience I’ve ever encountered.  Now before you think, “Well at least Justin and you have health, things could be worse,” please realize I understand that as well.  Things can always be worse, but this is a life experience that has placed me in the bottom of the well wondering how to recalibrate to normalcy.  I’ll get through it, as we all learn to adapt to difficult situations, but it will take some time to get past the exposed-nerve pain.  I’m ok with that.  My husband and job keep me fulfilled and occupied.  

And this is where these posts have helped.  I still have a few tricks up my sleeve (e.g. Eastern Medicine I’d come across recently), but I do not want to talk about this soul-crushing pain.  When we cross paths, an acknowledgement is grateful, and I don’t want to get into a discussion about we’ve been through.  We will grieve silently, time will pass and the raw pain will become a dull ache.  We will continue to update this as we try a couple of alternatives, but for now, we’re taking a break until the start of the New Year.  As we’ve said before, the journey is not over.  I’m not sure when it will resurrect and if human babies are involved, but worse case scenario, we’ll own a puppy farm in the country and all of our little fur babies will sleep in our bed.  I can think of much worse things than that.

Tuesday was the day.  I mean that a couple different ways. First, not one but TWO little embryos arrived to their new home .  Second, Justin and I discussed it, and this round will probably be the last try for a little while.  This has been both financially and emotionally draining; we are ready to take a break.

Instead of au natural like last time, we’re doing hormones this round.  In addition to the estrogen pills, all my dreams of the butt shots came true!!!  This gets to happen nightly around 8pm.  Justin draws up the progesterone from a vial and then pow, right in the sitter.  This has been a phenomenal bonding experience alternating between one of us exhausted from the day and the other having to wake their partner.

We find out Friday if we’re pregnant.  This will make it either a good Christmas or a really fantastic one.  Come on Santa!

Welcome back!  It has been a LONG time since we last met and a lot of things have happened.  The elephant in the room: pregnant or not??? Part of me wants to hold the audience in suspense to keep you engaged.  I won’t be so cruel; we’re not pregnant.

Since the last visit I wrote about, we found out about five days later we weren’t pregnant.  That was a Monday and the pregnancy test was supposed to be the upcoming Friday.  I cried a little that night; however, it wasn’t the constant flow of tears from the first time.  Tears weren’t the only things we did a little different this round.

We celebrated our wedding anniversary; I had a glass of wine.  I did some light jogging (I avoided any physical activity last time…which wasn’t hard to do). We even skipped Chik-fila and instead opted for Mexican the day of the transfer.  So I guess I’m the first to tell you all those comments about being even more relaxed didn’t hold any water.  I still got to go through the blood draw that Friday, and the nurse that called was very sweet about the negative pregnancy test.  Needless to say, it was the quickest we’d spent $3,500 on an “event.”  So that’s neat.

That Friday, Dr. Lucidi wanted me to start taking estrogen.  We’re not leaving anything natural and thus pseudo-up-to-chance-this-time.  So yep, that was about a week ago.  I just had another appointment with the doc.  And this is what we’re ecstatic about.

Per the usual, my body/blood work/etc. all looks great….blah, blah, blah.  I tease about this, because everything just seems to be perfect until the actual conception part.  Anyway, Dr. Lucidi discussed the embryo options.  If we do only one embryo transfer a third time, it’s around 30% chance of becoming pregnant.  If we do two embryos at the next transfer, the odds of getting pregnant rocket back up to 50%.  So that’s what we’re going to do, and secretly, the possibility of twins is what Justin and I have wanted all along.  I think we both love stress so potentially raising twins just seems to be a natural fit for us.

Let me just pause and make a quick comment: this entire infertility experience has been a weird, sick blessing.  It goes without saying that Justin and I are stronger together. When you lose a child not once, but twice, it is excruciating.  I’m not going to touch the political piece of this with a ten foot pole, but actually knowing a little embryo is inside, we can’t help to think about the future of it.  That said, this embryo thing and/or life planning in general has changed dramatically for us.  We’ve discovered the significance of making goals but not absolutely count on them to come to fruition.  I learned it’s important to plan but know that those plans are not concrete regardless of how well you think you know them.  Case in point, I never thought I’d be a dentist, but here I am living the dream.  Now that things are rolling along again, I’m excited to keep everyone in the loop.  Third time’s the charm, right?

We’ll keep this quick since it’s late for us, bed’s calling my name and I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much.  The blood draw on Monday confirmed progesterone levels looked great (naturally).  This meant we were ready to move ahead today with departing from a large sum of money (I know it’s for good reason but still burns a little) and another embryo transfer.  I’ll upload a pic of what the little embryo looked like this morning when frozen and a few hours later when it was coming out of its “shell.”  At this point, I made the joke that we would show this blastocyst pic during our future little one’s rehearsal dinner/wedding.  Already I sense Justin and I are feeling much better about this round.

During the procedure, I joked we were ecstatic Justin was in the room during the conception of our child.  Dr. Lucidi, without missing a beat, stated, “Yeah and you can say several other people were in the room.” To which we replied, “And we recorded it all.”  So yeah, another Space Station docking; we find out next Friday (10/26) if it is a success.  In the meantime, we are going to celebrate six, yes SIX years of marriage this weekend.  If you were at our wedding, can you believe it’s been that long?  Time sure flies when you’re having fun and attempting to procreate.  I’ll update things again early next week, since I feel I’ve neglected this little website of ours.  Until then, cheers (with apple juice).

I want to thank all the people that sent well wishes.  Whether it was a call, text, message via the blog, thoughts or prayers, I felt them and they were absolutely necessary to “recovery.”

Needless to say that was a wild, tough week.  There is no better term that comes to mind other than “emotional rollercoaster.”  When we found out we were NOT pregnant, I did the whole turtle shell thing.  For about 48 hours, we did our best to answer texts, fight the gum disease known as GINGIVITIS (what ever happened to that guy/voice) and sleep.  We even participated in one of my favorite past times: going out to eat.

I think my dad once described me as having the ability to “compartmentalize,” and this came in extremely handy during the last two weeks.  When I was with patients or out in public (except lunch that one day), I subconsciously wrapped painful experiences nicely in a little box.  Said boxes got tucked back in the cobwebs of my brain until I was by myself.   This allowed me to deal with my emotions when it was appropriate (no one likes a blubbering slash shaky dentist) and more importantly, when I was ready to deal with them.

This is also not the first time I’ve managed an emotional rollercoaster (all of dental school comes to mind), and the thing that helped me the most is the wave analogy.  I grew up surfing, albeit my brother is much, much better than me.  However, leave it to Mother Nature to teach us some valuable lessons.  When you learn to read the ocean, you understand that waves come in sets.  These sets vary from place to place, but they’re consistent for a given day.  Let’s say the below pic is a three-wave set.  This means three waves will come before there is a lull.  This infers, you have three shots to either catch a wave and surf it, or if you’re trying to get out past the white water (and avoid getting clobbered), you can wait for the set to subside.

I guess that’s how I perceive life; it comes in sets.  I know there are a series of either exciting or devastating events.  Regardless of that set, I know it will end and return to calm before the next grouping comes.  It’s part of the adventure of life.

Not to get all emo, but I suppose I want to clarify how I reached my current status of calm and contentment now.   So, yep let’s talk about last week’s appointments.

Tuesday, Dr. Lucidi and I discussed whether to move forward with hormone therapy (more injections/dollars) or to allow my body to do its natural rhythm (great song that will take you back to a weird time).  I know you’re thinking, “Let your body handle it naturally.”  Well, at this point, we want to move forward as quickly as possible.  So that’s what we decided.  Dr. Lucidi leaned more toward hormone therapy, because he said my body was probably still in recovery from the egg retrieval last month and would more than likely not produce its own egg (which is necessary to have your own cycle…even if we’re not “using” it).  That said, if my uterine lining was too thick, we would still have to wait another month for hormone therapy, because we would be too far past the point of using hormones to create the necessary conditions for an embryo transfer.

Back to the ultrasound equipment we went.  Dr. Lucidi made some measurements and checked the ovaries just in case an egg could be brewing.  Well, my lining was indeed too thick; however, low-and-behold, there was an egg on each ovary growing.  If these matured, released and fertilized, they would become fraternal twins.  So that’s cool.  To make a long story longer, we will allow my body to continue its natural rhythm sans hormones, and we don’t even have to miss a body-suit beat (see above video for reference).

Friday rolled around and Dr. Lucidi wanted to confirm everything was on track; plus, Justin could come.  Another ultrasound.  One follicle collapsed (it won’t release an egg), and we now have a “dominant” egg/follicle.  I now start taking ovulation tests daily to see when the body naturally releases its egg.  We casually wondered: what if the one egg that my body releases becomes fertilized (I know we’ve been trying three years, and this hasn’t happened but just saying) plus we placed a frozen embryo that took.  Dr. Lucidi nonchalantly answered, “You’d have twins.”  I’m catching another theme here.  Would we name one “Chick” and the other “Fil-a”?  I digress.

Let’s recap of things that occurred (I can never spell “occurred” correctly on the first try), and things to come.

• Decide whether hormone therapy or natural rhythm to place another embryo
• Ultrasound to help determine this
• Natural rhythm decided, so now we need to know the precise time to place the embryo
• Ovulation tests daily
  • Once positive, call the office and the clock starts “ticking”
• Five days after ovulation (remember, this is a five-day old embryo), embryo transfer
• Positive pregnancy test 10 days after that
  • Yep, I said it; feeling much better about this round

I’ll update things when we have more news.  Hold on to your hats, because I feel this is the last hurdle before we get an affirmative!

I had a non-related IVF meeting today and was able to get out of the office a little early.  This meeting was at a dental office near Chik-fil-a, so naturally I went there for lunch (I promise I’m not sponsored by Chik-fil-a).  This is probably TMI, but here goes: at this point, I’d been bleeding for the last 24 hours, so I knew where my earlier pregnancy test was going to end up (the doc’s office was to call later today). While eating lunch, the tears kept welling up in my eyes, and I superbly prevented them from cascading down my cheeks.  I’m not sure if it was these little pools or just the training there, but I had two employees ask me if I needed anything and if they could help.  Ok, it was definitely their training, but I felt I’d stepped out of this commercial (grab some hankies).  Anyway, the small gesture meant a lot; without them, the small reprieve in my racing thoughts would have tailspun quickly.

I called the doc’s office at 4:30 urgently requesting they call me this evening.  I absolutely did not want to get the call tomorrow morning and have to deal with the wave of emotion afterwards.  The nurse called a few minutes later, and as expected, the pregnancy test was negative.  I’m utterly devastated, but at least there are other embryos.  We scheduled an appointment for next Tuesday so we can go over the new game plan.

As expected, this would be a journey, and it looks like our story does not end today.

 

Today involved a lot of water.

Rain pummeled the area, and as we drove to our doc’s office, we received several emergency alerts for tornado warnings.  When we arrived at VCU, several of the first floor employees looked at us puzzled.  “Where are you going?” one of them ventured as we hit the “up” button on the elevator.  “Third floor,” Justin explained.  “Well I’m not sure they’re open, because we just saw a funnel cloud out our window.”  I promptly told them they would be there, because there was no way our team would be missing this appointment.

Everyone was in attendance, and we were whisked to the same back area as last visit.  Justin got to also don special “sterile” clothing this time.  Dr. Lucidi came in and showed us some wonderful sheets of paper.  The paper contained our beautiful little embryos each numbered 1-15 (if you’re doing the math, five of them didn’t make it).  Similar to Moody’s ratings, each embryo had a number and a series of letters to designate the “health” of the embryo.  #1 was rated 5AA, the highest the rating could go and the embryo that would be transferred today.

He then again gave us the option of implanting more than one embryo, emphasizing the chance of getting pregnant goes from 50% with one embryo to only 55% with two embryos.  In other words, the chance really doesn’t increase but the health risks go much higher.  With “1 embryo” circled and signed, it was showtime.

Even my favorite stirrups didn’t miss the event.  No fun drugs or anesthesia this time.  Justin held my hand as the little blastocyst was placed.  They don’t insert it in the uterine lining, because at Day 5, the little embryo needs to find its way.  It reminds me of a little sea turtle searching for the ocean.

The second version of water came as tears.  We got to see the little “bubble” and where the embryo should be (see above ultrasound).  Needless to say, it was a bit emotional; however, Justin and I understand that we are far from success.  Rather, today was one step closer to a hope…and we’re completely content with that for now.

Nothing is official until Wednesday, 9/26 at which point we’ll confirm the pregnancy with a blood test.  In the meantime, we get to at least pretend we’re expecting.  No drinking, no running, and I have an excuse to go to bed at 8:30.  I’ll take it!

We’re getting into heavier and more technical stuff.  If anything I’ve discussed is confusing, comment below or email me.  I’d love to address your questions to the best of my abilities, because when Justin and I are so thick in the forest, sometimes all we can see is the trees.  I promise others have the same queries.

Since I entitled this PSA and in the air of the doomsday media, I also thought I should add a picture of Hurricane Florence.  There she is.  I always wonder what the Indian Tribes and Colonials did without hurricane, snowpocalypse and other invigorating forecasting.  Deep thoughts by Kristin…carry on.

No embryo transfer yet.  But let me back up a day or two.

Thursday, was pretty painful still, but not the same type of ache from the prior afternoon.  It felt more like I-couldn’t-breathe type of pain.  Let’s see if I can explain this better.  My thought was since things in the abdomen were a little swollen from Wednesday’s trauma, the resulting pressure was pushing on my diaphragm (the muscle that allows you to breathe).  Regardless, this was nothing a little food (I sense a theme here) and shopping couldn’t cure. Mom was my conspirer with said plan.

I was out to lunch with my brother and her when we got “The Call.”  I was expecting about a third of the eggs to be viable and fertilized, meaning about 9-ish would be available to use.  “Great news!” exclaimed the nurse, “You had 22 mature eggs and 20 of them fertilized.”  She went on to elaborate that with so many eggs, Dr. Lucidi would probably wait until day five.  The longer timeline allows the embryologists to continue to monitor for any deficiencies.  Below you can see the difference between Day 3 and Day 5.

I included two, because I like pictures.  Diagrams are helpful; however, the real thing is just beautiful and elegant, don’t you think?

And she was correct.  Because we got the call yesterday: the embryo transfer will be on Monday.  Now, this doesn’t mean all 20 go in; I will not be the next sensation that hits US Weekly.

Many months ago, we discussed this amongst ourselves as well as with the docs.  We’d entertained the idea of twins, but the docs were strongly against this.  The thought being that due to my age (young…thank you very much), superb health (they may not have exactly said it that way, but I know what they inferred), and all-around low risk, placing one embryo is the safest route.  With twins, there can be many complications for both the children (low birth weight, premature, birth defects, etc.) and the mother.  Why risk it?  So one embryo transfer it is!

This cycle we are doing is called a “fresh transfer” compared to a “frozen transfer.” This means the “chosen one” will have never been frozen.  Again, this differs between various reproductive endocrinologists.  According to the literature, frozen and fresh have comparable success rates.  The main reason many like to do frozen is the embryos go through a genetic screening and you can choose the sex.  With this fresh transfer, we do neither.

I know you’re thinking, “What?!?  You’re going through all this and not getting that dang thing genetically screened?”  All I can say is we trust our doc and the literature.  It’s extremely rare to have a genetic deficiency (thank you evolution).  Justin and I were both genetically screened before this even got started.  I have absolutely no carriers for any diseases, which means the only way something could happen to an egg would come from a spontaneous mutation (if you clicked on that link to read more about spontaneous mutation, good on ya).  Also, embryos are “mosaic.” Let me see how I can explain this (here comes a picture).

Ok, so let’s say an embryo is the above diagram, and yellow is considered “improper genes.” When they go to take a teenie sample of the embryo, if they poke into the yellow (there’s no actual color on the embryo, so it’s simply by chance), then the test comes back saying it’s a “bad embryo.”  This means it’s discarded.

Now in nature, the “bad genes” or in this example, the yellow, is typically overridden by the healthy genes and so life goes on and you have a healthy baby.  The risk is, when you do genetic testing on something that’s only a few hundred cells, you risk getting more false negatives, meaning a lot of people throw out embryos that could be perfectly healthy.  Keep in mind, like any normal pregnancy, this embryo → fetus will have genetic testing along the way.  Lastly, it’s expensive (around another $1,000).  Price doesn’t really play too much of a role these days, but we just couldn’t justify the cost when viewing it with all the other pieces of the puzzle…or mosaic if you will.

To conclude, I just want to take a moment to discuss how things have been changing in the Edwards’ household over the last few days.  We have been much more affectionate with each other, because now looking back, the stress of not having a little one was a bit tough on the both of us.

We’re not drinking at all anymore.  Not that we drank that much originally, but even a little slowed us down.  This has led to extremely productive weekends, including vacation forecasting for 2019, replacing a broken garbage disposal, Halloween costume planning, writing thank you notes, sending birthday cards, eating and cooking almost every meal (we were going out about once a day between lunch and dinner), and perhaps most importantly, I believe the term is: nesting.

The last few hours of each night, when we would be typically tom-catting around, I research baby products.  The amount of information is staggering, but in trolling around the internet, I finally found one website I like a lot.  Even if you’re out of the arena of having babies, I encourage you to still check it out. She’s a funny writer, but perhaps more importantly, I can’t believe how much junk, I mean options are out there.  It makes you wonder how the baby boomers survived without:

• Changing pads that monitored milk consumption and weight
• Socks that measured the oxygen levels at night to make sure you didn’t succumb to SIDS
• Cameras that monitor the humidity of the room
• Seat belts

All this technology almost makes you feel guilty for not purchasing it, because you think, “Well I want my baby to have the best.”  But then the practical side roars, “I’m not paying $350 for a baby swing that will last six months.”  And I do feel guilty looking at this stuff since we’re not officially pregnant, but I just can’t seem slash want to stop myself.  Anyway, we’re having a blast with it, right honey?  I’ll update everyone tomorrow on how the transfer goes!