By the Grace of God, There are 5 Percenters!

massiahl

It has been sometime since I've posted on The Bump.  After my miscarriage, I was fortunate to find a group of women who understood my misgivings and pain.  I thank all the women who have been of support and who've shared their own stories with me.  This site was a blessing for me when I didn't think anyone else understood.  This has been a very emotional and exhausting ride - but one that has ended in success.  As of today, I enter my third trimester with a healthy, chromosomally-nornal, very active little girl.  And she is the result of using my own eggs!!!  The third time on IVF was the charm.  

Like most women over 40, I was given the statistics - less than 5% chance given my age at the time - and was trying to prepare for the possibility that it may not work.  Complicating things for me is the fact that I have a chromosomal inversion which makes me susceptible to miscarriages regardless of my age.  The true benefit that being younger would have given me would have been a greater egg supply to choose from had I tried having a child then - which I wasn't.  My IVF doctor was a brilliant but frank physician who was supportive of my decisions. The only thing that I asked him to was to run my tests and be honest with me.  If my tests showed that I had factors that made it impossible for me to have a child that was biologically mine then I was prepared to take an alternative course of action.  I just wanted to take a shot at it.

Fortunately for me, my blood work suggested that I was a good candidate for IVF.  I responded well to the medications (Menupur and Follistim taken together) and was able to produce eggs. My doctor did make a recommendation that I am glad to this day that I followed: he not only suggested PGD (pre-genetic testing) but that I wait until Day 5 when the embryos reached blastocyst stage to have them tested.  The risk associated with that is that there may not be any embryos left to test as they may die off; however, if the embryos do make it that far, there is a greater likelihood for their survival.  I am so glad that I listened.  Based on the first retrieval, I produced 9 eggs, had 7 embryos, and 5 blastocysts.  Under the microscope, the embryos looked perfect.  By the time they were tested, all were shown to have chromosomal abnormalities - to the point that there was no way that they could have survived in utero.  Had I not tested and had a Day 3 transfer, I would have subjected myself to another miscarriage which I don't think I could have taken.

By the time the second retrieval happened, I had already made the decision to try and get some sense of control over me and not the process.  If you're like me, the hardest part about this was the sense that I was not in control of anything, including my body. Anything that I've ever wanted, I just set my mind and back to it and it was a done deal. Not this.  So, I investigated and adopted nutritional options and health options (vitamins, protein shakes, diet eliminations, and acupuncture - which I would strongly recommend) that would increase my chances of getting pregnant.  EDITED BY MOD is an excellent source of information.  This time around, I produced 14 eggs, had 10 embryos and 5 blastocysts.  Again, the blastocysts were PGD tested on Day 5-6 and all were found to be chromosomally abnormal.

After much soul-searching, I asked my doctor what he thought about my trying again.  He was honest with me.  He told me that I knew my odds from the beginning and the difficulty of achieving this but he could not tell me not to move forward with another retrieval because I responded well to the medications and reserve was not an issue for me.  There were two issues at hand: how much more was I willing to emotionally and physically undergo and cost.  Bottom line: it was my decision.  I decided that I needed a third try - either 3 strikes, I'm out or 3rd time is the charm.  At least I could say that I gave it my best shot.

When I decided to move forward with another retrieval, I also decided that the time had come to look at donor eggs as an alternative.  I pursued both options as parallel courses. Instead of waiting for a live donor, I went to EDITED BY MOD, the premiere supplier of donor eggs to fertility clinics around the country because the thought of wasting anymore time just pissed me off. I loved EDITED BY MOD experience. The benefits: less expensive - you don't have to pay for someone else's medications or adjust your fertility calendar to theirs or deal with the donor flake out that can happen even after the process has started.  Better yet, EDITED BY MOD provides the physiological and psychological profile of your selected donor - the same kind of information you would get from a live donor.     I even found and purchased my donor eggs while I was waiting for my retrieval. The woman who donated her eggs provided a picture of herself as a little girl.  I swear she looked like she could have been related to my family.  I took this as a sign that things were looking up.

For the third retrieval, my fertility doctor himself did the retrieval instead of his associates.  This time around, I produced 15 eggs, 9 embryos and 5 blastocysts. Normally, when I got bad news regarding the results, the call came in on Friday afternoon.  I would then call my husband, leave work, we would go for tequila shots and I could spend the better part of the weekend nursing my wounds.  This time the call came in on a Monday morning - the first day of my coming back from taking time off to prepare and recover from the retrieval.  I did not know how I was going to go through the day with bad news.  I took a breath, called my doctor and said "OK, lay it on me doc."  I could hear his happiness on the phone.  Out of 5 blastocysts, I had two chromosomally normal blastocysts in one family of blastocysts which is unheard of according to him.  I don't remember much of what I said to him except, "Be honest.  You didn't think it was going to work, did you?"  To which he happily replied, "No, I didn't but I've never been so happy to be wrong."  I had my transfer on November 12 and on November 21 found out that I was pregnant.  

I can't believe that was 7 months ago.  Since then, I have undergone every test imaginable that is associated with pregnancy - high risk pregnancies in particular.   It took everything I have to write this out - cautiousness on my part I suppose - but I wanted women to know that amidst the pain, tears and frustration, there is room for grace and miracles.  I thank God every day for my gift and pray for her safe delivery in this world.  I pray that grace with be all of you.

 

TJ1979

@massiahl You have a private message.

Thank you.