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FuzzyDust

Hello all, 

I've been obsessively reading on other people's experience, but haven't gotten to start participating until now.

Here is my story:

My periods went away when I was about 16. Apparently my body stopped producing FSH, so I don't grow follicles/ovulate/grow lining/have hormonal cycles. No PMS - YAY!

Then, at 30 years old, I got married for the first time and we decided to try having babies.

By the way, I'm needle-phobic, and I get close to passing out every time I need to give blood.

So we decided to do an IUI attempt, as it sounded less invasive. Doc said - about 10 days of shots to prep.
Well, I did 30 day, because we started with 75IU Menopure, and the follicles just didn't grow big enough. After over 3 weeks of daily injections torture, RE doubled my dose. I quickly grew 10 big follicles and my cycle was cancelled in fear of multiple pregnancies. 

Which was a good thing, as I a year later we got divorced. But at least I now knew that FSH was the only missing ingredient, and everything else woke up and seemed to work as expected once the hormone was added.

Then, last year I got much re-married to a guy whom I'm willing to suffer IVF for We already knew that there is no such a thing as TTC naturally for us, so at the end of last year we went back to my RE and made a plan to have IVF cycle in Feb 2017.

The hope was - do IVF, get enough embryos to have 2 kids in the future, freeze all, enjoy the summer 2017, then start FETs. I felt like a child who hadn't had a chance to fail yet. My husband is very optimistic, and all I have is hope that it works out and I wouldn't have to ever ever ever ever do IVF ever again. Ever. 

Since I had such a good response to larger doze of Menopure during the IUI, my RE immediately put me into "OHSS risk category", which means that they wouldn't do fresh transfer. They also decided to do ICSI due to a possible reduced morphology male factor. And also a plan to do the PGS testing to further increased our chances with the resulting embryos.

In February I had 12 days of stimulation (about 150IU GonalF + 75IU Menopure/day + ovulation suppression shots for last 5 days), then triggered with HCG - half the dose to reduce OHSS risk (by then I had something like 70 follicles in total, but only maybe 15 of the mature size), and then I had a retrieval on March 3rd.

They retrieved 13 eggs. 10 mature.  7 Fertilized. By Day 3 we still had all 7 kicking - 6 of 'good' quality, and 1 'fair'

The day after retrieval my upper abdominal area swell up (the lower was already swollen during stimulation) and I looked quite pregnant... so ironic. On day 3 after the retrieval I started getting monster cramps that would last 5-10 mins at a time and often come in the middle of the night. I felt like someone is trying to tear out my insides. On days 4 and 5 I had to go back to the clinic for more blood work and a fancy ultrasound to check the blood flow to ovaries to eliminate the possibility of torsion.  They confirmed OHSS and in the report it said "massively enlarged ovaries" and  "large volume free fluid". Yay me... Well, at least the blood flow was normal.

On the same day (day 5 after retrieval) I got a call from Embryology that 5 of our little embryos arrested, so we'd probably have one ready to freeze by Day 6. And possibly two. Maybe. It was so crushing to hear - all this pain, and chances were dropping like flies.

That night I finally was able to sleep without monster cramps coming back. And in the morning I got another call from embryology saying that they biopsied and froze 3 (!!!!!) embryos  Apparently one little fella perked up and caught up!!!! I'm so happy

Now we're on a 1-2 weeks wait for the PGS results, and I'm hoping for good news. I'm 33 now, so apparently statistically 65% of embryos should be normal. But it's all very personal, so statistics doesn't really guarantee anything here.

I go between hopeful and hopeless. Sometimes I truly believe it'll work on a first try, and sometimes I feel like we'll have to go through a lot of heart-break and keep failing. It's a very surreal feeling that there are 3 embryos in this world that share mine and my husband's DNA. They are our potential future babies, and I'm already in love with them, but at the same time this hope is very fragile and there are so many more steps to be taken that might not work.


I started blogging my process so that I could go back and re-visit my own journey. It helps with the anxiety quite a bit, but I also realized that I need people to talk to through the process, and that's why I'm here. Hello, everybody! I'm looking forward to being a member of this very supportive and informative community.