Matt and Catherine met, fell in love and married. They decided to have children and then an egg popped out of the ovary and a sperm swam up the fallopian tube. And… oh, wait… this is the wrong story.
Let me start again (the whole Matt and Catherine met, fell in love and married part is still valid).
See… conception for us included not only me, Matt, his sperm, my questionable-quality-prematurely-aged (hey, who you callin’ old?) eggs… but also a Reproductive Endocrinologist (Dr. D), two embryologists, multiple anesthesiologists, a phlebotomist, a statistician, an IVF coordinator, a billing clerk and innumerable nurses and ultrasound techs… oh, and a couple of receptionists.
Forget the village, people…
It took a Fertility Center to conceive our children.
For several years we have been doing the TTC (trying to conceive) thing. You know, prop your hips up, go on vacation (yes, those who suggested this as the answer to our childlessness knew essentially NOTHING about us…). Oh and I can’t forget… the ever-famous “just relax and it will happen”. After a few years of relaxing, traveling and propping, we moved onto the brave new world of ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies).
Yes, see… the “average” woman gets pregnant by the third IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) cycle. But those that know me well know I am anything but “average” (Mrs. Jorgenson, my third grade teacher would agree :-) ). No, I was apparently on a mission to determine how many failed fresh IVF cycles a woman would be able to do before being carted off to the funny farm. In case you are interested… I do believe the answer is seven :-).
Our IVF journey has been filled with medications, appointments, blood draws, ultrasounds and surgeries, along with a rollercoaster of hope and repeated disappointments. Matt has become quite adept with needles (Catherine, of course on the receiving end…).
In many ways our IVF adventure was typical.
But in oh, so many (important) ways it has been quite extraordinary.
There were signs along the way.
First off, the whole Respiratory Arrest debacle.
After the egg retrieval surgery for my second IVF I stopped breathing in the recovery room. You know… turned blue and all. The nice people at the Fertility Center resuscitated me (thanks, Dr. D!). No one had ever heard of this happening before. Not in the combined 30+ years of practice of the two REs (Reproductive Endocrinologists) who, along with about 8 staff members were staring at me with worried looks on their faces when I woke up. “What?”, I asked, “What’s wrong?’.
A fluke thing. One in a million.
It should have been a sign…
Oh, but there were other things that made me an “interesting” patient (by the way, not a good thing to be at a fertility center…). For example, after the first couple of IVFs failed, I started on a new protocol. Kind of semi-experimental. The protocol itself wasn’t unusual, but the timing of the embryo freezing and transfer was different (blah, blah, blah, stuff you don’t need to understand). They believed it would be particularly beneficial for “poor responders” (something else you don’t want to be at a fertility center…).
Sign us up!
We did the cycle and it appeared to be going well… until it didn’t. Again we had a BFN (Big Fat Negative). Funny thing, though… I was the only patient that month on the new protocol NOT to get pregnant. Yeah… funny. In fact, it took two more cycles before another woman received a BFN. Just something else I am famous for at the fertility center…
But I suppose you aren’t reading this blog to learn new acronyms or hear the unusual things about our TTC adventures. You are here because you heard we actually got pregnant. Ahhh… but keeping in line with my Most Interesting Patient status… that too was not typical.
If you are interested in an accounting of our 7 IVF cycles, you will find it here. It includes all the technical stuff that infertiles will understand and others will be confused by. Knock yourselves out.
For the rest of you fertiles, suffice it to say that we did 7 IVF cycles, which included 6 minor surgeries (one cycle was canceled before the surgery). Instead of putting embryos back at the end of each cycle as we did in the first few cycles, the embryos from the last three cycles were frozen just after fertilization. They were all thawed at once in February of ’08 (that would be the Mega-Thaw). The embryologists grew them out for a few days to what is know as “blastocyst” stage, and then the hope was that we would have some to transfer into my uterus (with any luck--- which had previously escaped us--- a singleton or twins would be delivered 9 months later), and some to freeze in order to produce #2 or #3 child. That was the hope.
As you have noticed, things with us don’t regularly go as planned.
We did have embryos to transfer. There were four.
One great quality (our first Grade 1 ever--- yippee!), one good quality, and two “ehhh” quality. The latter two were not of sufficient quality to freeze… so if not transferred they would be destroyed. They were not likely to result in a pregnancy. Considering our history of failed cycles and my (ahem) age, the plan originally was to transfer three. There ensued a discussion in the transfer room between me, Matt, Dr. D and one of the embryologists. We were given the choice whether to transfer three (and if so, which one of the two borderlines would be transferred) or all four. Since this was the bottom of the ninth inning (did I mention this was our LAST chance? I was retiring from IVF), and not a single embryo had in the past taken up residence in my uterus… we eventually went with all four.
But I had concerns.
“Triplets I could handle. But quadruplets? That’s a different matter”, I said.
Dr. D and the embryologist both smiled. We all knew the chances were… well… one in a million that would happen.
With our history, the chance of all four embryos implanting and developing into fetuses?
“Essentially nil”, per Dr. D and the embryologist.
We agreed with them.
“Transfer them all”, I said.
That whole “one in a million” thing should have caught my attention :-).
Let me start again (the whole Matt and Catherine met, fell in love and married part is still valid).
See… conception for us included not only me, Matt, his sperm, my questionable-quality-prematurely-aged (hey, who you callin’ old?) eggs… but also a Reproductive Endocrinologist (Dr. D), two embryologists, multiple anesthesiologists, a phlebotomist, a statistician, an IVF coordinator, a billing clerk and innumerable nurses and ultrasound techs… oh, and a couple of receptionists.
Forget the village, people…
It took a Fertility Center to conceive our children.
For several years we have been doing the TTC (trying to conceive) thing. You know, prop your hips up, go on vacation (yes, those who suggested this as the answer to our childlessness knew essentially NOTHING about us…). Oh and I can’t forget… the ever-famous “just relax and it will happen”. After a few years of relaxing, traveling and propping, we moved onto the brave new world of ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies).
Yes, see… the “average” woman gets pregnant by the third IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) cycle. But those that know me well know I am anything but “average” (Mrs. Jorgenson, my third grade teacher would agree :-) ). No, I was apparently on a mission to determine how many failed fresh IVF cycles a woman would be able to do before being carted off to the funny farm. In case you are interested… I do believe the answer is seven :-).
Our IVF journey has been filled with medications, appointments, blood draws, ultrasounds and surgeries, along with a rollercoaster of hope and repeated disappointments. Matt has become quite adept with needles (Catherine, of course on the receiving end…).
In many ways our IVF adventure was typical.
But in oh, so many (important) ways it has been quite extraordinary.
There were signs along the way.
First off, the whole Respiratory Arrest debacle.
After the egg retrieval surgery for my second IVF I stopped breathing in the recovery room. You know… turned blue and all. The nice people at the Fertility Center resuscitated me (thanks, Dr. D!). No one had ever heard of this happening before. Not in the combined 30+ years of practice of the two REs (Reproductive Endocrinologists) who, along with about 8 staff members were staring at me with worried looks on their faces when I woke up. “What?”, I asked, “What’s wrong?’.
A fluke thing. One in a million.
It should have been a sign…
Oh, but there were other things that made me an “interesting” patient (by the way, not a good thing to be at a fertility center…). For example, after the first couple of IVFs failed, I started on a new protocol. Kind of semi-experimental. The protocol itself wasn’t unusual, but the timing of the embryo freezing and transfer was different (blah, blah, blah, stuff you don’t need to understand). They believed it would be particularly beneficial for “poor responders” (something else you don’t want to be at a fertility center…).
Sign us up!
We did the cycle and it appeared to be going well… until it didn’t. Again we had a BFN (Big Fat Negative). Funny thing, though… I was the only patient that month on the new protocol NOT to get pregnant. Yeah… funny. In fact, it took two more cycles before another woman received a BFN. Just something else I am famous for at the fertility center…
But I suppose you aren’t reading this blog to learn new acronyms or hear the unusual things about our TTC adventures. You are here because you heard we actually got pregnant. Ahhh… but keeping in line with my Most Interesting Patient status… that too was not typical.
If you are interested in an accounting of our 7 IVF cycles, you will find it here. It includes all the technical stuff that infertiles will understand and others will be confused by. Knock yourselves out.
For the rest of you fertiles, suffice it to say that we did 7 IVF cycles, which included 6 minor surgeries (one cycle was canceled before the surgery). Instead of putting embryos back at the end of each cycle as we did in the first few cycles, the embryos from the last three cycles were frozen just after fertilization. They were all thawed at once in February of ’08 (that would be the Mega-Thaw). The embryologists grew them out for a few days to what is know as “blastocyst” stage, and then the hope was that we would have some to transfer into my uterus (with any luck--- which had previously escaped us--- a singleton or twins would be delivered 9 months later), and some to freeze in order to produce #2 or #3 child. That was the hope.
As you have noticed, things with us don’t regularly go as planned.
We did have embryos to transfer. There were four.
One great quality (our first Grade 1 ever--- yippee!), one good quality, and two “ehhh” quality. The latter two were not of sufficient quality to freeze… so if not transferred they would be destroyed. They were not likely to result in a pregnancy. Considering our history of failed cycles and my (ahem) age, the plan originally was to transfer three. There ensued a discussion in the transfer room between me, Matt, Dr. D and one of the embryologists. We were given the choice whether to transfer three (and if so, which one of the two borderlines would be transferred) or all four. Since this was the bottom of the ninth inning (did I mention this was our LAST chance? I was retiring from IVF), and not a single embryo had in the past taken up residence in my uterus… we eventually went with all four.
But I had concerns.
“Triplets I could handle. But quadruplets? That’s a different matter”, I said.
Dr. D and the embryologist both smiled. We all knew the chances were… well… one in a million that would happen.
With our history, the chance of all four embryos implanting and developing into fetuses?
“Essentially nil”, per Dr. D and the embryologist.
We agreed with them.
“Transfer them all”, I said.
That whole “one in a million” thing should have caught my attention :-).
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