Let's start off with a little bit about me and our journey to date. I'm a little late starting this but what the heck, I thought I'd give it a try. My husband and I have been trying to conceive since June 2008 so that makes it over 2.5 years. I always had a feeling that conceiving could be difficult just because it was something I wanted so much.
In June 2009, we went to see the doctor because it had been a year of trying with no results he decided to refer us to the fertility clinic. Our first appointment was September 2009 where we met with the doctor who reassured us that because I had regular cycles and was still young he was confident we would conceive eventually and sent us for a bunch of tests.
The results of the tests came back in November 2009 that my ovaries don't know how old I'm supposed to be. Apparantly the clock is definately ticking as I have the ovaries of a 40 year old! We also have mild-moderate male factor so those 2 issues combines explain why we're here. The doctor gave us 2 choices. Either IVF or IUI. IVF has a much higher success rate (50%) vs IUI (15%) the catch is that IUIs are WAY cheaper than IVF and less invasive. We decided then to proceed with IUI and signed the consent forms and went for training on administering injections.
First IUI was in Jan 2010. I responded nicely to the drugs but my body decided to ovulate a little prematurely but we still proceeded with the IUI as we had 7 follicles growing and hoped at least one would mature enough in the few days that passed. Miracle of miracles, we found out we were pregnant! I was crushed 2 weeks later to find out we miscarried.
Second IUI May 2010. Repeated same dose as January, but my body didn't respond quite as well and only ended up with one mature follicle and that round did not work. Crushed again :(
Third IUI June 2010. Hoping that third time is the charm, but nope, with an increased dosage and 2 nice follicles, nothing, nada happened.
Time to move on to IVF. July 2010 I call in my day 1 to the clinic and we started the Estrogen Priming Protocol. Everything progressed nicely and I ended up responding way better to the meds than the doctors ever thought I would. We were able to retrieve 15 eggs (instead of the 3-6 predicted), 12 fertilized. 9 were still kicking around 3 days later so we decided to wait until day 5. On day 5, August 30th, we transfered two early blasts of medium quality (so they were a little slow growing and of ok quality).
10 days later I took a test and low and behold there was a very faint line. I knew right then and there however that something was wrong, the line was too faint. Sure enough, bloodtests revealed that my beta HCG was about 1/3 of where it should have been at that point. We thought we were repeating what happened in January. However, my levels just kept going up and up. At 5.5 weeks I started getting pains on my right side and got really scared. The clinic brought me in that day for an emergency ultra sound which revealed nothing in my uterus and something "dangly" near my right ovary which was most likely the pregnancy but difficult to tell at that point. We thought at that point that my body was taking care of things on it's own since my beta started to finally stopped rising and then dropped.
4 days later had another blood test and my beta was rising again! Checked it 2 days later and still rising! What was going on?? Another ultra sound revealed that the mass beside my ovary was in fact growing and was a pregnancy sac in my tube. Crap it's ectopic for sure. We had 2 choices. Go for surgery right away or administer methotrexate (a cancer drug that attacks rapidly dividing cells). The metho has an 85% -90% success rate for someone in my position and was recommended by the doctor so we did that. Definately one of the worse days of my life. I felt like I was killing my baby :(
We had a few more bloodtests over the following week which revealed by beta had stopped rising but was barely dropping. Looks like I was not in that 85-90%. We had another dose of methotrexate given and the beta finally started to drop more. It took 5 more weeks for me to be out of the danger zone of my tube bursting and on Nov 17th my beta finally reached 0. My veins were definately thankfull after nearly 30 blood tests!
We are now embarking on our 2nd IVF. We are on the same protocol as last time so hopefully we get a similare amount of eggs but with better end results!
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