ivf ftw

The psychologist at my RE's office told me that if my transfer fails, it will be awful...but she's more worried about me if it's a success.

She talked about our baby making it to 6 weeks, heartbeat, then 8 weeks, then 9 weeks when I can stop the PIO shots, then 12 weeks when I'll be returned to the care of my OB, then 20 weeks, then 24...and so on and so on and I couldn't stop crying, and eventually I said, "I just can't imagine ever getting that far." And she said, "I know."

Three years of trying, two of absolutely perfect timing, 8 months of letrozole/trigger, and 2 IUI's resulting in: one miscarriage, one ectopic and removal of right tube, and five chemicals...and I'm ready to admit that something's not working. There's a thing that's wrong with me or there's a thing that's wrong with our embryos but there's a thing that's wrong. We have killer insurance and I'm at my wits' end and broken from the inside out and well, it's time to give it our all and our best shot so we're doing in vitro fucking fertilization. Starting in October.

Even though I researched this I didn't know what it entails, and what it entails is this, best-case scenario: self-administered shots to the abdomen for several days to plump up your ovaries and produce lots and lots of beautiful follicles, most of which hopefully contain a perfect maturing egg. You give yourself another shot that triggers your ovaries to release all of those eggies, then roughly 34-36 hours later it's to the doctor's office for Egg Retrieval Day, where they make a little incision and suck out the eggs and fertilize them in a lab using technology that I am grateful for and which makes my head spin, then they age the "embabies" (I am fond of this term) to three days, then to five, then they freeze them and biopsy them and send them for genetic testing. I get a little rest. THEN I start taking estrogen pills and injecting myself with a truly terrifying needle, right in my butt, which is all supposed to prime my body for Transfer Day, where they put the thing back in me and hopefully it implants and bam, I'm pregnant. Scary butt shots until 9 weeks but I'm pregnant so I do not fucking care.

Best case scenario.

Worst case scenario is that I don't respond to the medication and if I do respond maybe I ovulate too early and the whole thing is a bust, and maybe I ovulate on time but they aren't able to retrieve any mature eggs and maybe none of our embryos make it to three days or five days and maybe none of them test genetically "normal" and maybe they don't survive the freeze or maybe they don't survive the thaw or maybe somebody sneezes in the petri dish or maybe I get OHSS and have to stay in bed for five weeks or maybe I get pregnant and it's another chemical or maybe I get pregnant and miscarry in my second or third trimester or maybe the birth hurts or kills me and maybe I never get to take a baby, MY baby, home from the hospital and I don't ever have children and don't ever recover from the trauma of these last several years but most specifically from the trauma of my failed ivf cycles.

I am completely overwhelmed, I am so excited, and I am beyond terrified. I have isolated myself to an astonishing extent and I mostly speak to my husband, my mother and sister, and a few friends who persist in contacting me for some reason.

I'm going to write all about my ivf experience. Some who read might not agree with this crazy science (I am open to discussion but not to ignorance), some might gain insight, some might stop after the first paragraph because it's just too boring, but I'm documenting all of it here because this process affects so many of us and it is kept silent and the lead-up to this is the worst hardest most inexplicable thing I've ever been through. Maybe this starts or continues a conversation or something, maybe it's purely gratuitous self-indulgence but at this point and in this pain and with this renewed hope I do not care.

Been on birth control pills for a couple of weeks, hysteroscopy last Friday, slated for baseline ultrasound and bloodwork on October 2nd and will start injections (stimming) on October 4th.

Here we go.