New here! Well, not new here but my first time posting. Sorry, I'm very emotional today - this is going to be a long one!!
Here's my story - I'm 41 years old. I have a 16 year old son who's amazing and brightens up my life every single day. In 2013, my husband and I were very surprised to find out that we were pregnant, and it only took about half of a second for us to fall in love with the idea of adding on to our family. At our twelve week ultrasound, we were given the sad news that things didn't work out for us. This was our first loss and it broke our hearts. As everyone who has experienced a miscarriage knows, this loss can be overwhelming. We had just been so excited about the pregnancy, talked about names, talked about future plans - it hurt us so much. After that, we were struck with two difficult years, our dog that was a part of our family for 16 years and that we absolutely loved, passed away of cancer. Then shortly after, my mother-in-law passed away unexpectedly; and then my own mother ended up in the hospital fighting for her life with Parathyroid Cancer. Luckily she fought through it and is still with us today, but all this to say that we went through hell and back and suffered tremendous heartache. And through it all, we continued to grieve the loss of our baby. So we scheduled an appointment with the OFC and were just about to start the process of IUI when we found out we were pregnant again! I cannot even express how happy we were. We felt like this was a gift, a blessing, that our prayers had finally been answered and that things were looking up for us. I'm diabetic, so we had several ultrasounds, saw our beautiful baby swim around the screen and during one appointment it almost looked like our baby even waved at us. It was beautiful. We even found out it was a girl through a 3D Ultrasound. Needless to say, we were over the moon. My son was so excited that he was going to have a little sister. It was such an exciting time. Things progressed like a normal pregnancy over the first 20 weeks… OB-GYN appointments, registering for baby things, choosing a name, etc. But this all changed on our 21 week check-up and ultrasound. The ultrasound seemed to take a long time and our technician was very quiet. Something felt wrong. Once the ultrasound was done, we went in to see our OB-GYN and she informed us that she was concerned that our little girl might have Choroid Plexus Cysts. CPC by itself is typically harmless but she was concerned that it could mean something else. The ultrasound noted a few "soft markers" (baby was measuring on the small side, clenched fists and heart issues) and she highly recommended that we do an amniocentesis immediately. The results of the amniocentesis came back 4 days later and we learned that our baby girl had CPC's on both sides of the brain and that she tested positive for Trisomy 18. About a week after we got the results, she was gone. Just like that. This was last February 2015. My husband and I were both deeply devastated with the news, so was my son, so was our families. Our daughter was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a chromosome disorder that can randomly happen in any pregnancy. It broke me, I guess our Angel was just too beautiful for earth. Devastation is not even strong enough of a word to express what we went through. It was the worst heartbreak of my life. I didn't leave the house or talk to anyone for 11 weeks. I don't know if my heart will ever heal. Her name was going to be Sophie, and there is not a day that goes by that I don't think of her, talk to her and wish she was here with us. We love her, and she will forever be in our hearts. <3
My husband and I both went through chromosome testing with CHEO and they were able to confirm that there is nothing in our genes that caused this or to show that what happened last time will happen again. So we decided to try IVF because now we are at the point where we want this more than ever.
Here we are one year later, going through IVF. This is obviously my first time with IVF. Wowww… what a roller coaster ride of emotions. I have been doing everything I can to make this work, from diet and eating all the proper food to increase the chances of fertility. I have been doing acupuncture, thankfully I love it and it has done wonders for my stress and anxiety (well… until today that is).
So here goes…
IVF #1:
My egg retrieval was on February 29th
They retrieved 8 follicles, 5 mature eggs and all 5 fertilized (ICSI)
All 5 made it to day 5
2 blastocysts were transferred on March 5th
I had some cramping a couple of days after the 5DT and some spotting on 3DPT. Last week my breasts were so sore but this week I'm not feeling any symptoms at all, only a bit of nausea once or twice.
I am now on 10DPT and trying to stay calm. I have taken HPT every day for the last 4 days and each time I get a BFN. I am feeling discouraged and emotional. I just can't imagine it not working out, at least for one of them.
Tomorrow is my Beta Blood Test and I am extremely worried!!!! Any advice or similar IVF stories and experiences would be wonderful to hear right now. I would love your feedback.
Ladies, I truly feel that we're all amazing! It's not easy being a woman and dealing with what were going through, mentally, emotionally and physically. I'll spread some baby dust with all of you on this site and wish you lots of luck too!!!
xoxo
