SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS!

Gosh I fall off the writing wagon quick, sorry for the delay!

So it begins. We left class with our detailed calendar in tow and began the IVF meds just two days later. It's kind of strange but the first thing that happens in this process is called suppression so I started off taking birth control pills, seems a little counter intuitive right? In conjunction with the birth control I also started on an antibiotic regimen for a week. That was a rough week. I don't handle strong antibiotics well and taking two of them together made me feel pretty darn sick. Feeling sick was not how I wanted to start this process and I hoped it wasn't a sign of worse things to come. Greg also was taking an antibiotic that thankfully didn't impact him in the slightest.

After the first week of antibiotics came my first shot, Lupron. Lupron overstimulates estrogen production and suppresses ovulation. I learned we basically tell my body to hold off on ovulating until the day the Doc wants it to happen then BAM we load me up with a different set up of hormones to force ovulation within a very small timeframe. So a suppressing we will go. I was pretty nervous. I sat at the kitchen table with all of my alcohol swabs, needles, syringes, gauze and was a little overwhelmed. I would use one needle to draw up a measurement of the medicine, swap needles, clean my skin then INJECT. Eeek! I watched the online tutorial over and over and finally just went for it and it really wasn't too bad. It really was just a tiny needle in my belly, I could do this. The Lupron shots themselves went well but I did get some massive headaches that had me wondering how on earth I was going to get through the next month.

After taking Lupron for a week I added in two more shots. Gonal F would come in the mornings and Menopur would be in the evenings with the Lupron. Gonal F is used to stimulate the follicles and egg production that naturally occurs every month. Typically women ovulate one egg, or two in some instances (that's how fraternal twins occur) and we are shooting for a heck of a lot more eggs. So taking Gonal F helps do that. The Menopur shot essentially helped to do the same thing. I continued with this triple shot cocktail for about nine more days. While on this cocktail of three shots I would head into our clinic about every other day and they would do an ultrasound and check out how my ovaries were looking, how the eggs were looking and do some bloodwork. When everything was reading how they wanted I was called and instructed to take two trigger shots and then we would go in within 36 hours of taking those shots and they would retrieve all of my eggs. If you are lucky you will hit a blood vessel and get one of these sweet bruises as a souvenir for awhile, a small price to pay though I told myself.

Things were looking really good so we stayed on schedule and I triggered Sunday, November, 22nd and had the eggs retrieved on Tuesday the 24th.

Retrieval day was not so much a fun day. I think what I didn't like the most was the type of anesthesia they use for the procedure. This is another outpatient procedure but this time they do not put you all of the way under. While I don't remember anything of the procedure itself other than walking back and laying down on the table, apparently you are responsive throughout the entire thing and able to follow instructions. Weird right? For the actual procedure my Doc inserts a needle connected with a suction device into the follicles and pulls out all of the eggs collecting them for fertilization. It was a pretty quick procedure and I recovered in a small waiting area with Greg by my side.

Apparently I was pretty emotional after the procedure and asked Greg to take a picture of me so we could remember what starting our family looked like. None of which I remember. While it's not a glamorous photo of me by any means I still think it's a great one and I am happy he took it.

What I do remember is being very concerned with how many eggs were retrieved. I thought, "If they got 16 eggs we for sure will get pregnant, I'm going to have a ton I just know it". That's when Greg told me they got 6. My heart sank. I felt like such a failure. 6? Are you sure they only got  6? He was, and I am pretty sure I cried. All this money, all those shots for 6 measly eggs? It was a rotten feeling but like always Greg was positive and not concerned at all about the 6 eggs. By this time I was recovered enough to get dressed and spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch in the basement. I did not get the memo on how crummy I would feel the rest of the day, it was pretty crummy.

At this point I started following some old wives tales and began eating copious amounts of avocado at the advice of my friend Sandy. After consulting the Google I found that there are some studies out there that say eating foods high in monosaturated fats can triple IVF success rates. Triple? I was in!

I also started taking the worst shot in the entire IVF process, progesterone in oil or PIO. This bad boy doesn't go in your belly but in your booty and the needle was fear inducing to say the least. All of my other needles were negligible in size, this one was an inch and a half long  to reach your booty muscle and the gauge was huge to allow the oil to flow through it. I was incredibly anxious, really almost sick to my stomach over it all. The nurse in class advised that our partners give the shot so it would go into the correct spot and to numb the area with ice first. If all went well I would take this shot every day for 13 weeks ... 13 WEEKS! Of course I had to start this over the Thanksgiving holiday so we were at my inlaws for the first shot. After watching lots of videos online and taking a big swig of courage I got out my ice pack and iced the area on down ... for about 15 minutes, this was a mistake. Greg and I prepared the shot and I am sure he was nervous as hell as I stood with my weight on one leg (video tip) and he injected the oil into my butt cheek. He could hardly push the oil through the syringe and soon a lump began to form. I had iced myself into oblivion. I froze my skin and the oil was freezing up after the injection as well. Thankfully it didn't hurt but I had a HUGE hard lump and freezer burn on my skin, back to the message boards I went, we had to find a better position and I had to ice less for the next one. Scouring the Google I found out lots of people actually heated their bums for 10 minutes prior to the injection and laid on a bed allowing all of your leg muscles to be relaxed, we tried this the next night and it greatly improved this rotten nightly routine.

Meanwhile back at the lab they injected my six eggs with Greg's sperm and we prayed that they would fertilize. We would find that three of the six eggs fertilized and we began to pray, pray and pray some more that our little embryos would grow and mature for the next five days making it to the transfer stage. Those were the longest five days of my life. 

PRAYERS FROM STANGERS

Back to the Bible study we go. Like I said me and a room of strangers more than twice my age talking about prayer and faith was a little intimidating at first. But soon I realized how much the women loved a younger person's perspective and how much I was growing listening to women who had matured so much in their faith. We were covering a book called, "The Power of Simple Prayer" by Joyce Meyer and one of the chapters we got to a chapter called, "Petition and Perseverance". Without getting into the nuts and bolts of the chapter itself while we were discussing it I felt very compelled to share with complete strangers what was going on in my life and how I was dealing with it. At the time I felt like all I did was talk to God, begging Him for a response or direction or a sign or anything and all I was getting was silence. So there I sat talking about these feelings in tears to all of these women and it was so freeing. I just barfed it all out. How mad I was at God, how frustrated I was with the doctor and what I felt like was bad diagnosis after bad diagnosis. Let me tell you, they were awesome. Soon I heard another story of infertility, another of loss and so much support. These people were so loving and at the end of the night they all prayed for me and came over and gave me hugs and told me all these wonderful things about me. It was amazing and I left that night finally feeling a sense of relief, a sense that we could take on this next step and as long as a door was open that I could go through it and maybe that was the answer I was looking for. The door for IVF was open so inside we went.

After getting through the fibroid surgery we were scheduled for an IVF class. The weekend before that class I kind of lost my mind. We had a friend's wedding to attend and I had been going through a few tumultuous weeks of poor work environment and low self esteem so I reacted like my college self and drank far too much. As I was getting sick and recovering from the wedding I was crying to Greg about how I just didn't want to feel anything anymore and how I got drunk so I could not deal with my life for a night. Whelp that was a problem. Murph was worried about me and my coping mechanism of choice as I had picked up the bottle a few times more often than usual over the summer as well. It was nothing serious but we wanted to make sure it didn't go down that path ever so I swore off drinking for awhile. You know it's getting to a low point when you are having these discussions with your husband, am I right? I also realized that a hangover at 31 is much less fun than the ones at 26 where you and your bestie spend the day eating McDonalds watching bad rom coms in your PJs on the couch. But I digress.... Let's get back to IVF class.

So the last week in October Greg and I spent an afternoon learning about the science behind IVF and received a calendar that dictated a slew of shots and antibiotics that I would need to be taking over the course of the next four weeks. We watched as the nurse demonstrated how to give yourself the shots and it's an understatement to say my head was spinning. Yeah I have a lot of ear piercings and a tattoo, but shots never have really sat well with me. I decided that I need to buck up and move past the needles to seeing what could potentially be on the other side of these shots, which was our family. I could do it. Well, I think I could anyway. We met with the nurse before we left and I experienced the first answer to our prayers. Like I have said IVF carries a significant price tag, about $17,000 when all is said and done for one full round. A huge expense in this number is the medicine for all of the shots. As the nurse was asking where to send our prescriptions and about our insurance we told her we had no fertility coverage (most folks do not). She said, "nothing at all?" and we replied with, "yeah nada". And  you know what she did? She reached into a mini fridge and gave us samples of the most expensive shot I needed to take. It was almost $2,000 worth of samples. I was speechless, and it was amazing. Greg and I both left the class that day in shock and gratefulness for that nurse, she really made me believe in that moment for some reason that this was going to be ok, and I knew in my heart that it was an answered prayer from the Big Guy.

ANOTHER SETBACK

Sorry for the delay in posting! Finishing our basement renovation, traveling for work, hosting Easter, a trip to Chicago and moving Murph's brother's family to their new home south of Kansas City all seemed to hit us at once!

Anywho, like I said my friend Sandy really wanted me to join the book study she was leading at her church, so I decided to jump on in. When I first walked into the room I was super anxious, I can't lie. There sat about eight women most of whom were 40 years older than me, what on Earth were we going to have in common? How can I participate in a Bible study with these complete strangers and have them relate to any part of my life? Well, God works in funny ways because it was such a great fit for me.

As I am starting to go to this weekly study Murph and I make the decision to move forward with IVF. In my conversations I have found that lots of people have no idea how this science works or really what it is, so I will take a minute here to explain it briefly. Everything Murph and I had done up to this point was what I would call gentile assistance. We used the standard mechanics of getting pregnant but with the doctor's help timed things more scientifically and assisted the swimmers on their journey so they wouldn't tire on their way.But we were still letting nature take its course in the fertilization department. In Vitro Fertilization or IVF is a different ballgame.

IVF is a process where I pump myself full of hormones that will stimulate my egg production. Women naturally ovulate one egg per month and the goal here is to get a lot more than one. With close monitoring I then would have my eggs harvested and fertilized in a lab with Murph's sperm. From there the fertilized eggs grow for 5 days in a dish in a lab. After that they are then put back in my uterus and we say a prayer that they stick and I become pregnant. But there are no guarantees. They may or may not stick and we owe the clinic some serious cash no matter what.

So we start in on this journey and it happens to time itself out pretty well. The first step is called a mock embryo transfer. Here the doc actually comes into the room and pretends he is doing the embryo transfer part of IVF. Here he can take some measurements and know exactly my road map so on the day of an actual transfer there are no mistakes. Because this was a really simple faux procedure I went to the appointment alone, assuring Murph nothing was really even happening that day so he could go to work. Man, that was dumb. I head into this appointment and the doc does his thing and just a minute in he hits that "roadblock" I told you all about. Remember the nurses having troubles with all of our AI's? Remember me telling the doc we were having issues with them? Well here he is literally running into the problem himself and he says, "oh, well look at that you have a fibroid on your cervix. We will need to get that removed." Um what?! "How does Friday look for you?"

So with that I scheduled another surgery for two days later to have the fibroid removed and called my husband in tears. Man was I mad. I know I have had this darn thing for the entire time we've been going through this process and tried to tell my doctor there was an issue, but it never seemed pressing enough for him to investigate himself! Then when he does look, there is a fibroid?! What the heck is it and is THAT the reason we aren't getting pregnant? I find through my internet searching that fibroids are pretty common and are non cancerous masses found usually in the uterus, mine just happened to be on my cervix. I would go in for another outpatient surgery and have this shaved down smooth, so that the doc can easily guide our embryos into my uterus without problems.

So in I go again. This surgery was mush less invasive than the removal of my endometriosis, and I was able to get some nausea medication to help me feel less terrible afterwards. Again, Murph took outstanding care of me and I spent the weekend on the couch recovering.

Up next, IVF class and prayers from strangers.

DEEP BREATHS

As I said, I felt like everything was falling apart this summer. Greg would probably tell you August was the worst of my sadness and I am sure that had a lot to do with another year of our birthday's passing as well. The good news is change was on the way and it was 100% a God thing.

When I graduated college I secured my first job and was promptly laid off six weeks after starting. It was 2008 and the advertising world was feeling the crunch of the recession BAD. I was part of a 30% lay off company wide and that event definitely changed the trajectory of my career. In those six weeks I was just starting to get my feet under me with a couple of big projects and the lead on one of those was Sandy. She was amazing, full of joy and positive energy, you couldn't help but like her. She was a great project lead and just when we were in the thick of becoming good friends, we both got laid off. Go figure right?!Over the course of the last eight years Sandy and I have kept in touch off and on. We met for coffee a few times, did a yoga class together, got our dogs together once but nothing consistent by any means.

While in the pit of my despair this summer I thought I should look for a new job and lo and behold there were some postings at a place I knew Sandy worked so on a whim I reached out asking her to meet me for a lunch date so I could grill her about the company. Little did I know how much that lunch would change my perspective on everything. When we met for lunch we caught up as much as one can in an hour, talked jobs and as we were leaving Sandy exploded in joy and told me she was expecting twins! I was so happy for her, we talked about all of the excitement surrounding their arrival and briefly about her road to get there, which wasn't easy by any means. My reaction to hearing her story was immediately to well up and begin crying big painful tears. I was so embarrassed because those tears weren't for her and her road to pregnancy, but for me and mine.

Man, she took that moment and totally wrapped me in grace. She said, "Somethings wrong isn't it?" I shook my head yes, overwhelmed by tears. She said, "This is bigger than a talk at lunch isn't it?" Again I nodded and with that she invited me to her house that Saturday to talk more. It was like this wave of of relief was washing over me again and again and I could not stop crying. I cried the entire drive back to the office, in the parking lot and finally at my desk. I FINALLY found someone to talk to about all of this, someone who was going to really GET IT and I was just overcome with emotion.

I headed over to Sandy's for coffee and breakfast goodies a couple of days later and we enjoyed a beautiful cool fall day, it was September 12th. We made small talk and then got in to the meat and potatoes of our visit and I cried and she cried and it was one of the most healing moments of my life, and I believe it was absolutely 100% orchestrated by God. I mean I met Sandy by chance 8 years ago, we kept in touch off and on but always had a great connection and looking back that's because God knew I would need her down the road in a big way. We talked about infertility, and what we had both been through. I told her about my IVF concerns and she gave me her thoughts. She gave me spreadsheets of medication comparisons and told me I could do it, that I was strong enough and gave me enough encouragement to not want to give up, especially on God. She agreed that the Dr. we both were seeing was a total jerk and told me to be more assertive towards him. She told me about failure and the beautiful success of her twins coming in the Winter. She told me about the moment everything changed for her and I knew I was having a bit of that moment myself talking to her, that my journey was not over, I needed to keep on trekking forward.

Toward the end of our visit Sandy told me about a bible study group she was leading at the church she was involved with and invited me to come. She told me about this set of prayer warriors at the church that were all old enough to be my parents and possibly even my grandparents and that they were amazing, I just had to go she said. I was skeptical, a bible study with a bunch of older ladies that I know nothing about? Prayer warriors? I am not the demographic they are looking for. I am broken and my trust in God has been in a valley not a peak. But I agreed. What a group of ladies I was about to meet...

FEELING THE WEIGHT OF IT ALL

If you are keeping track of this all we are officially 2 years and 8 months in to trying to get pregnant and I was at what I will call my tipping point.

When Greg and I met he was 31 and I was 26, we were married at 32 and 27 and turned 33 and 28 just a few months later. While I in no way felt old at this time, it was hard not to notice that Greg's best friends from college each had 3 kids (and one has since added 2 more to their brood) and his niece and nephew were already something like 4 and 7. I could see how much he loved those kids and like a lot of wives probably feel I wanted to start our family so he could have that at our house. Greg turned 34, 35 and then 36 and I met 29, 30 and 31 (in a super un-graceful and ugly way I might add). I hated my birthday. I felt like year after year there was this reminder I hadn't been able to give him the only gift in the world I wanted to give him. I bought a Father's Day card for him one year that I had a late period (something that women struggling through this dread, the LATE period) around that time and then ended up throwing it away. I contemplated how to tell him over Christmases and Birthdays and Anniversaries that "it" finally happened, but those days never came. It was heartbreaking, it was excruciating for me. Greg however was a champion with a capital C. He always was telling me that "we" weren't getting pregnant, that nothing was my fault that he was in no rush but I was in too deep by this point. I was certain all of this was my fault and I was the sole reason we didn't have a baby. I mean honestly I had thought we would be expecting our second child by now so there was that looming over my head too. I felt like I had never failed at anything in my life but I was failing my husband, the love of my life in the worst possible way. I recall thinking some nights, if Greg had met someone else he would be a dad by now, I hope he doesn't regret marrying me because he hasn't gotten to start that chapter yet.

As I was wrestling with all of those lies daily we ran into a roadblock that I internalized as a sign from God that we weren't going to be starting a family the way we thought, that there was another plan in place. After the first 3 failed AI's we talked about InVitro. I started researching the process and how much it was going to cost us since we had no help from insurance for any of this and were paying 100% out of pocket for everything. I had remembered in brief conversations with our doctor that the clinic offered a plan to those not covered by insurance that they could pay a flat fee that essentially was 3 IVF cycles for the price of about 1.5 IVF cycles. Under this plan if your first IVF failed (there is only a 40% chance of success with one embryo and 60% with two implanted) you would be eligible for up to two more cycles that year for no additional cost. Let me tell you the cost savings with this plan are close to $40,000 should you need to go through 3 full IVF cycles, so yeah, pretty significant we can all agree. As I headed to the website of the clinic to learn more about this option I couldn't find any information, it was so weird, I knew I had just seen the link. I made some phone calls and sent some emails and found what I felt at the time was the worst news in the world, they had just discontinued the program that month. My heart sank. We had just failed 3 AIs, and had been trying on our own for 2 and a half years, what seemed like our next step had just been yanked away from us as we would now have to consider throwing all of our eggs in one basket with IVF and if it failed we would be out close to $20,000 with nothing to show for it. I lost it. I cried and cried. I yelled at God asking why this was all happening and felt like I just wasn't meant to be a Mom. Again, Greg my level headed better half said we would figure it out. We would start saving and if we wanted to try IVF ever we would make it work. He was always so damn confident in God and not giving up and I was a puddle waiting to evaporate away from it all.

After hearing that news was when we decided to move forward with our second set of 3 AIs (they were only $425 a pop so 100% worth trying) and would begin to save for IVF in the event it ever was needed. Since we were potentially looking toward IVF in the future we consulted with the doctor again to learn about the process. This consult sent me even deeper in to my pit of sadness. I learned of how people have to make choices about embryos that might not get used, I heard about countless shots and success rates that didn't sound very successful. My head was spinning and my church didn't seem to have any answers. My friends were all so supportive and kind but none of them had been through this and didn't know what I was going through or how we had potentially huge choices ahead of us. Was this process playing God? What about genetic testing? If we do that I am absolutely playing God right .... or aren't we? God give us science as a gift, right?! Speaking of God WHERE IS HE?! Why can't I hear Him?! WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO?!

Help ..... I need help ... can anyone help me? PLEASE!

I had a couple of panic attacks in bed at night, I had terrible body image issues going on, I had no motivation to do anything, I was treating Greg like crap. Something had to give, and it did. I had lunch with an old co-worker Sandy one day. It was the day everything started to change.