Visit to the specialist

Today we saw a maternal fetal medicine specialist.  The reproductive endocrinologist sent me to the specialist, I guess because of my "advanced age."  We decided we didn't want to do any bloodwork to determine our chance of having a baby with a genetic abnormality.  There's no way we would terminate the pregnancy, and why would we want to worry for 6 months about a "chance" of something going wrong?  So, they just did an ultrasound, which was AMAZING.  It was so neat to see our baby moving, kicking, and even bucking-- the baby was really active in there!  It was strange to see so much movement, yet not feel any of it.  I don't know if I've mentally made the connection that the cute little thing on the screen is actually inside me!  We got to hear the heart beat for the first time today as well.  The doctor was going to try to make an early guess as to whether it is a boy or a girl, but the baby had its legs crossed!  Here are a few of the pics from today's appointment.

Our ultrasounds

Here are a few pics of our little one.  First, at 6 weeks, 6 days:

At 8 weeks, 6 days:

And at 10 weeks:

It's pretty amazing what a difference a week makes!  We will be having another ultrasound on Monday when we see the maternal fetal medicine specialist, so more pics to come...

Our Story

I have never been one to do things in a conventional way.  Not because I wanted to be unconventional, but just because that’s the way God orchestrated things in my life.  So when we tried and tried to have children in the conventional way, I wasn’t at all surprised when it didn’t work.  I was surprised, however, at the path God chose for this particular journey.  All of the unconventional journeys in my life (wanting to go to a Christian college before I became a Christian, moving to the middle of nowhere after grad school, getting married at age 32, etc.) have turned out to be such marvelously wonderful--though definitely not easy--journeys, that I would have it no other way.  God has taught me so much on these adventures, and our journey to have a child has been the most amazing to date.  I can’t help but share what God has done, but to spare you all of the nitty-gritty details, I have included only those most important in an effort to be brief.

We started trying to have children in September of 2009, ironically around the same time as the pain from my endometriosis became severe.  Batteries of tests showed a cyst on each ovary, and a poorly functioning gall bladder.  I had suspected for many years that I had endometriosis, but have never been officially diagnosed (surgery is the only way to do that).  However, I have all the symptoms, and my cysts have been termed “endometriomas,” meaning I have the worst stage of endometriosis (stage IV).  Because of my age (35 at the time) my gynecologist sent me for some tests and to a reproductive endocrinologist (RE) in July of 2010.  We saw the RE in August, and both he and my gynecologist said that the best thing to help with my pain would be to get pregnant.  The RE thought we should go straight to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) because of the effect that endometriosis has on fertility (basically it can destroy sperm and prevent conception from ever taking place).  Usually the first fertility treatments include medications to improve your production of eggs, then if that doesn’t work, intra-uterine insemination (IUI), and if all else fails, “the big guns” of IVF. 

While my husband was open to the option, I didn’t really like the idea of IVF.  It seemed too contrived to me.  Too much like “playing God.”  If God wanted me to be pregnant, wouldn’t He help us to do so naturally?  So we looked into foster care, and that door closed very quickly.  Adoption seemed to me the best option, and we looked into that.  I considered surgery to remove the endometriosis.  I also tried a very restrictive diet to help with the endometriosis in hopes of decreasing my pain, and having a baby naturally.  Neither happened.  We prayed about and discussed all of our options over the next 6 months.

When I wound up in my doctor’s office once more after another painful episode that sent me home from work yet again in February of 2011, my doctor simplified months of agonizing over what to do by saying, “So you want to have a baby, and your gynecologist and RE both think that having a baby will decrease your pain, so what’s the problem?  Do the IVF.”  I needed someone to put it so simply.  There were several other indicators that week that helped to solidify in our minds that IVF was the road we were supposed to take, and once we finally made the decision to do it, I immediately felt at peace.

I did still have a lot of reservations about the process itself—how many eggs would we try to fertilize?  What if we had leftover embryos?  I didn’t really want to freeze them, because I had read that only 50% survive the thawing process.  Isn’t that like sending half of our “leftovers” to a certain grave?  How do we balance having enough (we don’t know how many eggs will actually fertilize, and how many embryos would make it to the point where they could be transferred back to my uterus) but not having too many?  There were many unknowns, but we felt we were headed in the right direction, so we started the process.

I had to learn to give myself injections twice a day, and these were sometimes painful.  My husband learned to give them to me as well, so that I could inject different places on my body (he injected the places I couldn’t reach, like the backs of my arms) so I wouldn’t be so sore in one area.  I had to change my work schedule to accommodate sometimes daily appointments to take blood and have ultrasounds.  I was a human pincushion.  We had to spend a lot of money on medications, but here the Lord blessed us as well, and we wound up having to pay much less than we anticipated for the whole process.

The idea was to stimulate multiple (ideally greater than 10) follicles on my ovaries.  These follicles contain eggs.  The eggs would then be “retrieved” while I was under anesthesia.  The eggs would be mixed with my husband’s sperm, and the resulting embryos would be monitored in a lab for three days.  The ones that made it would be transferred back to my uterus, and then we wait for two long weeks to see if I’m pregnant.

The problem was, I only had 2 follicles after being on the maximum (read: expensive) dosage of the injectable medications.  A third follicle made an appearance late in the game, but they didn’t feel this one would contain a mature egg because of its size.  As a result, my RE wanted to “convert” my cycle to IUI instead of IVF (IUI has less risk because there is no egg retrieval done).  However, my husband and I felt that we had come this far, we may as well go the whole way and stick with IVF.  Plus, if my RE had felt that IUI would work, then we would have done this in the first place.  My RE was open to us sticking with the IVF, so we pressed on. 

The egg retrieval consists of using a needle guided by ultrasound to aspirate the follicles in order to obtain the egg contained therein.  There was a risk at the egg retrieval because of my endometriomas.  If they accidentally nicked one of the cysts, I could wind up with a severe infection.  I took preventative antibiotics to help decrease this chance.  The doctor who did the retrieval said she did not know if she would be able to get to all the follicles because she would not be able to go through an endometrioma if it was in the way.

She was able to get to all of the follicles, but only one of them contained an egg.  The others were empty.  Astonishingly, I was not upset.  I was just happy there was one and not none.   We still had a chance!  The next day, we were told that the egg had fertilized—another hurdle overtaken.  The next day, we were told that the cells were dividing, though not as quickly as they had hoped.  They weren’t too concerned about this, and the transfer was scheduled for the next day.  I was fully prepared to get there and be told that the embryo had stopped growing, but instead, they said it had grown exactly as it should have, and it was given the highest grade an embryo can get (our child is already an overachiever).  We were able to watch the whole procedure, and we even got a picture of our 8-cell embryo.  Not too many people can say they have a picture of their child 3 days after conception!

Then came the two-week wait.  I was on bedrest for 24 hours, then light activity for 3 days.  I was not really anxious during that time, and in some ways, the two weeks went by quickly.  I asked the nurse to leave a message on our home phone about whether or not I was pregnant so that my husband and I could get the news together, and I wouldn’t have to worry about trying to answer my cell phone while at work.  It was amazing to get the news that I was pregnant!  My husband asked the RE what the odds were of getting pregnant with just one egg retrieved.  He said there isn't much data because it is so rare.

We feel so incredibly blessed by how God worked this situation out for us.  Sometimes I cry because it is so overwhelming that He loves me so much that He gives me the desires of my heart.  I was worried about “playing God” by choosing to try IVF.  But it turns out that I had to rely completely on Him during the whole IVF process.  I have learned so much and have drawn closer to God on this journey, and it was worth all the time and sacrifice that we had to put into it.  God rarely asks us to do things that are safe and easy, but He blesses us for our obedience to Him.