Since November/December of 2007, about one month after Tony and I were married, we have been trying to have a baby. It is something that we are both desperate for and would pretty much do anything to achieve. About 6 months before we were married we decided that I should see an infertility specialist since I knew I had PCOS and would probably need help conceiving. They ran all the tests and blood work and what they came back with was a little surprising. Not only was I polycystic but I also had cardiac and thyroid antibodies (2 types of auto-immune diseases) and they were also concerned that I was in early menopause. I remember that I was home sick that day anyway (thank God) and that I was laying there devastated and sobbing wondering how I was going to tell Tony that we may not be able to have a baby. This was unimaginable to me! All I had thought about from around the age of 13 was having children. I was supposed to have babies. I wanted this more than anyone I knew and I was supposed to be a mother. As important as it is to me it is equally as important to him and how was this going to affect him? He is the last Anzalone boy and he needs to pass on the name, how could I expect him to be okay with this? I had never known a man that wanted children as badly as he did. I was a mess laying there all day waiting for him to get home and making myself sick wondering how I was going to tell him. I should have had more faith in him but in those moments you really go through the worst, most dramatic scenes in your head. When he got home I explained to him what the doctor had said and his reaction was so simple and perfect. He hugged me and told me he was sorry. He told me that the only thing he knew FOR SURE was that we were supposed to be together. He told me that we would be parents somehow even if we had to adopt. No devastation, no anger. It was the only thing that could have made it all better and it did. We got the adoption thing stuck in our head for a while and prepared ourselves for it and I actually got pretty excited about the idea of it. I think it was about 3 months later when we were getting our condo ready to move into and I went to the doctor again for more blood tests to check my levels again so we could have a better idea if I was definately in early menopause. If it was normal this time then it could be a sparatic thing or it could have been a fluke the first time. I got the results and when I got to our place I remember that Tony was painting the spare bedroom and when I walked in I just smiled and said that I got my results back. He asked me how it went and I just smiled and nodded my head. You would have thought I had told him I was pregnant! He looked so happy and just grabbed me and hugged me! It was such a huge relief knowing that we had a chance again!
After we were married October 27, 2007 we went on a honeymoon for 2 weeks to Italy and Paris. We had the most beautiful wedding and the honeymoon was something right out of a movie! Everything was perfect.
At the end of November I began prepping for our first IUI. The doctor decided to put me on Clomid and I ended up responding pretty well. I went in for my first ultrasound to look at the follicles and boy were we surprised! Tony went with me and we were so excited to do an ultrasound! HA!!!! When the nurse came in and pulled out the wand you should have seen Tony's face! It was absulutely priceless! He put his head down and instantly began playing games on his cell phone :) I don't remember now how many eggs in which ovary I produced but it was atleast 3 or 4 the first time. I believe all of them were fairly good size with atleast one or two being perfect. So they gave me my booster shot (Hcg) and sent me home. I was to come back the next 2 days to have 2 rounds of IUI. We were so excited. It's such a good feeling when you realize how close you are to having what you've always wanted. The IUI wasn't bad. When it was over they had me continue laying on the table with my pelvis elevated for about 20 minutes. Tony and I were so serious thinking "this is it!". He was so sweet, holding my hand and I was getting emotional (as usual). I had cramping pretty bad that day and I think for the next couple days. The first day of the IUI I also had to begin giving myself heparin (blood thinner) injections in my stomach twice a day everyday because of the cardiac antibodies would attack a pregnancy by forming blood clots on or around the placenta which would cause me to have a miscarriage. I would need to be on these injections until the last couple weeks of my pregnancy. No big deal though... we'll do whatever it takes. We had to wait 2 weeks to do a pregnancy test since the booster shot can give you a false positive. It's funny looking back at the first time thinking how sure we were that it had worked. That every tiny little thing that happened in my body made me assume that I was pregnant... how could I not be? Let me tell you that knowing you could be pregnant and having to wait 2 weeks to find out is excrutiatingly painful to do. We held out though and the morning I was able to test I had all these ideas of how I was going to announce it to Tony that I was pregnant and how we were going to tell our parents and all of our friends... but it was all crushed because it was a negative. I think it was actually Christmas Eve when we tested and I remember being so sad but not wanting to show it. We were at Tony's parents' house with the family and I didn't want to make it all about us and I didn't want to bring anyone down. It was really hard the first time around.
After that first time, in some ways, it got easier. We knew what to expect atleast and mentally it was much easier. I guess I should mention that before the first IUI I was on a medication for anxiety that I had been on for about 2 years. I was supposed to taper off of it if I decided to quit taking it and before the first procedure I had forgotten to take it for a couple of days. I was already feeling the withdrawl from it and decided that I might as well just stick it out since I shouldn't keep taking it anyway. WHAT A MISTAKE!!!! Tony said it was what he would imagine withdrawl from heroin to be. It was awful! I was emotional from all the hormones anyway so who knows how to divide up how much of the emotion was because of that or due to withdrawl. I would be fine for a little while, then I would be screaming about something, and then into sobbing. On top of the emotions my muscles would twitch like crazy and to the point where it looked like convulsions. It was really scary and stupid of me to do but I kept thinking that it was so bad and there was no way in hell that I was taking that medicine again and going through this again later... how much longer could it last? It would get so bad that the only thing Tony could think to do was put me in the bathtub and just try to get me calmed down. He was amazing. I would be shaking and crying (or screaming) and he would get up and say "let's get you in the bathtub". He would rub my back and keep adding hot water to keep it warm until it passed and I felt human again. Looking back I think of how hard it was for him to deal with but he did it so well. So needless to say, the first time was by far the worst. After that it was just the normal fertility drug induced insanity. We tried 3 IUI's with that doctor and all of them were negative. It got to the point where we couldn't even make it the 2 weeks to take the test because I would start before we could. During these few months I was taking the heparin injections and I would tell them that my stomach was red, rashy, itching terribly, and it was bruised and lumpy... and when I say lumpy I mean lumpy! They kept telling me that it was normal side effects and that it was fine. When they finally looked at it after 2 months the nurse said "oh wow! That's definately an allergic reaction!". No shit! So they tell me there is another injection that I can do (Lovenox) but they need to see if my insurance will cover it because if not it's about $800 a month!!! AND if that wasn't bad enough, it was our only option! Anything in pill form can cause birth defects apparently. Thank God my insurance decided to cover it (and why they did I have no idea since they cover nothing else to do with this fertility stuff!) and we only had to pay $50. We tried for 5 months with that doctor all the while riding the hormonal roller coaster and being so sure each time that I was pregnant. We tried Clomid a couple times and then clomid and injectibles and nothing worked. Then we decided that I should switch to the doctor that my sister used and conceived twice with. They could not get us in until around July I think, so we had the summer off to be normal.
I went to see the new doctor at the end of July I believe and I fell in love with him. He is so sweet (and my sister is right that he reminds her of our grandfather... though not in a wierd way that would make exams awkward!). He reviewed my records and said that I do have cardiac antibodies but not that many and that the preliminary test showed thyroid antibodies but the in depth test did not. He was very positive and reassuring which was great but I was really annoyed that the other office made me think it was terrible! Dr. W also said that he would not be putting me on blood thinner until I was pregnant and there was a heartbeat. (Something to do with bones being stripped of calcium the longer you're on it.) He asked me how I liked the Clomid and I told him it made me crazy. He said that he would rather me be sane so he wanted me to take Femara. I left feeling so much better! He also explained that he does all the ultrasounds and IUI's personally. This was very exciting to me since at the other office I only met the doctor on my first consult and never again, and his nurses did everything else! We were going to do our first try in September. I was feeling great. I had been off the fertility meds for a few months and lost 20 lbs and really back to my old self. I remember thinking "how nice to get pregnant after losing this weight! I'll be so much smaller and look so much better". How I wish that hadn't changed... damn meds! :O
Well, I'm not going to go into more boring details about the next six months or so, just know that in March or April after no luck we decided to talk with Dr. W about the next step. We have done 7 or 8 IUI's with absolutely no results... not even a miscarriage (not that we would ever want that to happen). Dr. W was baffled and everytime he seemed a little more perplexed. My eggs are perfect, my cycles are perfect, my lining is perfect, he refers to Tony as Michael Phelps... everything is perfect. I should be getting pregnant. He scheduled me for another ultrasound after my cycle to see if maybe my follicles aren't leaving the ovaries properly and at this appointment Tony wanted me to mention In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). As soon as I did Dr. W said he was glad I mentioned it because he thinks that's the next step. So he sent me home with a folder full of information.
When you think of people with infertility issues and you think of IVF you think of it being expensive and that it's something you wouldn't be able to do. It's very hard to wrap your head around it at first. We read it and read it and read it again, over and over. Tony was disgusted that they have different packages and went real wild when he saw one that was basically buy one, get one half off! He called and had a consultation with the woman about the different options and was less than pleased to find out the the prices listed don't even include everything! It doesn't include all the testing with is a few thousand dollars, or the meds which are a few thousand more, or the fertilization (what the hell!), or the freezing of leftover embryos. That is the most insane thing I have ever heard! So, everything you hear about how much IVF costs... add thousands and thousands more... absolutely absurd! SO anyway... off of my little rampage now :) I really want to be clear about something.... even though we complain about the money and the hormones and the little things that weigh on us.... we wouldn't trade these opportunities for the world. I would endure all of this a million times over if in the end it gives us a baby.
After we decided which "package" to go with we signed up for the May cycle and began the process of prepping for IVF! Since we have decided to do this I have had a hysterosalpingogram (dye injected through my fallopian tubes to make sure they are open and OMG excruciatingly painful), a hysteroscopy (that I heard terrible things about and had myself so worked up with anxiety about how bad it was going to hurt after the fallopian tube incident I had to take a valium and they let Tony go in with me... pretty good stuff), and 11 vials of blood drawn. Tony had some blood work done and the "other" analysis all of which are perfect. One thing they wanted to be atleast 20 million and he was at 103 million and another they wanted to be atleast 50% and he was at 95%.... overachiever! All of my blood work was perfect. The worst part of all of this is the waiting game that we're always playing. We had to wait to find out if we even qualified for IVF until we got all these results back and some of them took weeks, some we had to wait until the right time in my cycle to even do, and some were just nerve wracking. So many little things could have ruined everything.
So now we wait again. The tests are all finished. They had me on birth control for a few weeks and I started Lupron injections and dexamethasone a couple weeks ago and had my baseline ultrasound on 5/12 (last birth control the night before). The ultrasound showed what the doctor thinks is atleast around 15 follicles which is a little above average so hopefully we get atleast that. Not all of them will produce eggs and of the ones that do produce eggs they won't all mature so the more the merrier! We are hoping for enough good embryos so that we can implant 2 and have atleast a couple to freeze. I start Bravelle injections (follicle stimulator) on Tuesday (5/19) and at some point I do a couple injections of Menopure (follicle stimulator), then antibiotics. Then I go back for an ultrasound on Tuesday 5/26 and they will tell us what day we need to come back for egg retrieval. We may need to go back a couple more times for more ultrasounds that week to monitor it more closely but egg retrieval will most likely be that Friday 5/29, Saturday 5/30, or Sunday 5/31. Then they hand pick the best sperm and inject one into each egg. The day of egg retrieval is when they are fertilized and considered day1. They look at the eggs on day 3 and if they aren't ready then they look again on day 5. We will get a call either day 3 or day 5 to come in for embryo transfer. With retrieval I will be on bedrest for one day and with transfer I will be on bedrest for 2 days. I also begin my Lovenox (blood thinning injections) on retrieval day (I think). So much to remember!
I can't believe that it's so close! I am so paranoid about letting myself get too excited because I'm afraid I will jinx it and something will happen that will not allow us to do this. We only have a week and a half to wait now and it seems like it's taking forever to get here. After 8 failed attempts and everyone around me getting pregnant and having babies... it's finally going to be my turn. If for some reason it doesn't work and we cannot have a baby we can still adopt and I know we will be happy, but I really hope it works!!! For a year and a half I have felt terrible everytime I've had to tell Tony that it's negative. I know he doesn't think that way but I always feel like I'm letting him down (after all, the problem is mine... he's that damn Michael Phelps!). I get so excited even thinking about being able to tell him it's positive! So, lots of eggs, lots of prayers, and a little luck and we may just have a baby!
