Pathology Report

Today I had my follow-up appointment from my D&C and they had my pathology report ready. 46XX....a perfect little girl. I knew I wanted some answers but I wasn't prepared at all to hear them. I feel like nothing was answered for me today, instead all I have is the guilt that if I had more tests done prior to IVF then I might not be in this situation right now. I might still be pregnant. I feel like a complete failure at the one thing I ever wanted...motherhood. Part of me feels like I shouldn't even try to carry my own biological child anymore. What if they have the same problems conceiving when they grow up? To see my child go through the same tests and treatments I had to endure would just break my heart. I wouldn't wish infertility on my worst enemy.

My only comfort from today is that the doctor said they would do some additional blood tests for clotting and genetic issues. They gave me a hard time about getting the testing done here because they said I would be gone by the time the results come in and they wouldn't be able to discuss it with them. I told them I didn't care, I wanted to take the tests now so they would be ready by the time we moved to Connecticut. So at the end of April I will have my testing done. I have to wait a few more weeks for my hormones to go back to normal. God, I hope these tests can give me the answers I so desperately need.

Today was not a good day for me.

Sperm Storage Issues

I need some advice if anyone has had this experience before. Brandon and I froze two samples at a fertility clinic when his sperm count was at its lowest point. The samples were a measly 2 million and 8 million but we paid for 6 months of storage anyway. After some lifestyle changes which included vitamins and cutting out caffeine he managed to bring his count up to 19 million. We had a couple vials stored at another clinic at that time. The reason we chose another clinic is because the military does their IUI's at that clinic and we would have had to pay about $200 to move our crappy sperm from the other clinic to this one. So we never planned on using the crappy sperm we simply didn't want to pay to move it and it wasn't worth it anyway.

So we've been getting letters to pay for another 6 months of storage for about 6 months now. We never responded thinking they would just destroy Brandon's sperm if they got no response. Brandon even said he signed a paper stating that they would do that. Well last week we got a letter saying that we owe them $350 for storage fees and we have 10 days to respond or they will send our bill to collections. COLLECTIONS?!?! Are you kidding me?? I'd hate to pay $350 for shitty sperm that we're going to make them destroy anyway so we don't have to go through this again in another six months but on the other hand we can't afford for this to go to collections. Brandon and I both would lose our security clearances, which could get Brandon kicked out of the Navy. So my question is, do we really have to pay or should they have destroyed when they received no response from us?

I think I'm going to puke

M co-worker (who sits in the cube right next to me) just announced on Facebook that his wife is pregnant with their second child. They are due in November...I was due October 20th. I feel like I'm going to cry. I only have three more weeks of work left, I hope to God he doesn't spread the news at work. I don't think I could stand people stopping by his desk to congratulate him.

*Update* Well my husband came home and I had a really good cry on his shoulder and we snuggled on the couch for a bit in complete silence. There was really no need to talk, that's the good thing about being married. You already know what the other person is thinking and feeling. Talking about it wasn't going to mend our broken hearts. I'm going to try and put this out of my mind and just hope he doesn't talk about it too much on Facebook or post ultrasound pics. If he does, well, that's what the Hide button is for.

Adoption or IVF

I know Brandon and I are physically taking a break from TTC until this summer but it's hard to take a break mentally. I find myself constantly thinking about my last IVF cycle, the hope and joy I felt when I learned I was pregnant and the utter devastation that followed when the baby was no longer there. Sometimes I still feel like I couldn't possibly go through that again and yet I want a child more than anything.

We have 2 embryos to try a FET but honestly I'm not counting on it. With the thaw rate at only 50% and both embryos being grade 2, I think our chance of success will be minimal. So I'm looking past that and trying to hash out how we can build our family with the least amount of heartache (and money). Brandon is all for another cycle of IVF if the pathology report from the D&C shows that there's nothing wrong with us. I'm hesitant to do another cycle 1) because I think I have crappy eggs, hence the miscarriages and 2) the chance of getting pregnant is only 50%, the chance of staying pregnant is only 70%. Not very good odds.

We discussed embryo adoption as a possible option. There is an agency that lists their fees, which are about $3,000 to get into the program and $3,000 for a FET. You get three tries before having to reapply. It sounds reasonable but the wait can 10-12 months and there's lots of stuff involved such as a homestudy.

Another option is domestic infant adoption. This option is the scariest for me as it costs the most (about $25K), there are risks of failed adoptions and birth mother scams, and can take over a year to be matched. But in the end its the only option that guarantees we will bring home a baby, mostly because we just wait until one comes our way. For those that know me I hate waiting. I absolutely hate it. I feel like I've already waited years to have a child with all the combined infertility treatments we've had. How can I possibly wait two more years for my baby to come home? And how can we possibly afford $25,000 to adopt a child? We'll spend the rest of the kid's life paying it off instead of saving for their college education or our retirement!

So I'm seriously on the fence with these three options. Each one has its pros and cons and two of the options I know nothing about because I've never gone through them. I wish life were so much simpler and I didn't have to make this kind of decision. But life is full of tough choices. I can only hope I make the right one.

ICLW Welcome

Hello to all those from ICLW. Sorry it's late in the afternoon and I'm just now writing this. I figured I should enjoy the sun because it's not that often that we get sun in Seattle! Anyway, just want to give a little background about myself. My name is Christa and I've been married to the hubs for 2 1/2 years now. I've had infertility problems for the past 8 years. My husband is in the Navy so we deal with Tricare issues when trying for a kid. We just completed our first IVF in January after traveling to North Carolina. We transferred 2 embryos and froze 2. Unfortunately after seeing a heartbeat at 6 weeks they couldn't find it at 7 weeks. I just had a D&C about 10 days ago. Our next step is waiting to hear from the pathology report and hopefully try a FET in July/August. We're waiting that long because the military is making us move in May. We're making the trip from WA to Groton, CT. Yipee. We're not really looking forward to it but such is life. But if anyone is from that area I'd love to hear from you! I won't know a soul and I'll be needing some new friends.

So if our FET fails we're not sure what we're going to do after that. We're considering another IVF, embryo adoption or domestic adoption but with the adoption credit expiring we might not try that route. So for now we're taking it one step at a time.

Let's see, what else....Oh yea, I'm doing a fundraiser for Parenthood for Me. They're giving out their first infertility/adoption grants in June so it's going to a good cause. I have a giveaway along with the fundraiser. For every $10 donated you will be entered to win a $50 gift of your choice: Kohl's, Lowe's, Sears, Wal-mart, Olive Garden, Chili's, Best Buy or Motherhood Maternity. AND I will be matching dollar for dollar any donations received. Drawing for the gift card is July 20th. So far only one person has donated so if no one else donates then she will be the automatic winner! If you'd like to make a donation you can visit the widget on my sidebar. Anyway, welcome to my blog and I look forward to seeing some new faces!

HURRY to win a free IVF cycle!!

I just came across these IVF giveaways but the seminars are next week. If you happen to be in the area you might find yourself the winner of a free IVF cycle!

Sher Institutes for Reproductive Medicine

Advanced Reproductive Concepts

I'm a published writer!

My first article has been published on Associated Content, How to Save Money on Infertility Treatments! I'm completely stoked and can't wait to write another one. I started a section on the sidebar that will list all my future articles in case you ever want to reference them. I think I see a new part-time job in my future :)

PS- If anyone has any suggestions for article topics about infertility, adoption, or travel please feel free to share them.

A Heartbreaking Post

As a Navy wife I've been through my share of deployments. While thankfully none of them have involved a combat zone, I am reminded today that there are still soldiers and Marines who are fighting the good fight and sacrificing their lives for the sake of freedom. Please take the time to visit a fellow blogger as she mourns the loss of her beloved husband, a United States Marine who was killed in combat and will never get the chance to meet his 2-month old daughter.

After Googling his name I realized that this young man was stationed at Camp Lejeune, NC with 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Division, the same battalion that my ex-husband served in. It's a small world indeed.

Financing Infertility

I've been doing a lot of thinking and worrying about our financial situation and the cost of another IVF cycle or domestic adoption. I know we still have money available for those treatments but that would leave nothing left in our emergency savings, hence the worrying. With Brandon planning on quitting the Navy in less than 5 years we need to have a good amount of money saved up so we can stay afloat while he finds another job. My goal for that is $10,000, no small amount of money. Neither is the cost of another IVF ($8,000) or adoption ($25,000). That's a lot of money we need to have in our savings account and we simply don't have that much. Not even close to it.

So I have decided to pursue some creative ways to earn money to set aside for our next baby-making attempt. The first venture has already made its debut on my blog. Its called Infolinks. It's a pay per click in-text advertising company. It's quite simple to add to your blog, you simply add some html code into your template. Infolinks does the rest. It finds keywords in your blog and adds advertising links to them. You can hover over a link to see where the it will take you. Members get paid based on the number of times that readers click a link. Payment is made every month to your Paypal account. So far the process has been quick and easy for me. I signed up two days ago and the links are already showing up on my blog. The only bad thing I've noticed is that some of the links are for advertisements that are COMPLETELY irrelevant to the keyword it is linked to. I'm not sure how much I'll be paid for my participation with Infolinks but please feel free to click a link or two so I can at least find out. I'll update again in a month and let you know how it's working out for me.

Another money-making venture I'm trying is writing online articles. I researched a few companies such as eHow but ultimately chose to write for Associated Content. I wrote and submitted my first article yesterday and I'm waiting for it to be published. I'm extremely excited about this. I know I've been writing publicly on my blog for almost a year but it seems more like a journal to me. Writing for Associated Content makes me feel like an actual writer. Just like with Infolinks, my paid amount is based on the number of views to my articles. When my article is published I'll include it on my sidebar for your viewing pleasure. Almost all my articles will feature information about infertility.

My last money-making attempt will not occur for at least a few more months. I plan on having a raffle to raise money for our IVF or adoption. I have some credit card points I can use to purchase a gift card or nice product (valued around $100). I plan on selling tickets for $5 each. I'll announce it when everything is set up and ready to go.

So that's what has been keeping me busy for the past few days. I've been doing a little better in dealing with my depression by staying as busy as possible but I know it will take some time. I'd like to thank you all for the support you've given me over the past few weeks. It's really meant a lot to know that there are people out there who know what I've been going through.

Super Sad

I had done so well for the past week in dealing with my miscarriage but I should have known it was bound to happen. I've been getting more and more depressed as the days go by. I see bloggie friends with the same due date as myself and think that should be me blogging about my pregnancy symptoms and posting pictures of my little sprout. I thought work would provide a distraction but it's only made me feel more sad. I just want to stay in bed all day but instead I have to drag myself to work and put up with all kinds of crap that I could care less about because I'm quitting in 5 weeks anyway. My family means well but they've been saying all the wrong things lately like "You know you're more fertile after a miscarriage" and "At least you know you can get pregnant". Sorry but a miscarriage doesn't miraculously make my husband's sperm count go up. And we're not supposed to have sex for two weeks anyway. Hopefully my depression won't last too long and I'll be able to return to a normal routine and even try to get some exercise and lose weight. But for now I don't feel like doing much of anything.

Brandon's boat was kind enough to send us a beautiful bouquet of flowers. They even let him have off for 5 days without charging his leave which is practically unheard of in the military. As for me, I had no leave left because I used it all up for the IVF treatment so I had to take unpaid time off last week. I didn't qualify for bereavement leave or short term disability or anything. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pissed about that. You'd think they would cut me some slack or something. Oh well. Hopefully I'll get a better job in Connecticut.

D&C Day **UPDATE**

Well today was the D&C. My reporting time was 7 am. It wasn't too painful and now I have my lovely Percocet. I have some bleeding and cramping but that's about it. And the nurse tried to use a vein in my forearm for the IV but couldn't so now it's really painful to the touch. She ended up going with the big vein in my elbow and now I look like a heroin addict.

The doctor gave me one last ultrasound before the D&C. I mentioned I had some brown spotting this morning and he noticed that the embryonic sac had already started moving away from the uterine wall and that was probably the cause of my spotting. So apparently we had the D&C just in the nick of time or I would have miscarried on my own. After the surgery the doctor came back to visit me and said they got everything and it should be 3-4 weeks before the results come back.

I have an appointment in two weeks for a follow-up WTF talk. I also called Nurse D at Womack and let her know what happened. We're thinking about doing the FET this summer so I want to find out about the process. I asked her about my HCG levels which she looked up. So the first u/s where the doc said our pregnancy wasn't viable was 13K on a Thursday. The next Tuesday (5 days later) at our u/s where the doc found a heartbeat of 120 bpm the HCG was only 22K. This past Tuesday (7 days later) the HCG was only 34K. I read that after the HCG levels reach 13,000 they should double every four days. Well our HCG didn't even double in a week so we have no second thoughts about doing the D&C. Some people have been insisting to me that there are cases where people go to have D&C's only to find out they have a perfectly normal baby. We're 100% we are not one of those cases and we feel confident in the decision we made. In 3-4 weeks we'll hopefully have some answers and can move on from this painful experience.

**UPDATE AND TMI ALERT** Has anyone who had a D&C had some pain during urination? The past two times I've peed I've gotten a stabbing pain down there. Not sure if it's my vagina or my bladder.

Miscarriage Confirmed

Today's ultrasound confirmed what I had known since Saturday. Our baby stopped growing. The doctor said it measured only 6w1d which is the same size it was last week (I'm 7w6d today). We decided to go with a D&C (scheduled for Thursday) once I was reassured that I would be under anesthesia and I wouldn't feel any pain during the surgery. I had a bad LEEP experience a couple years ago where they only used a cervical block (that didn't numb the area properly) and I swore I would never go through that kind of pain again. I'm very sensitive when people mess around with the lady parts.

This has been a painful weekend for Brandon and I. We're very sad and not sure what to do. We hope the D&C will give us some answers about the issues that caused this miscarriage. I want some testing done to see if I have any genetic, clotting or immune issues that can contribute to our miscarriage rate. I'm not sure if the doctor will do those tests. If it turns out we have additional issues we may not pursue another IVF. Other options we are considering are embryo adoption or domestic infant adoption. Both choices have so much information to research that it will take a very long time to get all the information we need to make an educated decision.

Although I'm extremely sad that we're back at Square One, I'm surprisingly at peace right now. We want a baby more than anything but Brandon and I still have each other. I'm so thankful to be in a wonderful marriage with a man who loves me very much. We've had so many wonderful adventures together as a couple, even during all the infertility treatments, and I'm sure we'll have many more adventures in the future. Those adventures may or may not include a child but they will include the two of us and that's all that really matters. Infertility is a part of us but it does not define us. It does not consume our lives because we refuse to let it. Sometimes it takes an epic failure such as a miscarriage to really see what's important in your life. And the most important thing to me is the relationship I already have with my husband, not the dream of a child that may never exist.

I'm not saying that we don't want kids or that we're quitting fertility treatments. We're not ready to give up just yet. But we are growing weary of the medications and treatments and long trips to the doctor. We know that there will come a day when the pain of failed treatments and the cost of creating a family will outweigh the joy that a child will bring. Some may disagree with me and say that a child is worth every penny they spent but that's how I feel. We hope that we will be blessed with a child long before that day comes, either through adoption or pregnancy, but even if we never have children Brandon and I have such a strong marriage that we can be happy with just the two of us.

No heartbeat

Last night I had some cramping but no bleeding so I thought nothing of it. This morning I had a little nookie with the hubby and afterward immediately passed a few small clots and had some bright pink spotting. So we took a trip to the ER. There was no way I was going to spend the next 3 days worrying until my Tuesday ultrasound. After 6 HOURS at the ER and the longest ultrasound of my life, the doctor told us they couldn't find a heartbeat. Brandon and I didn't see it either. We are heartbroken. I'm still going to my ultrasound on Tuesday but I think the ride is officially over. We are so disappointed and bitter right now that we're not sure whether we even want to try another IVF. We can do a FET with our two frozen embryos but we might consider adoption first if the wait time isn't that long. We don't know what route to take and right now we don't feel like doing anything. It just doesn't seem worth the rollercoaster ride of emotions. I don't know if I can go through another disappointment like this

Going Shopping!

I know it may sound silly but this weekend I'm going shopping for maternity clothes. Not because I can't fit into my regular clothes. In fact, I still have three pairs of jeans that fit, albeit a big snugly. The reason for my shopping spree is because every year I get $250 from my company as a clothing allowance. Because my last day at work is April 15th I want to use my allowance as soon as possible so I can get reimbursed before I leave. And what's so great is that my work clothes are actually jeans and casual shirts. I'm not required to wear business clothing for this job. Lucky me!

Dr. Gloom and Doom was WRONG!!

Our baby is doing just fine. It's measuring at 6w1d (I'm 6w6d) with a heartbeat of 120 bpm. I got a different doctor today, Dr B, who I thought was deployed but apparently has been in a different part of the hospital for the past 6 months. He said that they're still cautiously optimistic but I'm not. I'm very happy with today's ultrasound, even if my baby is on its own time schedule. I don't think there's anything to worry about at this point.

The doc did find a second sac but couldn't find a heartbeat. We weren't expecting to see that. We don't know whether there's a baby in there but right now we're just assuming that we only have one little sprout. I go back again next Tuesday for another ultrasound. I suppose next week we will know for sure how many there are.

The only downside is that there was an Army student who was observing our ultrasound today. I didn't appreciate that because if the news had turned out bad then I would have preferred to grieve without some stranger in the room. Other than that today was a very good day!

Progesterone FYI

I had some spotting on Friday and for some of Saturday so I decided to try a new "trick" with my Endometrin. It's a simple trick, just don't stick it that far up there! I think that if the progesterone is too close to the cervix then it can cause irritation and spotting or bleeding. So far I haven't had any spotting since implementing my new technique. The only problem that I've had is more, ahem, moisture than usual.