IVF: The Middle
June 2020. At this point, my body hurts, my spirit broken, my life a disappointment. Back to feeling sorry for myself. I knew this was irrational, however I still had a tough time controlling it. Looking back, it was definitely correlated with getting my periods. If the “normal” fluctuations of hormones causes you to be emotional, imagine that, plus the added frustration of another unsuccessful month, and being pumped with even more hormones. Terrible. I was even taking birth control patches at some point, and those do not mix well with me on a good day. My poor husband, but we are through it.
Now it was time for assisted reproductive technology (ART). For some couples, more extensive treatment is needed. With most forms of ART, the sperm and egg are joined in the lab. The fertilized egg is then returned to the woman's uterus where it can implant and grow. While ART procedures are often costly, many are being used with success.
And what type of ART was for us..? You guessed it.. IVF!
As always, the cycle consisted of daily 7:00AM doctor visits, blood work every time, ultrasound every other day. My veins in my arms were destroyed. I was having the blood taken from the top of my hand in the last week.
The medication involved three different shots to the abdomen each night, and a final trigger shot to the butt the night before egg retrieval.
The next day, my husband and I had an appointment at Weill Cornell Reproductive Medicine. At this point, I am bloated, bruised and anxious to see how many mature eggs my doctor will recover. The procedure was quick, I was under anesthesia, woke up with a little pain in my abdomen, but nothing to note. I was told it was a successful procedure, and to go home.
Once at my apartment, I had really bad cramping and knew something was off. I called my doctor, and he asked when was the last time I used the restroom. Turns out I was given too much anesthesia and my bladder was paralized. So, I couldn’t pee. Drinking more water, coffee, eating, laying down, stretching, walking, nothing helped. I went back to the hospital after five hours (side note: you go into the procedure with a full bladder, meaning I haven’t peed all day). The doctor did an ultrasound and said I either somehow fource some out, or I will need to get my bladder drained via catheter. That was all it took to scare my body into very, very slowly peeing.
Back to IVF, the egg retrieval, sperm retrieval and fertilization of the mature eggs happens on the same day. The eggs are left to grow/ develop into embryos for five days before transferred back. I had 37 eggs retrieved, 14 were mature, and 5 survived to the five day mark.
From my blood work, my husband and I found out we were facing another problem, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome - the cause of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome isn't fully understood. Having a high level of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a hormone usually produced during pregnancy, introduced into your system plays a role. Ovarian blood vessels react abnormally to HCG and begin to leak fluid. This fluid swells the ovaries, and sometimes large amounts move into the abdomen.
During fertility treatments, HCG may be given as a "trigger" so that a mature follicle will release its egg. OHSS usually happens within a week after you receive an HCG injection. If you become pregnant during a treatment cycle, OHSS may worsen as your body begins producing its own HCG in response to the pregnancy.
Therefore, my embryo transfer had to wait. One of the complications of OHSS is pregnancy loss from miscarriage. My husband and I were not going to take that risk. The solution was freezing all five embryos.
Mature follicles are fertilized and frozen, ovaries are allowed to rest and you can resume the IVF process at a later date, when your body is ready.
It’s the beginning of July, my husband and I have two months to wait until it is safe to do the transfer. We pack up, travel to Toronto to stay with my parents for a month in July, then travel to Germany, Austria and Croatia for August. Great distraction and well needed rest period.
cbxo
