The Trip Takes a Detour

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“The night is darkest just before dawn…”

For those of you that don’t know, In Vitro is actually a two month process.  The first month you are on birth control.  It’s very ironic isn’t it?  They put you on birth control to make sure that things are nice and “quiet” as they say with your ovaries.  They don’t want any surprise cysts or other things happening.

 

The first part of the month is normal and slightly relaxing.  You don’t have to go to the doctor, you just have to take a little pill.  Towards the end of the month you start doing the shots and visiting the doctor.  When we did the IUI I went to the doctor about four times and would get two shots from M.  (In addition to the oral medicine.)  That was nothing compared to IVF.  In IVF during the second month I was getting two shots a day, everyday, and as I got closer to ovulation I was going to the doctor everyday.  It’s an intense process.  Right away there was a bit of a hiccup.  Even with all of the birth control I still had a cyst on my ovary.  The good news (confirmed through blood work) was that it wasn’t producing any hormones so we were still okay to start. 

 

Each time I would go to the doctor they would do an ultrasound and blood work.  On the ultrasound my doctor would measure and count the number of follicles on each ovary.  The nurse would then record everything right into the computer so that they could monitor the growth of things.  At first things were going normally, but as I went along there started to be some trouble.  I wasn’t producing enough follicles.  (Follicles hold eggs, kind of important…)  So they increased my medication.  This medication was muy expensivo.  We paid more than $1000 just for the medication.  It is a little astounding isn’t it?  The ironic thing is that we didn’t even have everything that we needed!  Because of my increase I had to get more from my doctor, and they had left out an important medication that triggers ovulation.  We were very careful when mixing and preparing the medication.  The timing with everything was very crucial. We always did it later at night before going to bed.  Usually nothing was going on at that time of the day.  After changing the medication I went back into get checked.  They saw that the medication was helping, but not in the ideal way.  I now had ONE follicle that was much larger than the rest.  Ideally they want at least EIGHT follicles all growing at about the same rate.  That way when they harvest the eggs all the eggs will be at the same maturity level.  As the follicles grow the eggs mature.  In my case I had one that was so much larger they were worried that it was growing at the expense of all the much smaller follicles. 

 

I went back the next day to see what was happening with my little “follies” as I started calling them.  Sure enough, the one large follicle was growing, and the rest weren’t.  My doctor very calmly informed me that it was not worth going through the extraction process for only one egg.  (My friend just did IVF and they extracted 18 eggs…)  The process was just too painful and expensive to do for only one egg.  I was very disappointed.  The doctor said that we could convert it into an IUI so that it wouldn’t be a total waste.  I remember him saying, “you never know, keep a positive attitude” before he left the tiny exam room.  I was pretty frustrated, but I was also not a basket case.  I just couldn’t believe that I had a WORSE result from my body when we tried IVF than we did with the IUI. 

 

M and I completed the IUI two days later.  Neither one of us were very hopeful.  Normally I had about three mature follicles for each previous IUI, and they hadn’t worked.  I talked to our mothers, and my sisters.  I let them know what was going on, and that it was not very good chances.  M and I were not broken up about it.  We had a plan.  We knew that it wouldn’t work, and we would start working on our adoption papers.  We would spend the holidays working on the papers and see what happened.  Having a plan made me feel okay.  I also had some tender experiences that let me know that God knew me.  I didn’t know what that meant in the context of this challenge, but I knew He heard my prayers to Him.  That brought me extraordinary comfort.