It looks like we are going to be making us some test tube babies! We had our IVF consultation yesterday and decided that this is the route we are willing to take an is really our only option at this point if we want to be able to effectively use the last of our insurance lifetime maximum for infertility. I will say that I think we might have lucked out a bit because most of my husbands procedures were not coded under infertility so it doesn't count against our maximum. It is looking as though most of the procedure (minus co pays for meds and monitoring) will be covered. It is still going to cost us multiple of thousands of dollars out of pocket. We are looking to start the process around the end of October with the process approximately being 40 days from start to finish. We picked October because we want to be able to mentally, physically, and financially prepare ourselves for all of this. We are being realistic, I need to take off a few pounds and we as a team need to find ways to channel our anxieties and stress in preparation for something that could quite possibly be one of the most stressful processes we have ever had to deal with.
IVF is done in 4 stages
1. Suppression. Taking medications in order to suppress the ovarian functioning so that the ovary is a "clean slate" with no follicles, cysts, or anything else leftover from previous cycle. ( I will be on birth control pills and lupron injections during this time)
2. Stimulation. Taking of medications in order to stimulate the overproduction of mature eggs (10 or more) without overstimulating the ovaries. Overproduction without overstimulation? Yeah, they are not the same thing! Overstimulation can cause OHSS, which I am told is very bad and very painful. ( I will be on Gonal-F injections to stimulate production and Lupron injections to keep me from ovulating until ready) I will be monitored every to every other day at this point to adjust the medication as needed either up or down depending on how I am responding. When they are satisfied with my response to the medications I will have to give myself a HCG injection (pregnancy hormone) to get my eggs ready to release..... but before they release on their own I move on to the next step.....
3. Retrieval and culturation. In this stage you are put under anesthesia, they insert a probe attached with a needle into the uterus then up the fallopian tubes to the ovaries in order to aspirate and collect the eggs. After retrieval, the put the eggs into separate petri dishes and introduce amounts of sperm into each dish in hopes of fertilization. They watch the progression of the (hopefully) embryos and grade them on quality (when I understand this better I will blog about it) then decide whether they want to transfer the embryos at 3 or 5 days. There are pros and cons of both the 3 and 5 day transfers, but neither has a better success rate than the other so I will leave it up to the specialists to make the final decision. ( I will be on vaginal suppositories 3 times daily as well as oral medications 2 times daily in order to plump up and make a nice squishy thick lining for the embryos to implant into after transfer).
4. Transfer. They best of the best embies will be "shot" through my cervix into my uterus with a catheter in hopes that they will snuggle in. ( I will remain on the oral and vaginal meds until a beta confirms success or failure, if successful I will stay on these until I have a beautiful sono pic of my baby). Hopefully after this we will have good ones we can freeze and use later for a FET (frozen embryo transfer) cycle if A: it doesn't work or B: it works and we want to have more babies. The pros of a FET cycle is that you skip steps 1 through 3 (yay, no suppression, stimulation, and retrieval) and go right to a transfer if anything good makes it to thaw. I will even get a picture of my embryos that they transferred! Hopefully these will be my baby's first photo session.
Whew, that was an information overload, thanks for reading if you made it this far.
My husband and I have decided that we are ok with and will be transferring 2 embryos if we are lucky to be able to have enough that had fertilized and got "good grades" to be able to pick from.
I'm scared....shit less.. of this whole process and the chances of after ALL of this, it may not work. There is only a 45% chance of a baby you will give birth to and take home. Better than I am looking at now. The doctor was really nice and it made me feel so much better telling me that there is NO evidence that anything is wrong with me or my egg quality nor is there anything wrong with my husbands sperm. We really aren't "broken" and we could have the possibility of better odds. EEEK.
::Fingers crossed:
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