IVF Success

Our IVF experience the second time around was so much better than the first! I received Lupron shots for four months and then we began our IVF in July. I was having a hard time being ready to try again because I still felt so much disappointment and sadness from our negative result. Last time I was so emotionally involved- I would bounce back and forth between extreme excitement at our possible babies and extreme fear during shots and procedures. This time around I think I was too scared to think too much about what I was doing. In a way it really helped me. I didn't freak out about shots or surgery, just business as usual. It wasn't until one of my check ups a few weeks in that I finally allowed myself to hope again. We were doing one of the last routine check ups where they check to see how the meds are affecting me and how my egg production is doing. Last time I produced a total of 13 eggs and during this check up they saw 29! The wonderful result of being on Lupron for so long. It suddenly hit me that this time was different and that even if it didn't work this month we would most likely have enough embryos to try again! When I woke up from my egg retrieval Dr. Foulk came in to tell us how it went and I'll never forget how he smiled at us and said "Guess how many eggs we were able to get." I tentatively asked if there were 29 and he said 35! We were so relieved and Dr. Foulk was thrilled at our improvement. I'm so glad he was able to take our failed IVF and change things based on our need to help my body respond better. They fertilized the eggs and a few days later we came in for our embryo transfer. They told us we had eight embryos that had matured to the point they could be implanted! They cryogenically preserved six of them for future cycles and we used two. Last time we only had two embryos total so we are so happy that we can do more cycles without paying the full cycle fee. 

Our family photo with our two embryos shown on the ultrasound. 

Then came the dreaded two week wait where we hoped and prayed those embryos were sticking. We tried to stay positive and also enjoy being pregnant until proven other wise. On the anniversary of the day we got engaged I went in for a blood test and then we went home to wait for several hours for the news. When they finally called and told us the results were positive its was the biggest flood of relief and joy. We cried and laughed and hugged each other as we thought of our little baby. We had been waiting for this moment for so long. What surprised us is how quickly the fear came back. For years a positive pregnancy test seemed like the goal but immediately we realized this didn't guarantee a baby and the risk of miscarriage terrified us. We told our family the good news but didn't share it publicly for a few weeks while we hoped everyday that I was still be pregnant. On our wedding anniversary we had our ultrasound where we finally got to see our baby and hear the heartbeat. It was such a magical moment. We ended up losing one of our embryos but we are so grateful our baby was able to to stick around. We had another ultrasound two weeks later where we saw our little babe dancing around.  This was our last appointment at our fertility center as we "graduated" to our OBGYN for the remainder of the pregnancy.

It was pretty bittersweet leaving the fertility center- obviously this is what they want for all their patients but they have such an amazing staff that were so good to me during the scariest and hardest couple of months of my life. I would highly recommend their office to anyone needing help. It worked out okay though because our OBGYN is awesome and has had to go though infertility and IVF with his wife and knows exactly what we've been through so it makes the transition easier. Since then I have felt pretty consistently awful which isn't fun but also is a daily reassurance that little babe is still there making me sick. Its amazing how loved this baby is already. We are so excited to become parents and we can't wait until April. We're praying everything goes well over the next six months and that this sweet baby will be healthy and strong.

IVF Preparation

We wanted to give everyone who has been following our journey an update on what we have been up to. The past few months have been hard on us emotionally. When we were told that the IVF was unsuccessful, I wanted to try again immediately. It was hard having our doctor tell us we had to do at least three months of additional treatments before trying again. However, it ended up being a really good thing having a few months off for us to deal with our loss and get ready physically and emotionally for another IVF cycle. We finally feel like we are in a good place and ready to try again.

Our fertility center recently published an awesome video on facebook of our doctor explaining what endometriosis is and how it affects fertility. Here is the video if you are interested in watching.

We will go through pretty much the same procedure as before; I will start out by giving myself shots daily to stimulate my egg production. Since my numbers were low last time they are upping the amount of medication so hopefully we will see an increase in healthy eggs. During this time I will have an appointment almost every day for an ultrasound and blood draw so they can make sure all is going well. When the eggs are ready, they will trigger ovulation and I will go in for a minor surgery in which they will retrieve all the eggs I have produced. The lab will fertilize the eggs and watch them for a few days to see how they develop. The embryos need to develop to a certain point before they can be used in a live transfer or frozen for future cycles. This time they will be adding a procedure called ICSI to increase the number of eggs fertilized. They will take the best two embryos and transfer them back for implantation. Any other embryos that have progressed to a certain point will be frozen. Then we wait and see if they have implanted.

 Unfortunately, like before, all that our insurance will cover is the blood work since infertility treatment is seen as non-essential treatment and IVF is very expensive:

Medicine/shots: $4,600
Base Cycle Fee: $8,300
ICSI: $1,500
Embryo preservation: $750

Based on feedback from some of our friends and family, we've decided to put together another fundraiser in case anyone wants to help. As a quick note, we've learned that since Youcaring uses Paypal to transfer money, Paypal takes 3% of donations through Youcaring. If you want to donate but wish to avoid this annoyance, we have alternate options. Using the square cash app you can send money directly and its free. You can find us under the username $carolynhalejohnson or $ussjohnson. You can also use the Venmo app using the username carolynhalejohnson. Any donations given to us offline will be manually entered and shown on the website as progress towards our goal.
Thank you so much for your help. We would not have been able to pay for either cycle with out the selfless donations of so many wonderful people.

Click here for our fundraiser

Results

We had our pregnancy test on Monday and the results came back negative. Its been a rough couple of days. We really appreciate all the love we have been shown. We met with Dr. Foulk today to talk about what went wrong and where to go from here. He said we got unlucky but that they were able to learn from this cycle and adjust my treatment. Apparently at my age and health I should have produced more than 13 eggs and more of them should have developed to the point that they could be used immediately or frozen. This means my endometriosis is affecting my ovaries as well as my Fallopian tubes. He suggested that I take Lupron for three months (yay more shots) which will essentially cause my body to stop creating estrogen. Since endometriosis feeds on estrogen this should kill it off for a year so we can try again within that time.  We can't replace eggs that have been destroyed by the endometriosis but with it gone the eggs I do have should have more of a chance to develop fully. After three months we can try another IVF cycle. So, for now, we're trying to stay positive and save up money. Again, thank you for your kindness and for your prayers.

IVF

First off, thank you so much to everyone who helped us with this IVF cycle! We were blown away with how much love and generosity we were shown after announcing our situation. We raised enough money for our IVF cycle very quickly, we had so many people send kind words, and we have felt the many prayers on our behalf. We wanted to post an update to show what has happened this past month and what the future looks like for us.

All my supplies delivered. I had to give myself 26 shots over a 10 day span.

We had our first appointment on January 10th for a baseline ultrasound and blood draw. Then every day after that I gave myself 2-4 shots every morning to stimulate my egg production. After the first five days, I went in everyday for another ultrasound and blood draw. They increased one of my doses halfway through, but other than that, they said my body was responding well. 

Last day of shots and blood draws! Such a relief! 

My last shot was to trigger ovulation. They then scheduled an egg retrieval procedure for 36 hours later. I was nervous about the procedure because my last surgery experience (laparoscopy) was  awful. However, they took really good care of me at the fertility center and it went very smoothly.

All drugged up afterward.

Dr. Foulk came in after the surgery and told us they were able to get 13 eggs. They fertilized the eggs that day and then called the next morning to say that we had 7 embryos. I had a few days of rest as we waited for the embryos to mature for the implantation. Jan. 27th we went in for the embryo transfer. They gave us an update that 3 of the embryos had stopped developing. Out of the 4 remaining, 2 were looking really good. They weren't sure yet if the other 2 would be mature enough to freeze and use in further cycles. We decide we would transfer our 2 best embryos. During the transfer they had a monitor that connected to the lab and showed us the microscopic view of our embryos. We watched them get sucked into a syringe and then the lab workers brought them into the operation room. One of the nurses was preforming an ultrasound throughout the procedure so we were able to watch the embryos enter the uterus.

The embryos are microscopic so they put an air bubble before and after them. The circled white spots are the air bubbles. 

The next few days were called my "princess days". I was suppose to do as little as possible to help the embryos implant while Spencer took care of me. Luckily my Mom flew out to help, so Spencer got to be taken care of a little too. Unfortunately the lab called the day after the embryo transfer and said that our last 2 embryos had stopped developing. This means we have no embryos to freeze for future cycles. If this cycle was unsuccessful we will have to go through the whole process again. We are, of course, very disappointed. It makes it even more important that this one works.

We don't go in for our pregnancy test for another week so for now we just have to wait and pray it works. They gave us a 50% possibility we would get one baby, 25% we would get twins, and 25% it will be unsuccessful. We are really hoping for twins! Please continue to pray for us!