Infertile Myrtle: Where do we go from here?

One of my loyal readers asked me to update you all about the latest happenings with our infertility struggles. I know I kind of left everyone hanging for a few weeks here, but I have lots to report, but unfortunately no good news to share.

The last I wrote I was hopped up on super duper estrogen patches. Well after a few weeks on those bad boys, my levels were not as high as they wanted them to be. My uterine lining was not thickening as it was supposed to, especially with that amount of estrogen pumping through my body, so we went back to the estrogen pills up the hoo-hah. This brought my levels up to where they were supposed to be, but actually had zero affect on the growth of my lining. If I remember correctly it actually started to shrink.

So I contacted my fertility doctor, whom I love so much, and told her I was in desperate need of some reassurance that there was a light at the end of this tunnel, and that we weren't just treading water, only to find out I would never be able to get pregnant again.

She called me immediately after I emailed her (one reason I love her) and laid it out for me (as she saw it). She believes that I am a rare case where my body does not respond to pharmaceutical estrogen, but will need to produce my own estrogen naturally and hopefully that will stimulate my lining to grow.

At this point in my second IVF cycle (remember first one went 44 days and was canceled), I was around day 24 and my lining was at 3.9. It needed to be to at least 6 to do the Cryo transfer. Things did not look good, once again, but my doc told me that we would up my dose of meds one more time, do a scan and see what happens. She said that she had done successful transfers with linings that thin, that resulted in pregnancies, and that she wanted to go ahead and give it a shot with me this time around. I am only 32 (about to be 33 in a few weeks), and that possibly once the embryo was inside me, it would decide to stay and grow on it's own, despite the thin lining. It was worth a shot.

So that is what we did. 15 days ago I had a Cryo transfer. My husband was out of town for work, so I trekked into the hospital by myself and had the embryo implanted in my sad, thin-lined uterus. Out of the 5 we had frozen, the first one they attempted to defrost had very high scores after surviving the thaw, so we used just that one. I was given a photo of it before it was implanted, and then I was given a photo of it inside my uterus - both of which I still had for M.

It is making me very sad to think about this, because I haven't thought about those photos really at all. I remember looking at both of them (which are now right in front of me under my computer screen in an envelope) and thinking - wow, the first photos of our new baby. I even sent a picture of the photo to my husband and he wrote me something endearing like "she is a beautiful baby."

Well, we found out yesterday that the embryo decided not to stay, and I am not pregnant.

I am doing better than I expected, but have little moments of great sadness since I found out the news yesterday. While I say I didn't expect it to work, of course I wanted it to, and honestly thought that there was no way it wouldn't.

When my nurse called and gave me the news she then explained to me that my case is going to a Fertility Review Board for review. They aren't exactly sure what to do with me next she explained to me. We will either be doing a Cryo Cycle with no-meds, in hopes that my body's own estrogen does the trick, or doing a fresh cycle and starting from scratch. Either way, I am going to give my bruised body a break until next year, as I don't want the added stress of going through this during the holidays. It really takes a lot out of a girl!

I am happy that I can enjoy cocktails with my family and friends over the next few weeks. I can eat my soft cheese and all the tuna I want. I can eat my steaks medium rare for the time being. I can try my best to get back into some sort of shape (who does that over the holidays, right?) and start working out again now that I am not on all sorts of medicines, and feeling like a slug. I can let my body heal from all the shots and can get back to my old self for the time being.

So that is where we are - in a holding pattern. I can't believe that it has gotten to this point though. When I had my IUD taken out in May, I was sure that I would be pregnant in July on our first try. Never did I think that what worked for us last time with M wouldn't work for us this time around. My wonderful husband keeps reminding me that it took two years to get pregnant with M, but I always remind him that what we did to get pregnant with M isn't working now and the scary thing is that I don't know where we go from here if this doesn't work out in the end?

I guess that is something I will figure out when we come to that crossroads...and something that will be a good topic for a future post.

Thank you for all of your support over the last few months, and if any of you are going through this too and have specific questions about any of this please email me at bostonbabymama@gmail.com.

XOXO, Mama J