Our 3rd Pregnancy and Miscarriage

At the end of the October, Jamie and I started our last frozen embryo transfer cycle. We were filled with hope and excitement that this was going to work.

We went in on the day of our transfer and everything seemed like it was going well. Of the two embryos they thawed (our last two), one seemed to be bouncing back well and the other was a little slower. Jamie claimed that the slower one was definitely his...I love his sense of humor!

Here are some pics of us with our embryo babies and our transfer.

5 days after transfer I got a positive pregnancy test and Jamie and I went out to celebrate. We were cautious and more nervous because of our early miscarriage in September, but we still wanted to celebrate the life we had right then. Because of that same philosophy we started telling people right away. My hcg levels were rising well with every blood test that I took. The first hcg test was a 46 (9dp 6dt). Three days later it was at 222. 4 days later it was at 1,157.

Then the next day everything changed. At 5 weeks 3 days, I started bleeding. Jamie and I rushed to the ER with Molly to see if we could find out anything, but after several hours they wouldn't give me an ultrasound and could offer nothing more than a "wait and see." The next day it seemed like it had slowed down a whole lot, which I took comfort in and went to work. Unfortunately, while I was having studio time with my night class I went to the bathroom on a break and what I saw was horrific. I was gushing huge clots of red blood. I came up with some excuse about a migraine and dismissed class early. On my hour drive home from Durham, I stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom and sobbed uncontrollably because I was certain that I was losing my baby. My heart was breaking into a million pieces. How could this be happening?

When I got home, Jamie and I laid in bed and I just cried. Choking back tears I started singing the words to "It is Well with My Soul" and Jamie joined in.

   "When peace like a river, attendeth my way,

   When sorrows like sea billows roll

   Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say

   It is well, it is well, with my soul

   It is well

   With my soul

   It is well, it is well with my soul"
   -Horatio Spafford

God didn't answer all of my prayers with this pregnancy, but he did answer my early prayer that nothing - not even a loss - would take my love away from Him. 

The next day (Friday) my fertility practice got me in for an ultrasound. To our utter shock our baby was still there all nestled in my womb. Measuring right on schedule there was a gestational sac and a yoke sac. 

They tested my hcg levels and they had still risen from my results earlier that week, so maybe there was a chance. The ultrasound tech told me that I had a huge blood clot at my cervix and while she seemed nervous for us, our Dr. seemed cautiously optimistic that everything was going to be okay. I was told to lay down or sit as a much as possible and not lift anything heavier than a loaf of bread (aka no picking up Molly). Long story short on Monday (about 6 weeks pregnant), I went in for more bloodwork....my hcg level had fallen and I was in the middle of miscarrying our baby.

 

This is my third pregnancy and third miscarriage. I am tired of getting excited for new life and then having it ripped away from me. Yet, I do trust firmly in the goodness of God. This perfectly sums up my feelings about our losses. 

Is this our last pregnancy? My prayer is that it isn't. I am not ready to think that this is the end of our journey. 

Maybe I'm a Polyanna always looking for the happy ending...maybe I'd rather try as hard as I can to believe my 2nd child is still on their way to me than think its really over...maybe I feel like after all we've been through so publicly I feel pressure to wrap my pain and grief up in a nice little bow...and sometimes i think that maybe all this is so someone out there will know they aren't alone in the storm called infertility and miscarriage.

When Jamie and I started on our journey of infertility we both agreed that we longed to raise children whether biological or otherwise, but I have to say at least for now my heart has been spoiled by the sweet sweet gift of Molly. I say spoiled because she is a lavish gift from God that we do not deserve. She is 18 months now and I just can't get over how in love with her I am.

I see it as an extra special blessing that I get to see pieces of Jamie and I in her and I know this is not something every family is gifted with. Selfishly I long for her to have a younger sister that shares some of her traits. Many people have asked me about adoption and while we are open to it, right now my heart is not ready for that road and I wonder if that is even the road meant for us. Adoption is more expensive than another round of IVF and my heart's longing is to carry and deliver another child into this world. 

Yet, more than a biological sister I long for her to have a sister. I also think about my brothers... we fought and got on each others nerves sure. But we also laughed all the time. Growing up we moved around a lot (like seriously A LOT), but part of the safety during our moves was knowing that we were a family and we would always have each other.  My brothers and I may live in different cities, but my bonds with them are deep. During all this I have been thinking a lot about the importance of siblings. If you have been blessed with close relationships with your siblings what would your life have been like without them? For me it is painful to think about...

I have some secrets to tell you. When Jamie and I were engaged we dreamed together of how many children we wanted. In a very specific conversation we picked out two girl names. No boy names, just two girl names. The first one is Molly Joy and the second was Madison Jean. Now I know life usually doesn't work out how we plan it and I know God's ways are higher than my ways, but even with everything we have been through I long for a Madison Jean. Jamie and I during this pregnancy were really giddy with hopefulness that this little baby could be our Madison Jean. But this baby was not our Madison Jean. The baby we lost will be called some other name because naming them by that name would crack our hearts open more than they already are...it would be like throwing in the white flag... Right now I am still longing to raise our Madison Jean. It feels like a part of our family is missing without her.

So how am I doing? I might as well answer the question that everyone will ask me...My best answer is I am doing ok given the circumstances. I am getting lots of Molly snuggles in. I often hold her tight and do my best to slowly breathe in the precious moments I do have with her. It's been a little over two weeks since that scary night in the ER. I am doing a good job of keeping myself distracted from the pain and trying to soak in the joy of the Christmas season, but underneath all that I just wish I was still carrying our baby. I have lots of anxiety about crowds wanting to talk to me about it. One-on-one I am fine, but my fear is when lots of people are around that my taped together pieces will come unhinged. 

My ultimate prayer is that God shows up in some beautiful powerful way and allows us to get pregnant again. Is it totally illogical? Probably, but this is what Jamie and I are praying for. We have no more money to pursue additional fertility treatments or more children...at least not for now, so we would love it if you'd pray that God would work a miracle in our lives. 

Looking Out Over A Cliff

So here we are two crazy fools standing on the edge of a cliff about to jump into the unknown with very little but the safety net of the Lord to catch us. After our chemical pregnancy in September, we are back and ready to transfer our final two embryos. We really really need your prayers! 

I have done an excellent job of emotionally ignoring the fact that this is really happening...well up until probably this week. Financially this has been a very strange year...one filled with many blessings, but also one filled with WAYYYYY more medical bills than we ever expected. This year, between my gallbladder surgery and our last and our upcoming embryo transfers, we will have spent $11,000 on medical bills (insert big gulp here)!!!

This year we also settled into our new house, needed a new air conditioning unit for the house, AND had several thousand dollars worth of unexpected car repairs (insert another big gulp here). I feel like maybe there could be a line in the Living on a Prayer song by Bon Jovi about us "Jamie works on the taxes all dayyyy...(insert non-descript singing of crazy person) ...cause we gotta hold on to what we got. It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not. We got each other and that a lot for love.....WE'LL GIVE IT A SHOT."

Okay that was fun. You gotta laugh to keep from crying right? Anyways, we are very blessed to have had the money to pay our bills (VERY VERY BLESSED), but at this point I feel like we are standing looking over the cliff without a financial safety net anymore and just praying for God to get us through and give us more babies. I hope that this doesn't sound like complaining, but it is a very real part of our story right now.

In October, I went in for an endometrial biopsy, which is this super fun procedure (just kidding) were they basically scrape around the inside of your uterus with a straw. Yeah...I know gross. Thankfully, my results came back normal, which means that my uterus isn't attacking our embryos (yay!). The procedure also spurs on new uterine lining that increases chances of our next embryos implanting .

On Monday, of this week I went in for an ultrasound to make sure that my body is ready for the transfer and everything looked good (another yay!). I brought Molly with me this time and she made a friend in the waiting room, which was so cute! See the snapshot that I caught of the two of them hugging.

As I mentioned I have done a really great job of practically ignoring the scary cliff up ahead. Then several things this week just caused me to really wake up...one of which was our bank account, or lack thereof, and the second is just thinking about twins. If money wasn't a factor, I probably would transfer only one embryo at a time, but at this point it is a factor and the doctor recommended we transfer both of our last embryos, so that is what we are doing. There are lots of exciting things about twins, but I just feel extra nervous because we miscarried Molly's twin and I think I am more aware of the complications that can happen with twins.

This brings me to prayer...we really need your prayers! Prayers that this will work! Prayers that God will provide for us through the next few very lean months. Prayers that we will not just get pregnant, but that God would bless us with a healthy pregnancy and a healthy child or children.

So thankful to have such a wonderful community of friends, a blog where I can share our struggles, a church that loves on us, and an amazing God who is knitting together the next chapter of our family's infertility story.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurable more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,..." - Ephesians 3:20

Our First Frozen Embryo Transfer

Whew! What a month it has been. This month Jamie and I had our frozen embryos shipped to the new practice and we had our first frozen embryo transfer. It has been a month filled with lots of different emotions as we first found out we were pregnant, but very soon after had a very early miscarriage (also called a chemical pregnancy).

On 9/14/16 we transferred 2 of our little frozen embryo babies back to live in their mama. There is a lot of significance with this date. On 9/14/14 we had Molly and her sibling in heaven, Riley, transferred back into my body. Exactly, a 2 year difference in transfers! It wasn't something that we really planned out, but as we were looking back through Molly's embryo photos from the blog we realized the date and thought if we get pregnant they would have the exact same due date as Molly's.

We were super nervous about the thawing process and wondered if both would survive being thawed out. These were our weakest 2 embryos that had been frozen together in one vial. Thankfully, both survived the thaw and showed that they were growing. Below is a picture of our little embryo babies!

The transfer was quick and pretty painless. I remember I was suppose to arrive with a full bladder so they could have better images through a sonogram of where to drop my kiddos off, but I ended up having to do pee dances in the patient room waiting on the drs and eventually begged the nurse in the hall to let me pee "just a little bit." If you have ever tried to stop mid-pee...well let's just say it is not natural, but I managed. They gave us our first sonogram photo of the babies in my uterus. 

They also gave us the vial where both of our embryo babies have been stored for exactly 2 years. Can you believe it is this small?

Our transfer was on a Wednesday and Saturday afternoon (3 days past our transfer), I got a positive pregnancy test! I was shocked! Last time I planned this grand elaborate pregnancy reveal to my Jamie, but I knew that I couldn't keep it in this time because he was home and every second of me not telling him felt like I was lying. So I wrote a card to him letting him know we were pregnant and secretly booked a babysitter so I could surprise him with a date night out to celebrate. As he read the card, he was shocked that we knew this soon. I showed him the test and he agreed that it was faint but positive. We kissed Molly goodnight and dashed off for a celebratory date!  

The next morning, I took another test expecting it to be darker, but it wasn't. This worried me a lot, but that afternoon I took another test and I felt like the line was getting darker so that put me at ease. We began sharing with friends over the next few days our wonderful news. I remember distinctly feeling nauseous, having an increased sensation in smells, and feeling very very tired....you know the soaking your pillow with drool kind of tired. Over the next couple of days my tests got darker, but then I couldn't tell anymore. Were my positive lines fading away? In the back of my mind I had this nagging feeling that we better hurry up and celebrate this pregnancy before it's over with.

Unfortunately, that is what happened. I went in for bloodwork, which confirmed that I was pregnant, but my hcg level by that point was only 8. Ideally, they would like it to be between 25 and 100 for the first draw at 4 weeks pregnant. I was told to prepare to lose the baby very early, but that we would know more after another bloodtest. My prayer was that God would protect us from leading us weeks through a pregnancy that would only end in a miscarriage anyway. He answered that prayer. A few days later my bloodtest results showed an hcg level of 0. Often this is called a chemical pregnancy or very early miscarriage.

It sounds strange to say, but I was really thankful that we got to celebrate with people and tell them we were pregnant. A lot of people wouldn't even share information like this with close friends, let alone the world through a blog, but some wise friend once told me "Whoever you would share your sadness of miscarriage with - share your joy of pregnancy with." I have always held onto that. There were more people we wanted to share the news with early, but never got the chance to.

Thinking back on this whole frozen embryo transfer I was kind of floating above a lot of emotional pain - resting in the worldly security that we have more embryos and it wasn't the end of our story. After talking with my doctor today, she suggests we take a month off, pursue an endometrial biopsy & scratch to make sure my uterus is a healthy environment, and then go for one more transfer with our last two embryos. This means our safety net is going away. What if this last transfer doesn't work either? This could potentially be our last chance to have more children of our own, which terrifies me. Jamie and I are asking ourselves if we should really use both at one time.

While thinking about this today, I was prayerfully brought back into a place of repentance. I have been so focused on what I want and how I want to build our family instead of seeking how God wants to build our family. We feel strongly that we need to pursue putting back the rest of our embryos, but there is the possibility that we might not get pregnant. Maybe Molly is the first and last biological child we have and God wants to lead us down other avenues, like adoption. I have to admit that right now that deeply hurts to write. Emotionally, I am not ready to face that yet. My hope and prayer is still that God would bless us with more biological children before we consider if adopting is right for us. For now we would love your prayers that God would bless us with a healthy pregnancy and child (or children) from our upcoming and possibly last frozen embryo transfer.

This has been the song in my head all day and it seems to perfectly fit my feelings today. 

"In the eye of the storm, You remain in control
In the middle of the war, You guard my soul
You alone are the anchor, when my sails are torn
Your love surrounds me, in the eye of the storm

When my hopes and dreams are far from me, and I’m running out of faith
I see the future I pictured slowly fade away
And when the tears of pain and heartache are pouring down my face
I find my peace in Jesus' name"

-Ryan Stevenson
"Eye of the Storm" 
https://youtu.be/-sx8wTnnfSc

The Next Chapter in our Story

Hey guys! It has been way too long since I blogged last time. Wanna come join us on our next fertility road trip? Cause guess what? Here we go again! Join in on all the fun, wacky, stressful, and embarrassing details as we gear up for a frozen embryo transfer this fall. Some of you may recall that through IVF we were blessed with our daughter Molly Joy, another baby we will one day get to meet in heaven, and 4 beautiful frozen embryos. This process has already had tons of twists and turns!

A little back story...in December our family bought and moved into a new house where we hope to raise our family and build many wonderful memories. Our original plan, was to do a frozen embryo transfer in January or February of this year, but Jamie and I both had bronchitis for 6 weeks. Ugh...it was pretty rough. Between being sick, moving in less than a week before Christmas, holiday traveling and hosting family for New Years, trying to get settled into a new house, and taking care of Molly - we put our plans on hold. Clearly, it was not the right timing. So as the year went by we decided that I would pour my energy into making our new house a home. It has been a fun challenge! I really have enjoyed getting us settled in. Every room is not completely finished, but it doesn't drive me crazy like it use to.

One cool thing about our new house is that it is only 1/2 mile or so away from our fertility doctor's office where our little frozen babies are being stored. Every time I drive by the office, I wave to them and tell them I love them. Sometimes I tell Molly, "Wave hi to your siblings!" Does that make me a weirdo? Eh ...ok well just blame it on the baby fever. 

Then we were going to do a transfer in August, but I ended up needing emergency gallbladder surgery in July and again we realized it clear that we needed just a little bit more time for me to recuperate from surgery. But thankfully, the ball is now rolling and we are super stoked to try to get pregnant again this fall.

This time has been less stressful than IVF in some areas and more stressful in other areas. A few weeks ago I went into our fertility doctor's office to get images of my uterus to make sure everything is okay to have a healthy pregnancy. Thankfully, my test and the images were clear, but we learned some shocking news. 

Our fertility office is closing...forever!!! The practice is owned by a huge company and that huge corporation decided to close down this particular practice. Not only that, but my doctor said he couldn't do a transfer until he is settled at his new practice...3 months after our original planned month. Ummm....WHAT? I was definitely stressed and upset. Thankfully, I learned that there is another doctor at his new practice that they suggested I meet with to see if she would be willing to do our frozen embryo transfer for us. 

After learning about the closing there were many unanswered questions like... will this new doctor even be willing to take me on so last minute (later we found out yes), where are our embryos going, when are they being shipped, what type of shipping is used to ensure their safety, what if the vehicle transporting the embryos is in an accident, when can our old lab ship the embryos and when can the new lab receive them....this is just the tip of all the questions that have taken weeks to get sorted out. 

We quickly learned that the cost to ship them was going to cost us several hundred dollars more ON TOP OF the already $3,100 that it takes to even do a frozen embryo transfer. At this point, I think both practices are working together to try to cut this cost down to something MUCH MUCH more reasonable and still have our embryos transferred in a manner that is just as safe. Fingers crossed. 

One thing I am super excited about with this frozen embryo transfer is NO SHOTS and NO EGG RETRIEVAL SURGERY! Alleluia! In fact, here is a picture of the fertility meds that I received for my transfer a few days ago. 

Common Questions
So what is an embryo and how many do we plan to transfer out of the 4 we have? Our embryos are my eggs already mixed with Jamie's sperm (getting squirmy yet?). Our goal is to put back 1 or 2. There are 3 vials. Two vials have one strong embryo in them each and then one vial has 2 weaker embryos frozen together. To anyone going through IVF, share this one tip with them - tell the doctor/embryologist not to freeze any embryos together. This was something that never even entered my mind during IVF and of all the hundreds of fertility blogs I read, no one ever said anything about this and it has worried me a lot. Once a vial with 2 or more has been thawed, they either have to be used or discarded (which we don't feel comfortable with). So two big reasons we are using the weaker embryos first is (A) if we are going to get surprised with twins I would rather have that be now and not a surprise at the end of using our embryos and (B) because they are weaker if they do result in a loss I would rather have that be now than during our last frozen embryo transfer. I know that despite all my best planning, God is going to build our family in the beautiful way he has designed for us, but given the information we have we are trying to make the best decisions possible. So long story short, we will put back whatever embryos survive the thaw from the vial with two. In the end though we will use all of our embryos at some point. However, if in 6 years you are wondering why we didn't have Molly plus 4 more babies it is because not embryo becomes a pregnancy. 

What are your chances of getting pregnant? We should have between a 45% to 55% chance of getting preggo for each frozen embryo transfer. My mind is already racing with what this will mean. It could be anything ranging from a negative pregnancy test to a positive pregnancy test, could each embryo split and we end up with quintuplets (it HAS happened before), a miscarriage of 1 or 2 babies or a beautiful birth, or so many other things. The one thing I am holding onto through this time of uncertainty is that God is faithful. He sees our family as it is suppose to be and any baby(ies) we conceive through this - He already knows their every detail.

I would love some prayers for peace during this time. Peace for what will happen and peace about the financial side of this fertility treatment. Going through a frozen embryo transfer is an expensive procedure. It definitely is not as expensive as IVF was, but still expensive. I do get worried because the hospital bills from my gallbladder surgery are coming in, we are replacing our broken air conditioning system in our house, AND moving forward with trying to expand our family. Thankfully, I have a husband who reminds me that true security does not come from a savings account, but from Jesus Christ. He also reminds me of all the ways God has provided for us in the past.

Often I ask myself, does anyone even care about this part of our story, but then I am reminded how much reading other's blog stories helped me during times of uncertainty...THAT and I really want God to get all the glory in the story of how he builds our family.  

Having Molly join our family has been amazing. She is 15 months old now and just brings so much Joy into our lives! We hope next year we can bring her home a sibling (or maybe two).