My name is Kristen and i am 26 years old. I got married to the most wonderful man on August 14, 2010. And ever since that moment i have been living in a dream, everyday i think..how can i be this lucky? And i do feel extremely lucky and blessed every single day. Even with the fact that we are faced with something that newly married couples do not want to hear, we have infertility issues and cannot seem to make children on our own. Everyday I'm terrified of the idea that i may never have children but i try very hard to keep faith and know that children have to be in God's plan for us...
Here is how our story begins:
My husband and I love children and have always wanted to start a family early after marriage. I was required to take a "natural family planning" class before getting married so i was already charting my ovulation cycle. I was thrilled when I realized that I would be ovulating on my honeymoon! What luck!! But my luck with ovulation, pretty much ends there. After 7 months of not conceiving on our own, i decided it was time to see my gynecologist. She ran tests and couldn't find anything, i had low progesterone and she said that maybe i was not ovulating and prescribed me progesterone supplements. After about 5 months on those, i decided that i really needed a specialist. I made an appointment with a reproductive endocrinologist (RE). He ran many tests and found nothing. These tests involved both me and my husband. I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility. (as in, they can't really find any reason why this isn't working) He put me on clomid 50 mg to guarantee that i would have a good ovulation cycle. Nothing. He put me on clomid 100mg, nothing. He put me on clomid 150 mg, something. After an ultrasound of my follicle, i had produced an egg. I was thrilled!! This was finally our time!!! (it wasn't). This went on for 6 months and i never got pregnant. I then started to have severe symptoms from clomid which included blurry vision, which could have lead to blindness or a heart attack. Okay, time to switch meds! I was then put on Femera. Femera (in my opinion) is a much better drug! It gave me less side effects and better results (It just isn't FDA approved, no big deal right? ;). So on Femera, I was producing 2 good eggs. We decided to do Femera with IUI. IUI is "Artificial Insemination: the process by which sperm is placed into the reproductive tract of a female for the purpose of impregnating the female by using means other than sexual intercourse or natural insemination." Using an IUI would help us time the cycle perfectly so that the sperm was being placed at the right place at the right time. We had 4 failed IUI's. Ok. At this point you start to feel pretty discouraged. I almost wish they would have found something because atleast there would be something to fix. At this time, I am getting pretty depressed and overwhelmed with the idea that maybe this will never happen. My husband was getting worried about my emotional state and we decided to talk about our options at this point. We had a consultation with our RE about Invitro Fertilization. IVF is a process by which egg cells are fertilized by sperm outside the body. IVF is a major treatment in infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed. IVF is expensive and no infertility treatments are covered by insurance in the United States. IVF would be $13,000 and would involved numerous different medications, injections at home, unltrasounds, bloodwork and weekly appointments. You are given injections to make as many eggs as possible and when this eggs are at their mature state, they are extracted in a minor surgery procedure. These eggs are immediately fertilized and placed in incubation. These eggs will hopefully start to grow. They will take the best 2 embryos and place them back in the body either 3 days or 5 days after extraction. And then you wait...and pray that one will implant. We started the IVF process 2 days ago :) I am finally feeling hopeful again. IVF is expensive but it is also very in depth. This will work!!
If you are starting this journey, I found this site helpful.
IVF Hints - Fertility Plus
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