January 27, 2014
What I expected
I expected to spend a lot of money. More money than Jim and I had ever spent on anything together. But, another child was worth it to us. We crunched numbers, we looked at our savings, and we agreed to make it work. I expected to not want to do the shots, because who would? I expected to have to sacrifice a lot of time driving, going to appointments, planning my life around timed medication. I expected to *possibly* not get pregnant, but the odds of getting pregnant were the same percentage of my previously not getting pregnant through other methods, so I felt good about our odds{60-80% FYI}. I expected to bloat, to have symptoms from the meds, but ultimately, to be a “textbook” IVF case.
The Process:
I’ve written about the entire process before: HERE
Re-reading that now? I’m just shaking my head in disbelief. I can’t believe I lived that.
If you skimmed to the bottom, you’ll notice I took 142 pills and 39 injections during my ONE IVF cycle.
I’m sorry, but that is INSANE.
I bring this up also, to talk about something that completely blew my mind about the entire process. You take care of all of that medicine, by yourself.
Sure, your office gives you your “instructions”. But they aren’t there to mix it for you. That’s right! You have to mix it yourself like a genuine pharmacist. Your meds come by mail and there are needles and syringes and alcohol swabs and powder and liquid and pre mixed meds and meds to mix yourself and different sized vials and different sized needles. Some go into your muscle. Some go into your stomach. They have to be given at a specific time. They have to be mixed a specific way. They cost thousands and thousands of dollars.
Goodness, I sure hope you don’t use it wrong.
The Appointments:
I’ve pretty well documented or have listed all of my appointments, but it’s hard to grasp just how many there were. Especially once I got to the stim phase of my cycle, I had to have appointments every other day to keep a close eye on my follicles. I also had to have blood work every time to check my hormone levels. I ended up living at my in-laws for two weeks just for appointments. If I hadn’t, I would have been driving myself and Abigail 6 hours back and forth every other day or so.
I was so bruised. My elbows ached, my stomach and arms were bruised from needles.
Another fun fact. They had IVF days at my office. Appointments where they lumped everyone going through an IVF cycle together to make their schedules easier. I could hear through the doors. Follicle check after follicle check after follicle check. Filing us on through. Checking the boxes.
I was dealing with life and death, and I was treated like just a number.
Jim and I started pondering if we could go ahead and move forward with the original plan of a 5 day transfer. I emailed my office Sunday night{retrieval had been Wednesday} to let them know that I was feeling a little better{emphasis on little} and that if there was any way we could move forward with a transfer, we would be open to that. We didn’t have the money to proceed with a FET{frozen embryo transfer} for what looked like a very long time and that upset me so much. I wanted to take some of my babies home with me, RIGHT THEN.
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Thank you for your honesty. This must have been incredibly difficult to write, I know all of my posts are. This is so helpful. Thank you.
Thank you so much for posting this. I know it was hard and probably re-living it all over again 🙁 stay strong, mama! Have you considered embryo adoption? Just throwing it out there – not a lot of people know about it. 🙂
This post, plus my own experience over the last 15 years of failed pregnancies, is absolutely why we are now considering adoption.
Courtney, thank you so much for sharing your experience. My heart hurts for you, Jim and Abigail. What a reunion there will be in Heaven! You will get to hold your babies one day.
Courtney, thank you for so boldly, and honestly, sharing your story. I remember praying so hard for you and your precious babies when you went through your transfer. YOUR BABIES, who are now safely in the arms of Jesus. I'm so sorry that you and Jim have been through this, but am thankful you are at a place that you feel you can write out and express your experience. Continuing to pray for you.
I appreciate your honesty. It sounds like a very grueling, emotional process. I hope this post helps anybody that is considering this process.
I just read through every IVF post you had and I'm truly heart broken. I had no idea this process was so grueling and just downright hard. Thank you so much for opening up your heart to us and sharing this. Praying for you.
I am so late to this. I just found your blog through another. I am so heartbroken for you to have gone through this. As an IVF mom and someone who works at a fertility clinic, I am so so heartbroken about your whole experience. I cannot fathom experiencing that as a patient and I cannot imagine working for a practice like that.
Thank you so much for sharing this and being honest about your experience. I would say maybe I had a rare case where everything went really well and we did get pregnant the first time with IVF (We also did a couple of IUI’s that did not work). I hate to hear how your clinic treated you, no way should that be the case. I loved all of the nurses and doctors I saw. They genuinely acted like they cared through every step of the process. Congrats on baby #3 by the way, that is amazing news!!