Still on the IVF hamster wheel!

It's been a long time since what was going to be my last post and so much has happened. It is seriously a whole year since I've even looked at this blog. I was really surprised to see that over 2600 people have viewed it. I hope that it helped some of you out there going through the same thing.

So! I know what you're thinking. You're thinking this is the post where I say "Oh, now we have a baby and blah blah blah" and you think "Oh man, you suck, you're just like all the others". Well, sorry for us to say it is not that blog post. But while it's not, this also isn't going to be a sad or depressing post. Before I give you an update on everything that's happened, let me just say that my husband and I are ok. We really are. We're a lot poorer than when we started, but a lot of great things have happened in our lives in the past year along with all the hard stuff.

So, here it goes. January 2010. We decided after our last cycle that my eggs were crap and moved on to donor egg. At first I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that the baby wouldn't be genetically mine. Then, as the cycle started and the 70% success rate that my clinic was at so far for the year, I started to get very excited. Excitement and hope....hmmmm Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

(technical jargon alert) We had 18 fertilized embryos. We froze 9 immediately at 2pn and let the other 9 culture. I started to get a little worried the day of our transfer when our best embies were 1-8cell and 1-7 cell. I thought we'd have a lot more 8 cells. But, the doctor was practically giddy and assured me they were great because they were already compacting.

I guess I've done way too many IVFs at this point b/c I looked at the photo and thought "wow, that's a lot of fragmentation for a 23 year olds eggs". and...I thought, "it's way too early for the embryos to be compacting". But in the end, I bought what my doctor was selling and changed out all my clothes in my closet for maternity clothes. I even disregarded the fact that none of the other 7 made it to quality blastocysts for freezing.

Whatever hope blinders I had on set me up for a big fall the day we found out we weren't pregnant. It was a really hard one to take and I gave my IVF office an earful!

We went on to get a 2nd opinion, and then to do a frozen cycle with 5 of the other 9. None of these made it beyond 4-cells. Also BFN. I seriously considered wearing a hat on our transfer day that said "if you tell me to think positive I will kick you in the balls". But, there were too many women in the office to make that threat actionable.

The kicker cycle. We gave it one last effort with the remaining 4. 2 didn't make it through the thaw and the other 2 arrested and did not continue to divide. In other words, it was a major catastrophe. Not at all what should have happened on a donor cycle. I'll forever be convinced it was a lab error of some kind, but I'll never know what actually happened.

Since then we've taken about 3 months to feel normal again. I've lost another 10 lbs. and concentrated on my business. The good news is that my business is really starting to take off. My husband got a new job and a nice raise, which has helped with me not having any income while I'm starting my business. We still have no IVF coverage of course...thank you Pennsylvania.

Well, that's enough of an update for you to take in tonight. I'll share more soon.