In Vitro Part 2

I was scheduled to start my shots December 31st. I remember that day because my baby sister gave birth to her son that afternoon. This time around, I was cleared to begin. Have you ever had a needle in your hand and been told to stab yourself in the stomach with it? How bout 4 times a day? That was a little nerve racking for me. Some women have their husbands do it but I didn't want to have to plan my 4 shots a day around Trey's schedule. After a few days of shots in the stomach, I had to switch to my thighs because my stomach was so sore. After my thighs got sore, I'd switch back to my stomach. It was only 2 weeks though, I knew I could handle it. Here's what I was working with...



After about a week and a half had gone by, we had an appointment for an ultrasound to see how the drugs had affected my ovaries. The drugs were follicle stimulating hormones, designed to produce as many eggs as they could muster up for that one cycle. With a normal woman on a normal cycle without drugs, you'd produce one a month. This is the appointment where you get excited because you get to see how many eggs you'll get to work with.

The nurse was the one who did my ultrasound, but after about 3 minutes with us she left the room. Probably not a good sign, I thought. She came back and told us that she had called the doctor to come over and check for himself because she wasn't seeing much activity in there. Our doctor showed up about 10 minutes later and confirmed that we only had one egg to do this upcoming in vitro with. He explained how slim the odds were with just one...not only does that one egg have a 60% chance of fertilizing but then it's got just a 50% chance of surviving the 3 day development and then after that a 33% chance of implanting and getting pregnant. Or in other words, it would take a major miracle for this to work. Trey and I were praying for that miracle and did not want to give up on that one little egg so we decided to continue forward.

For the actual egg retrieval and embryo transfer, we had to travel to Boise because our doctor's lab was not complete in Utah. Day 1 was the egg retrieval, where they put me out for half an hour, removed the egg and sent us on our way to wait it out for 24 hours to see if the egg fertilized. We tried to stay busy while we waited so we wouldn't stress and drive ourselves crazy. That, however, is hard to do in Boise, ID. The following day, we waited all morning for a call and never got one. We continued to wait until 3:00 when we just got too impatient and Trey decided to call them. They didn't answer so we actually drove over to the doctor's office to find out for ourselves. I made Trey go in to get the news because I didn't want to get bad news in front of anyone. I waited in the car for about 10 minutes and then looked up as Trey came running out of the office shooting his arms up and down in the air. It had worked! That one egg made it through the 60% and fertilized. Now we just had 2 more days to kill, waiting to see if it could survive and be a good embryo.

Two days of boredom later, we went back to the doctor for the embryo transfer. They hadn't told us if our embryo made it and I was so nervous. A nurse came out to the waiting room and gave me a Valium to take. That was my answer...they wouldn't give me this drug unless we were going through with the transfer. They brought us back and showed us a picture of our embryo that was the best it could have been. All these miracles were happening right before us and I could not believe that this was really going on. Luckily for us, my parents drove down from Washington the night before to hang out with us so they got to be in the room during the transfer. We all joked that not many grandparents are in the room when their grandchildren are conceived.

After the transfer, I had to take it easy for a few days so we drove back to Utah immediately. We then had the long wait of 10 days to find out if we were pregnant or not. I had read all about pregnancy symptoms, trying to know my body before those 10 days, which was probably a mistake looking back. Every time I felt anything different, I would think, oh man this is it, I've got to be pregnant. Trey and I both felt that so many miracles had happened to get us this far that it just wouldn't make sense if we weren't pregnant. On day 8, I decided to take a pregnancy test to confirm my feelings. It came out negative and I was devastated, but still had hope since it was a little early. We went to church a few hours later and I remember this moment so vividly. We were singing a hymn and in the song the line read, "For courage to accept Thy will..." After that I broke down. I had just had my own confirmation that I was not pregnant. I knew it. We left church soon after because I could not stop crying and did not want others to see me like that.

Two days later, we waited around all morning for the phone call to tell us whether or not we were pregnant. Even though I didn't think I was, I still had a tiny ounce of hope that I was wrong. All of our friends and family knew we were getting the news this day so they were also anxious to hear. After 1:30pm, we got impatient and Trey called in to get the results. They told him they would call between 2-3. So we waited a little while longer and then my phone rang. I handed it to Trey to answer. I didn't want to be the one to get the bad news. Trey answered and the woman explained she was calling from the doctor's office to give us our results. I remember her saying "Unfortunately, your blood tests were negative. I'm sorry." Trey held it together to talk to her a bit, but I was already sobbing next to him and as soon as he hung up, he joined me.

We cried together for maybe 30 minutes and then decided we should probably let our friends and family know. I think we both sent out mass text messages because neither one of us felt like talking about it. That was a very hard day for both of us. We were back to square one and didn't understand why it was so hard for us when so many others got pregnant so easily. We spent the afternoon together, crying off and on and then went to Taco Bell for some comfort food. I remember holding back tears while I sat and ate. I also remember seeing the word "fart" etched in pencil on the table we were eating at. And that put a smile on my face and I knew we were going to be okay. Look close in the pink stripe and you'll see it too.



Stay tuned tomorrow for Part 3.