Since I haven't updated in awhile, I wanted to provide a brief history of our infertility struggles.
We've been trying to conceive since the beginning of November 2010. I'm currently 28 and my husband is 30. I always had a feeling I would have trouble having kids, but you never really truly think that it will be you. After a year of trying on our own, we decided to seek the help of our OB (big mistake) since she told me I wasn't ovulating. Not true. She just didn't know I was a late ovulator. Thanks to the push of some family, we decided to move on to a fertility specialist.
All of the initial tests came back normal so we were diagnosed as unexplained with possible endometriosis. We moved forward with 5 medicated timed intercourse cycles and a 3 IUI.s (5 rounds of clomid 50mg-150mg and 3 rounds of femara 5mg) but nothing worked. We had laproscopic surgery for the endometriosis in July 2012 where our doctor at the time found out that I had stage II endo and removed a polyp. One of our medicated IUI's was after this.
After doing some research online, I realized that I never had me AMH or FSH tested, which determine ovarian reserve. I strongly suggested that I have these simple bloodtests but my doctor said I was too young (27 at the time) and I didn't need to worry about it. After hounding them with calls, I was finally able to get the blood tests in November 2012. Finally, we have answers. We found out that my AMH was .23 (super low) and my FSH was 11.1 (a bit high). I had to fight for this with our doctor but I was so glad we had answers. Time for a second opinion now that all trust was lost...
We moved on to our 2nd doctor who recommended we move on to IVF right away. Hey, we were on board with whatever would help us get pregnant. I was officially diagnosed as severe DOR. Basically, my eggs were fried and there aren't many of them left.
So we had plans to move forward with IVF #1 in March 2013 but I had a huge cyst so it was delayed.
We started IVF#1 in April 2013, around the same time we had a huge project/change at work. We were able to retrieve 9 eggs, 4 of them were mature and 2 of fertilized with ICSI. We were looking to do genetic testing on any that reached day 5, but both stopped dividing on day 3. We were devastated. You think IVF is the answer when in reality, it's not. Our doctor recommended that we move to donor egg, but we weren't quite ready for that yet. I also requested that we retest my AMH which was no undetectable at <.16. Awesome. Just what we wanted to hear.
So we took some time to think about what we wanted to do next. We decided to go to one of the best clinics in the country at CCRM out in Denver, Colorado. We did a 1 day regroup in June 2013 and started with IVF #2 in July/August 2013. We also retested AMH which was now up .3. Hey, that's good news...maybe it was the acupuncture I've been doing? I was on maximum drugs at this point, trying to get as many eggs as possible. We ended up retrieving 5 eggs, 2 of them mature. 2 more ended up maturing over night and one of each of those ended up getting fertilized with ICSI. We decided to freeze both embryos on day 3. We had a 7-cell with 10% fragmentation and a 4-cell with 15% fragmentation.
We went back to Colorado in October 2013 for a frozen embryo transfer where we transferred both day 3 embryos. We were hopeful but we also knew that these weren't the best quality. Needless to say, we were devastated to find out that neither took. Our doctor truly believed that it was just egg quality issues and recommended that we try again with a different protocol, with minimal stims. She also recommended I be on the CCRM recommended supplements for 6 months as well as going gluten free. Hey, at this point, I'll try anything. We plan to go back to CCRM in 2014 for IVF #3.
