We thank Him for peace...

We are still here...

From the very beginning of our journey (almost three years ago now) Steven and I told each other that IF it came to it that we would try IVF a total of two times (God willing and IF we had the money to do so). We NEVER thought we would actually be faced with that “second IVF.” During the month of August, Steven and I spent a lot of time in prayer after receiving our devastating news in July. We had to make some decisions, and one of those decisions was to seek a second opinion. There are only a few fertility specialists here in Charleston, and we had been seeing one of those for over two years. We had heard some amazing things about another fertility clinic called Coastal Fertility Specialists so we decided to do some research. After a lot of research we decided to take a leap of faith. There were just too many red flags from my first IVF cycle not to seek a second opinion… especially with this being our last shot and attempt.

Any time you are faced with having to decide whether or not to seek a second opinion is difficult. You put your trust in your doctors, and when you have been with the same group of nurses for over two years it is hard to start over... But for us... it wasn't hard at all. Our first appointment with Coastal was in August. Our new doctor reviewed our records, pointed out several red flags, and had already come up with a new plan within one hour of us being there. Tears just filled my eyes as I sat there and listened to him speak to us about some of those "red flags" from our previous experience. I knew right away that I could not be angry or mad, but I had to accept it, move on, and thank Jesus for providing us with a new direction. Steven and I left their office with more confidence than we’d ever had throughout this journey.

Click on the link below to meet Dr. Schnoor, Dr. Slowey, and Dr. Cook! Dr. Schnoor is our main doctor, but we see all three at times, and we LOVE all of them!

Meet our doctors!

The NEW plan!

After much discussion and a series of new tests, ultrasound, etc. Dr. Schnoor re-diagnosed me with PCOS. My original diagnosis was PCOS w/ Hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (you can read about that one on my very first blog entry).  BUT come to find out you actually CANNOT have both of those as a diagnosis!! You have one or the other- we never knew that, and Dr. Schnoor explained to us that these are treated very differently as well which explains why my body did not respond well to that first IVF cycle leaving us with only one embryo to freeze out of 24. 

Long story short… we dove right in. I started hormone injections (almost triple the dosages I had ever taken), and I was taking different medications on top of those as well. Just shy of two weeks my ovaries we already growing to be massive. I was somewhat of a sight show at my appointments… all of the doctors insisted to see my ultrasounds. I was being monitored every single day, and I was up to nearly 60+ follicles right before my egg retrieval (they stopped counting after that number). Just to give you an idea of how crazy that is… most people get about 10-15 good follicles. Basically, my ovaries were about to explode with so many follicles. Keep in mind not all of those follicles had mature eggs… that was the main goal- to get mature eggs out of as many follicles as we could. Remember those "red flags" I spoke of before? Just to give an example: my estrogen level was 1,250 when my eggs were taken last time. This time my estrogen level was over 15,000 when eggs were retrieved! 

“You are ready!” Those words meant it was time to go in and retrieve eggs- as many as we could. My main doctor, Dr. Schnoor, was at the Myrtle Beach location on the day my retrieval happened to fall on so Dr. Cook did my procedure. When I woke up in recovery (very out of it) Dr. Cook came in and told me that she was only able to retrieve 20 eggs and only from my right ovary. This was devastating to me because we knew we had more eggs in there! She explained that my left ovary was so enlarged that it was actually sitting underneath my diaphragm, and she could not get to it without having to go through my uterus to do so. **Keep in mind this procedure is done with an ultrasound probe and a needle that goes in and takes the eggs so I completely understand why she did not want to go through my uterus. I started crying immediately. To say I was upset is an understatement. I knew Dr. Cook had tried everything she could (and while we were thankful for 20 eggs) we just knew there were more. Being an amazing doctor that she is she called in Dr. Slowey (who happened to be at the hospital working that day), but he came right over! He walked in to the recovery room and explained to Steven and I that he would like to try and go in again. Steven and I agreed this was the best decision. So…. Here we go again… they knocked me out again, and I woke up in recovery again…

Dr. Slowey also tried going in vaginally in efforts to reach my left ovary, but he also had no luck. INSTEAD he decided to go through my abdomen (yes, you read that right), and he was able to retrieve 10 more eggs from my left ovary. This extra 10 was huge (keep reading to find out why). When I came to… The doctors and staff were with me, and they explained that 29 out of 30 eggs were mature!! **Remember eggs are not fertilized yet though- we still had to get to that point, but 29 mature eggs was a huge blessing!

Now for the downside… because I was put under anesthesia twice in a row I was very sick. I was also already becoming very sore from both procedures. This type of procedure is supposed to be an in & out procedure, but unfortunately, not for me. I began vomiting to the point I had nothing left so then I was just dry heaving which was making my abdomen hurt even more. Steven sat with me through all of this, held my hair back, rushed to the pharmacy to get nausea patches (they’d already pumped me full of as much anti-nausea medicine they could legally give me), and I think for the first time he realized my body was officially done. By 5:00PM (the clinic’s closing time) we had officially been at the office for nearly 8 hours. The doctors decided that it would be best to get me over to the hospital for recovery instead of sending me home. My body just could not get itself back on track. We rolled into the hospital with an IV for fluids, and they got me in a room on the labor & delivery floor. Some how my IV had come out in all of that moving so a nurse came in to get me all set back up. Impossible. There were no veins to stick L She called in her best nurse, and that nurse called in her best nurse, and finally that nurse called in the children’s anesthesiologist (they nick-named him “pretty eyes”). I rarely remember much, but I remember him spending about 5 minutes just touching my arm and getting a vein in one single stick. I remember thinking (or maybe I actually said it), “Thank you Pretty Eyes.” Next thing I knew I was completely passed out. I stayed that way through the night and the next morning. Getting up and taking the 5 steps to the restroom were excruciating. The nurses came in from time to time to help, and their sweet compassion was displayed across their faces every single time. I remember one of them taking me to the restroom in the middle of the night- I was crying, and she just kept saying, “One day it’s going to be worth it honey.” I don’t even remember her name, but I am so thankful for her.

**Side note: let’s talk about a drug called Dilaudid. I have taken this pill before, and I am pretty sure I was passed out for over 24 hours. BUT when the nurse comes in to your room in the middle of the night and injects that lovely miracle of a drug into your IV… amazing! I don’t remember anything after that, but Steven sure does! He said I was talking out of mind about pirates, giving the pirates syringes, saying, “I was going to sleep until the devil strikes again” and other crazy things that make no sense at all. Bottom line: Dilaudid is good stuff.

Dr. Cook came by often in the hospital to check in with us, and Dr. Schnoor called almost every two hours checking in on us. Dr. Schnoor also gave us the amazing news that 26 out of the 29 eggs were fertilized! That was AMAZING news!! He expected a ¼ of those to make it to the freezing stage, but later we found out that we actually had 9 embryos make it to the freezing stage (which means pulling those extra ten through my abdomen could've made all the difference)! It, honestly, was/is the most perfect ideal number to have from an IVF cycle. AND all 9 are considered grade A embryos!!! This told us that every single moment was worth it!

The next two weeks I pretty much stayed on bed rest. I did not go to work nor did I rarely leave the house. I mostly slept throughout the day, woke up to eat and to take more pain medicine. Friends came by with dinner, flowers, cards, etc. Those two weeks are somewhat of a blur as I was out of it most of the time. I finally started feeling better the last couple of weeks of September. I started back at work, but taking it easy of course. My body slowly but surely started to heal. My ovaries were finally going back down to a normal size by the beginning of October.

Time for transfer:

^the above picture is our little embryo on the right and our ultrasound pic of our embryo inside

We did a single embryo transfer on Monday, October 12^th. It was a perfect transfer. I watched on the screen as our little embryo entered my uterus. It was amazing to watch. God’s gift of science is truly remarkable! Steven and I just prayed, and happy tears poured down my face. We only had to wait a week and a half before returning for blood work to determine if our embryo had implanted. On Wednesday, October 21^st I went in for blood work. I got a call from my nurse around noon with those dreadful words, “We did not get good news today. It was negative. I am sorry.” Dr. Schnoor called later that afternoon, and he expressed his disappointment as well. We had a 50/50 chance, and sadly we were the ugly part of the 50. He explained that he would not have changed anything at all- my estrogen levels were perfect, my lining was perfect, and the transfer was perfect. Our embryo just did not implant. I think that has been the hardest part of this… nothing went wrong so I was more confident than ever that this little embryo would implant.

How do we feel? Numb. While we are SO thankful for 8 remaining embryos we still feel defeated. In my mind… if that time was perfect and our embryo did not implant then why would any of the 8 remaining ones implant? THAT is when I am reminded that it is HIS timing that matters and NOT ours. So I took a day to be sad and allowed the feeling of defeat to settle and leave again THEN I picked myself up and asked, “what’s next?” We will be moving forward with another transfer (we do not know when exactly- we will probably wait a little while), but we have some decisions to make. We cannot keep doing single embryo transfers and not have them work… if we did that would be nearly $30,000. We have already spent thousands of dollars… to the point that I swear I think we’d be pretty wealthy if we did not want to experience parenthood. Then I look at my nieces and nephews and think to myself… they’re worth every single penny.

While that may be so at some point we have to make the decision to transfer two embryos. Most doctors encourage women my age to do a single embryo transfer because it is SO much healthier. Of course, transferring two embryos increases our chance of getting pregnant from 50% to 60%; however, it also increases the health risks (as with ANY multiples if both embryos implant). Our doctor has expressed that the risk of cerebral palsy is greatly increased when transferring two embryos. So the decision that we have been faced with is do we transfer one again? Or do we take a risk and transfer two embryos? I know people that have had multiples, and everything is perfect. I also know people that have had multiples and have experienced more heartbreak than any single human being should ever have to endure, but would they take it all back? Absolutely not. Our heart says that no matter the outcome we are going to love our God. We may have one perfect healthy amazing baby. We could have perfect & healthy multiples. Or we could have one baby that develops a rare disease. We could have multiples that do not make it through their first week. We could have multiples where only one baby makes it and the other does not. You see…. We do not get to decide what happens- only our God does.

I have done the research. I have stayed up all hours of the night researching cerebral palsy, other risks with multiples, reading horrific stories of loss, etc. And at the end of the day even after all of that I tell myself that even if I only get to spend one day with a precious baby God created for me it will be one day more than without one. If I get the opportunity to raise a baby with CP then it’ll be one amazing life let me just tell you! I know all of the above is much easier said than done, but I have witnessed some amazing women experience such loss and come out braver and stronger on the other side just for having known such precious tiny toes and hearing such precious little heartbeats.

Please continue to pray for us as we have a lot of praying to do ourselves. Pray for our amazing team of doctors and nurses. These men and women will never truly know how much they mean to my heart. Pray for our eight remaining embryos!! Pray they continue to remain fighters! Thank you for praying with us through our journey.

We praise Jesus for leading us to a new direction at Coastal Fertility. We praise Him for giving us 9 frozen embryos. We praise Him for reminding us that it is HIS timing that matters. We praise Him for giving us peace. This was our last step in the infertility journey, and we came out of it with 9 embryos (8 remaining). My body proved that it could never go through this again. We are officially done. We thank Jesus for giving us that peace. If all 8 remaining embryos never implant Steven and I can walk away from this journey knowing that we did everything medically possible that we could do. We thank Him for giving us that peace.