“I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains.”
-Anne Frank
As you can tell from the title, our IVF w/ICSI treatment was unsuccessful. Here's a little back story..
We started our treatment on May 25, 2015. We had 9 days of stimulation injections (Gonal-F and Luveris) then we administered our trigger shot on June 5, 2015. Our egg retrieval was June 7 and we collected 18 eggs! We were so thrilled with that number and later found out that 7 of those eggs made it through fertilization. Again, we were very happy with that number, too. A couple days later, on June 10 (our 2 year wedding anniversary!!) we found out that our embryos were of poor quality and that the majority of them would not last long enough to make it for transfer or even freezing. Along with a big scare of fluid in my uterus and a very high risk of developing OHSS. Regardless, we had 2 embryos of "average" quality that the doctors recommended we transfer on day 3. This was a huge blow for us. It changed the game entirely. We had these expectations of how we wanted our treatment to go, and it ended up the exact opposite. I wanted a 5 day transfer. I wanted to have multiple embryos ready for freezing, as a back-up so-to-speak. I wanted to only transfer one embryo. I wanted it to be perfect quality. I didn't want OHSS. I just wanted it to go smoothly. And I naively thought it would. "I'm so young." Is what everyone told me, and they helped make me believe that this was going to be a piece of cake. So anyways, we went forward with the transfer and had 2 little precious embies make themselves comfortable in my belly. The next two days, I felt a bunch of TWINGES (signs of implantation) and I was over the moon! I just knew that my babies were digging in for the long haul. We spent the Two Week Wait (TWW) trying to stay patient and hopeful. Caleb and I loved those babies so much with every passing minute. We truly believed that they were going to turn into our precious little miracles and give us the dream that we've been praying for.
My impatience got the best of me twice. We did a Home Pregnancy Test (HPT) on two separate occasions. Once on Father's Day, because Caleb wanted to make that day extra special for him. And both tests came up with a very faint positive! We became cautiously excited and optimistic. Thinking that this was the beginning of our BIG Fat Positive (BFP).
On June 25, I went in for my blood test with so much hope and love. Later that day, we opened the results right here in our living room together. To our demise, the results came back negative. Those two little babies didn't make it.
We were (and still are) heartbroken. Absolutely crushed. This has been the hardest thing we have ever had to go through. We put so much energy, money, emotions, physical strain for this and it didn't work. The biggest blow is that we do not have any frozen embryos to try again. We are going to have to completely start over - save all our money again and this will take a lot of time.
Although the news has been so difficult for us to get over, we are finding comfort in each other's presence. Caleb has been an amazing support system for me and I have been doing my best to be that for him as well. We have allowed ourselves to grieve at times and laugh when we feel like it. This is yet another immense hurdle that we will have to get over, and I am so unbelievably thankful to have my sweet hubby by my side. There is some beauty in this - the beauty is that we were pregnant, for even the smallest amount of time. Something that has never happened to us before. We got that much closer to achieving our dream and I know that we still will someday. We have learned SO much from this process and can only come around the second time more knowledgable and prepared for what is to come. We thank everyone for their ongoing support at this difficult time. It is truly inspiring.