Thursday, February 16, 2006
My pregnant friend stopped by my desk the other night. She conceived accidentally and is only now starting to lose the glazed look she'd been wearing for the past several weeks. I'm glad I can be happy for her now, too. That's because it's still early in my own personal saga: "Infertility 2: Getting Pregnant Again After Barely Squeaking by on IVF."
My RE told me during our meeting a couple of weeks ago that they were thrilled when I got pregnant on my second cycle back in April 2004. The two fertilized eggs they managed to engineer weren't exactly Grade A. These guys, on a scale of 1 to 5, were only 2-3s. One had divided eight times, and one just four times. They were my little remedial-class blastocysts, my little C-plus students, and one flunked out long before the end of the first trimester. The other, though, is my beautiful, perfect son, which just goes to show that grades don't mean crap.
On the first cycle, I stimulated poorly, producing just six eggs, leading to only two fertilized ones. On the second cycle, thanks to massively increased doses of God-knows-what hormones, I managed to squirt out seven. And I was two years younger then. Women my age are supposed to produce huge numbers of eggs under these drugs, have several of them fertilize and then obsess over what to do with all those frozen embryos sitting in storage.
So I'm not a great candidate for another IVF cycle. And I'm relieved about that. I'm not sure I could handle the depression caused by all those hormones again, not to mention slipping into the ladies' at work each night with a huge tote full of clinking vials and sticking needles in my abdomen. I got lucky on IVF, amazingly, incredibly lucky, more lucky than I ever realized at the time. I had a perfect pregnancy, a wonderful delivery, and now a jewel of a child.
But that leaves the question: What do I do now?
Dr. RE gave me an ultrasound while I was there. "Your left ovary is enlarged," she said, showing me a blob on the monitor. "So you likely did ovulate this month."
Whoopee! An egg, an actual egg, came down the chute, with no chemical prompting!
That means that we could conceive the old-fashioned way. It could also mean many months of disappointment, me getting inexorably older.
Other possibilities are monitoring my monthly LH surge, which indicates ovulation, through bloodwork. And there's always Clomid, which stimulates ovulation.
And to nudge the whole thing along, Dr. RE said I should wean. Breastfeeding produces prolactin, which suppresses fertility.
I left the office dizzy with information and possibility -- the knowledge that my child was indeed a one in a million, the idea that I could, maybe, conceive like all those other effortless breeders out there. I clutched a prescription to get my FSH level tested on day 3 of my cycle.
So I waited for my period.
Three weeks later, I'm still waiting.
My RE told me during our meeting a couple of weeks ago that they were thrilled when I got pregnant on my second cycle back in April 2004. The two fertilized eggs they managed to engineer weren't exactly Grade A. These guys, on a scale of 1 to 5, were only 2-3s. One had divided eight times, and one just four times. They were my little remedial-class blastocysts, my little C-plus students, and one flunked out long before the end of the first trimester. The other, though, is my beautiful, perfect son, which just goes to show that grades don't mean crap.
On the first cycle, I stimulated poorly, producing just six eggs, leading to only two fertilized ones. On the second cycle, thanks to massively increased doses of God-knows-what hormones, I managed to squirt out seven. And I was two years younger then. Women my age are supposed to produce huge numbers of eggs under these drugs, have several of them fertilize and then obsess over what to do with all those frozen embryos sitting in storage.
So I'm not a great candidate for another IVF cycle. And I'm relieved about that. I'm not sure I could handle the depression caused by all those hormones again, not to mention slipping into the ladies' at work each night with a huge tote full of clinking vials and sticking needles in my abdomen. I got lucky on IVF, amazingly, incredibly lucky, more lucky than I ever realized at the time. I had a perfect pregnancy, a wonderful delivery, and now a jewel of a child.
But that leaves the question: What do I do now?
Dr. RE gave me an ultrasound while I was there. "Your left ovary is enlarged," she said, showing me a blob on the monitor. "So you likely did ovulate this month."
Whoopee! An egg, an actual egg, came down the chute, with no chemical prompting!
That means that we could conceive the old-fashioned way. It could also mean many months of disappointment, me getting inexorably older.
Other possibilities are monitoring my monthly LH surge, which indicates ovulation, through bloodwork. And there's always Clomid, which stimulates ovulation.
And to nudge the whole thing along, Dr. RE said I should wean. Breastfeeding produces prolactin, which suppresses fertility.
I left the office dizzy with information and possibility -- the knowledge that my child was indeed a one in a million, the idea that I could, maybe, conceive like all those other effortless breeders out there. I clutched a prescription to get my FSH level tested on day 3 of my cycle.
So I waited for my period.
Three weeks later, I'm still waiting.
