We are expecting our first child in November! I cannot begin to put into words how excited and thrilled we are that this is finally happening. I plan to use this blog as a way to keep closest friends in the loop with whats going on in our lives. I don't like posting too much on Facebook and this way you will be able to see lots of pictures of "baby Johns" :) First of all, I want to share our crazy story and sometimes heart wrenching journey over the last 2 years to have this precious baby growing inside of me. This first post is rather lengthly, but the rest I hope won't be so long.
Brian and I always knew we wanted children. We have always said we want at least 3, and I sometimes think we might go for 4. I have always wanted a somewhat big family with lots of chaos and our whole lives just enveloped in each other. I have this picture of kids running around everywhere, complete chaos in some ways, but joy, laughter, family and so much fun! 2 and a half years ago we decided we were ready, and I stopped birth control. I never imagined I would have any trouble getting pregnant. After 6 months I noticed my cycles were not regular at all, and in fact they were getting longer. The nurse in me knew that if I wasn't having a period, then I wasn't ovulating. Around age 18 my cycles were horribly painful to the point they thought I may have endometriosis. Thankfully I did not, but I did get on birth control to regulate and offer relief. It worked, and I never thought anything else of it. So when I stopped the pill I thought my body would just take time to get normal. I went to my ob/gyn who was sure there was not a problem, but just the birth control wearing off. She did some blood work and there was a problem. I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). PCOS is a condition in which a woman has an imbalance of a female sex hormones. This may lead to menstrual cycle changes, cysts on ovaries, infertiliy, and other health changes including diabetes and cancer. Some physical characteristics include obesity, facial hair, deepened voice and acne...I didn't really have any of these, so I was shocked. It was also found that I did not have cysts on my ovaries either. The diagnostic factor in my case for which fertility seems to be the worst, was my hormone imbalance. It takes 2 major hormones to produce an egg. LH and FSH. FSH matures the egg and helps it grow. LH helps to release the egg so you ovulate. Normal lab values of this test should be a 1:1 ratio. A PCOS diagnostic lab value for a LH to FSH ratio would be 2:1.. mine in fact was 5:1. Not good. My doctor was very encouraging and reassuring that all I would need was a pill called Clomid, and voila I would be pregnant in no time. I tried Clomid 3 cycles, taking a pill first off to start my period. Without the pill to start my period, I wouldn't have one for 3 months...good for most people, bad if you want a baby. Each cycle I would go in to get a blood test half way through my cycle to see if I ever ovulated, and it never worked. I was discouraged of course and unsure of the next step. My ob/gyn referred us to a Fertility specialist, and the wild ride began.
We started seeing the fertility specialist in December of 2010. It was a whole different world to us and extremely expensive. Each cycle we did with the specialist cost roughly 3000.00 out of pocket. The medication alone was 1000.00. A little overwhelming, but we decided we wanted to try whatever we could. The first cycle we did a Follistim injection cycle. Follistim is given to rapidly grow and mature eggs. They monitor your ovaries and estrogen blood tests very closely, because if you were to hyper stimulate there is risk of losing an ovary and other horrible things I won't mention.
This is basically a typical few weeks for me while I received these treatments.
I would start my lovely pill to bring about my cycle, and once my cycle started, I would have to have an ultrasound within 3 days to check my ovaries for cyst and a blood test to check my estrogen level. If there were no cysts present and a low estrogen level, we would begin injections. The clinic has your own voicemail set up so the day after my scan/ blood test, I would call the voicemail and the nurse would have instructions..something like this...day 6-9 take 75iu Follistim and on day 10 return for a scan and blood test. Starting on the 10th day I would get a ultrasound to measure how many and how big my eggs were and check to make sure my estrogen wasn't getting too high every 2 days. This was sometimes difficult to rearrange my schedule at work to make these appointments. I switched days with a lot of sometimes had to call in. It was very stressful. Once your egg was mature enough, I would then take another shot that would cause the egg to drop from the ovary within 24 hours. Then we would have a procedure known as an IUI done. Basically the sperm is inserted into the uterus to help facilitate conception. After all that, how could I not get pregnant, right? After each negative pregnancy test, I was heartbroken. Brian always gave me my injections every night. One funny memory I have is when we went camping for the weekend, and with a head lamp and a special cooler with our medicine in it. You had to keep it cold and the injection had to be given within an hour of the same time each day.
To be brief the first cycle we did was a bust. I overstimulated on the lowest dose of Follistim and for 2 weeks it felt like the worst days of my life. My estrogen was dangerously high, I was swollen, depressed, and miserable. I didn't want to do another cycle. It was awful and so stressful. We prayed and prayed that God would show us what to do. Brian never lost faith, never. I wish I could say the same for myself, but there were times where I would wonder if we were ever going to have a baby. We have always been open to adoption and had even began to research and pray about it. Brian was adamant and felt very strongly that the Lord wanted to us to have a child of our own. So we pressed on and after 3 more cycle, we were unsuccessful.Our doctor told us that there was no way we would be able to get pregnant on our own and offered us no hope. He instructed us to go ahead and do Invitro Ferilization (IVF) and said it was the only way. With much reluctancy, we decided we would proceed with IVF. The path to IVF is much the same as we had been doing, except in the end they would remove the mature eggs from my ovary, place the sperm and egg together, allowing fertilization to happen before inserting them into the uterus. We began to mentally and financially prepare for this. Where our current cycle regimen cost $3000, IVF would cost $10,000. A very scary number! We decided to take a few months break and enjoy each other and prepare to do IVF in May of 2012. We both started working as many hours as we could. Working overtime every chance we got, saving, and paying off debt. The farthest thing from my mind was the possibility of getting pregnant.
In March I was driving around running errands getting ready for St Patricks day weekend. I noticed I was cramping a lot, thinking I would be starting my cycle soon. I also noticed every 5 minutes I had to pee. When I got home, I took a digital test to put my mind at ease. I hid it behind the commode, so Brian wouldn't see, because I knew he would think I was silly. I actually forgot about it and after a few minutes walked back into the bathroom and saw it..."PREGNANT"
Brian was lying down in the other room and I quickly ran in yelling something like, "Its broken, this can't be right, theres something wrong, please don't panic!" He jumped up completely excited and said well take another test to be sure...so I did, and what the heck???
I had a few spare pregnancy tests hidden under my sink..lol. But really half were clearly pregnant and the other half not. I knew it had to be early, if I was indeed pregnant. My mind was racing. Full of hope and scared to death!
The next day I went to my doctors office and he did a blood test to check my betas (blood pregnancy test). Two days later, I had another test to compare. If the numbers were doubled, it would be a viable pregnancy. If they do not, the chances are very slim. I got the phone call that I was in fact pregnant, but my numbers did not double. I was told to prepare for the worst and that chances are I had already miscarried.
To be sure, they did another test 2 days later.. and my number tripled!! My doctor was very negative and said in cases like this, it usually means you have an ectopic pregnancy, and its not viable.
I was told to come back in one week for an ultrasound, only to check if it was in the tube. But to my surprise there was a sack in the right place. Nothing in it yet, but I was hopeful. My doctor on the other hand was not. He warned us that it was "blighted ovum"...where your body mimics pregnancy but nothing grows in the sack. Man, this was a hard few weeks! I was ecstatic one minute, and in what felt like the "depths of despair" the next.
2 weeks later we returned, and there was a little shrimp with a heartbeat!!!
Despite the negativity of my doctor (even at this point), we started to believe this was meant to be, and that God was answering our prayers! 2 weeks later another good report and somewhat resemblance to a baby.
And at 10 weeks the specialist released us to my regular wonderful ob/gyn. We got to see our little baby again. This time there were little fingers and toes and so much movement. In one picture, the baby also appeared to be waving at us...as if to say, "Hello there mommy and daddy! I'm coming!!!" We also heard his or her perfect little heartbeat! :)
I am currently 17 weeks and feeling the baby move more and more every day. I still have my fears, but I am trusting the Lord with all my heart that this little baby is going to be healthy. I know that our story is nothing compared to many others I have heard. It only took us 2 and a half years to get pregnant, and thankfully, we have never suffered a loss. I just wanted to be able to share it and give God the glory and praise, because I truly believe His hand is in this. :)
8weeks
12 weeks and 17 weeks (today)
I think I'm finally starting to show!
Stay tuned for more of Baby Johns :)
