Wow, didn't mean to slack off!

If it's not obvious, IVF #1 was a big fat fail.  Not only that, it was full of miscommunications and setbacks.

The cycle started out with a large cyst on my left ovary.  Then, the day after my retrieval I was excited to have a majority of my eggs that fertilized, most naturally.  That was the end of the happiness in this cycle for me.  The day after I got my fertilization report, most of my embryos were behind, and even more were behind on day 3, where we transferred the three best (none of which were at the 8 cells they should be, I transferred two 6 cell and one 5 cell).

I pretty much knew at that point that the chance of success was down, but my RE seemed optimistic so I tried to stay the same way.  I was set to get my beta (quantitative blood test for pregnancy) on Christmas Eve, so I was told to come in a day early to get that done.  The night before my anticipated beta, I started bleeding.  I knew at this point that it was over and bawled my eyes out.  The next day, I woke up at 7am and drove the half hour into Lexington to my RE's office to find that there was nobody there.  They were closed, and according to the medical emergency line he uses, not set to open back up until Tuesday.  The bleeding continued off and on throughout the weekend, and even though I was convinced that it was over, I couldn't convince anyone else otherwise.  I had many well-intentioned and loving people telling me that it could be that I just lost one, that they knew people who had bled heavily in pregnancy, and eventually I started to have that glimmer of hope left.

On Tuesday, I walked into Dr. Akin's office convinced of failure, but more cheerful about it since I'd had the weekend to mourn the pregnancy that may have been.  I got the call in the afternoon from Dr. Akin's wonderful nurse, Gail, who confirmed that my beta was negative.  She told me that Dr. Akin discounts subsequent cycles and that we could do another as soon as we wanted to.  As we had to take out a loan to do the first one, we chose to put off a second until that loan was paid off.  I also came to the conclusion that my weight (277 lbs at the time the IVF cycle began) was impacting things, despite being told that it was something that could be bypassed with medications and IVF.

I decided that day to put off any more treatments until I had lost at least 50 lbs, and since then, it has increased to "until I'm at a healthy weight."  For me, a healthy weight ranges between 155 and 170 lbs, so over 100 lbs to lose.  I've already lost about 11 lbs since the IVF cycle started, but since then have had a hard time getting myself on track.  When I get depressed, I binge eat, and unfortunately I have been depressed a lot lately.  I have an appointment with the counseling center at school to get started on treatments and have also made an appointment with a local psychiatric nurse (practitioner) who will be there for more long term care for me.  Once I can get my mental health on track, it's only a matter of eating healthy and exercising to get the weight off.

I also (still need to talk to Geoff about this in more detail) am wanting to look into domestic infant adoption before doing more IF treatments.  We have always discussed adoption, we both love kids and would love to give a child a home who needs one.  Our goal was always have 2-3, adopt 1-2.  My hope is that we can start with adoption now, I'll get healthy in the meantime, and we'll have a baby by the end of 2013.  This is only a hope and preliminary, but part of the reason that IF doesn't destroy me is that I have always known I will be a mommy one way or another, whether through adoption, surrogacy, egg donation, or what have you.

I have to thank all of my wonderful family and friends for their support through this, and their continuing support for all that happens in the future.  I have been so blessed with a large support group and wish that everyone going through this can have the same support.  I couldn't imagine going through this alone (or just with my spouse), and I hope that others are willing to share their stories and help remove the stigma of infertility.  It doesn't just effect "old" women, or fat women, or women who waited too long.  It can effect anyone at any time, and in fact about 10% of couples around the world are dealing with this at any time.

Check out my weight loss blog at: http://losingformysanity.blogspot.com