Praying for a Miracle

After meeting with the fertility doctors and psychologist today, I realized a big way that I alleviate some of this infertility stress is by talking and getting my feelings out with others. So I decided to start my own blog to keep those of you that care updated along the way and help you understand our journey.  By all means, I am not writing this to make everyone feel bad for us, but almost using it like a coping mechanism for when things get tough and a way of expressing excitement with good news. I appreciate your encouragement and positive thoughts! Thanks for listening! 

Today was a big appointment day so prepare for a long post.  We started out with another sperm analysis for Justin (I'll talk about that at the end) and then saw the fertility psychologist. They make every couple speak with a psychologist before signing consents for IVF.  She was really nice and knowledgeable about the IVF process and explained what we could expect to feel during each stage of the IVF process. My favorite part was when she warned Justin to not tell me that I am acting crazy when I am being all emotional from hormones (it'll just make matters worse). He said he'll just make sure to do the laundry and put dishes away that month to not set me off haha score for me!

We then met with Dr Christman, our fertility doctor or officially titled "reproductive endocrinologist."  We often secretly call him Santa due to his name and joke that he will make us a baby by Christmas.  He has a great bedside manner, makes everything comical, and is a math & statistics genius. I swear I can ask him a question and he can give me the stats or do all the calculations in his head in a second.  Makes me feel like he knows what he's doing & super smart. haha He also has a brother who had infertility due to a varicocele so he's very knowledgeable in what Justin is going through.  He is great! 

Dr. Christman started out by saying he spoke with the director of anesthesia about how we should handle my diabetes during egg retrieval.  He described me to the anesthesia doctor as a "conscientious" pediatric nurse who is always fine tuning her diabetes. I laughed when anesthesia responded as "well if she's that OCD, then there shouldn't be any problems!" Hahaha I'm glad I have that reputation already. We all knew that description is accurate so I couldn't say anything! So they aren't worried about me getting low blood sugars at all, they will use my own glucose meter and continuous glucose meter during the procedure and Justin will follow along with my sugars on his phone and it will be great! He gave us a consent form over 20 pages long to sign discussing things we hadn't thought about like what would we do with our fertilized eggs if one or both of us died etc. They will discuss our case this Friday with every fertility doctor in the clinic and come up with a team decision for a protocol for me to follow with medication dosages etc. We think it will be the antagon protocol due to my PCOS.  It typically includes small amounts of steroids of dexamethasone which could raise my blood sugars a lot. Dr. Christman said I didn't  have to take them if I thought my sugars would be too crazy because he doesn't even know if they help at all- it's just something they have always given since IVF started and the cases that haven't gotten them, did just fine. That made me feel better!  

We discussed putting in 1 or 2 eggs and the current literature only recommends one for my age if you get a great looking fertilized egg. You have around a 40% chance of that egg implanting and if you add another one, your pregnancy chance only increases to 50%.  They get nervous about multiples but he understands that we don't have tons of money so we may decide on two and he wouldn't think less of us haha!  They won't be able to tell us what we can implant until the day of based on how many have survived and how they look.

I am really stressing about telling my diabetes doctor that I am officially starting IVF in a few weeks. I have only seen her twice and she's older and way more strict so I am praying that she won't make me feel like crap. Fertility is ok with an a1c level of less than 7.2 for IVF and diabetes Dr wants it less than 6.2. I told her that I have never been that low in my life and she needed to be okay with fertility's plan which was my old diabetes Dr's magical number too. My last a1c was 7.0 and I am due for another one at the end of May. I have been trying to manage blood sugars while on birth control which I am afraid will make my a1c higher when I check it. I am leaning towards checking it next week but I am so nervous! Praying for less than 7.2! 

We then got Justin's sperm analysis back. It was AWFUL!  I literally don't know what to think anymore.  The Clomid he was taking made it increase to a total of 8 million just in January and now they only saw 5-6 single sperm per "high visual field" on the microscope (whatever that means) and only one of those moved at all. SAY WHAT?! How can this happen? It has NEVER been that low. Just a few weeks ago we had 1 million total. So I don't know exactly how many they have in this specimen but it was frozen in case it's even worse in a month at egg retrieval.  Justin is already not drinking alcohol or caffeine, wearing boxers, taking a multivitamin, and avoiding heat.  The only thing I wonder was could his increase to 8 million be when he stopped taking his Valium for his vertigo syndrome a few months ago?!  He recently doubled his dose of Valium due to more dizziness and it's been all downhill on his counts from there. We are going to try stopping it again to see if that helps but seeing as sperm take 72 days to regenerate, I am not sure we will see a difference in enough time. At this rate we are praying that we have just enough sperm to fertilize all the eggs I produce.  With IVF with ICSI, they chop off the sperm's tail purposefully so it doesn't move around once it is placed in the egg and then the DNA will break down in the egg to fertilize it. So I guess they don't need fast movers then. If we don't have enough sperm, I guess I could freeze my eggs and always fertilize and implant them later but who wants to do that?! 

So that's how we left that appointment: annoyed, anxious, praying for a miracle a1c and enough spermies for each egg! 

Next step: Getting my a1c, hearing back on Monday from my wonderful friend/nurse Melinda what our official protocol will be with calendar and meds etc., and sorting through all these amazing garage sale donations. Stay tuned!