LTTTC - Success Stories
Reply With QuoteI was 26, had already had 3 children and was a SAHM when my husband at the time decided that we weren't ever going to have any more kids. I was shocked and angry as I wasn't ready to stop, but he was adamant, saying he would not agree to any more kids, and since we were going to be together forever, I would obviously not be having any more anyway. We looked at him getting the snip, but as I was scheduled for a lap on an unrelated matter (polycystic ovaries) my gynae said he'd tie my tubes at the same time, and my husband thought it was a marvellous idea. Within a month, it was done. No one really asked me if I really wanted to do it, and at 26, I don't think they should have anyway, but that's a whole different thread.
We stayed together for another 6 years, and when I was 30, I started telling him that I regretted tying my tubes and I wanted to have the operation reversed. I researched my options and by the time we split up in Aug 2000, I had already decided I was going ahead with my operation.
In Feb 2001, I bumped into a really good guy friend who I worked with for 3 years and he asked me out. Within a couple of weeks, I knew he was the man I'd be with for a long time, and in April 2001, he moved in with me. In July 2001, I got the news that I was scheduled for my tubal ligation reversal!
I had the op and was then told that the first 6 months after the op was the optimum time to fall pg, so my long-time colleague but brand-new BF and I decided to start TTC! I bought a MaybeBaby and we went to work, timing ourselves perfectly. But month after month after month, AF would arrive, right on cue.
After a year of trying, I suggested getting more tests done, fearing something had gone wrong with my op. But less than a week after, BF proposed! And BF became DF and suddenly my parents wanted us to wait until after the wedding to continue TTC (good Catholic parents that they are). DF and I agreed to keep trying naturally and if we hadn't fallen by the wedding we'd do the tests.
We didn't have any success in all that time, and after we got married in Jan 2004, 2 and a 1/2 years from when we first started TTC, we started fertility testing. In very short order, we discovered that the operation to reverse my ligation was unsuccessful and my tubes were completely and irreversibly blocked.
In July 2004, we did our first IVF cycle.
Because the blocked tubes was seemingly our only obstacle to success, and because I'd conceived my first 3 children with relative ease, we were given the best prognosis possible. Every medico we met believed we'd quickly and easily achieve a pg. My FS himself told me not to be too optimistic, but he believed we shouldn't take too long to achieve our dream.
And when my first cycle produced 6 evenly matured eggs and 5 fertilised, it felt like it was all meant to be. Everything was going along in a text book fashion and on transfer day, we transferred a beautiful grade 1 day 2 embryo which was already at 8 cells. The clinic staff joked that it was a perfect outcome, and I was sent home to wait til my BT, armed with crinone and high spirits.
On 13dpo, I went to the loo and found I was bleeding.
I was devastated. I mean I know you're not supposed to expect it to work first time, but I actually thought it would for us. DH was philosophical about it - he never believed it would be quite that easy. Never mind, I told myself, maybe it didn't happen the first time, but it will happen soon, I knew it.
The next month, we did an FET. Of our 5 remaining embryos, 2 thawed well, so we transferred both. This time I was a little more realistic, but still optimistic. It was also at this time that I was looking up IVF-related stuff on google, and found BellyBelly. I coped with the TWW better being able to talk to others in the same situation as me on BB, even though back then the community was very small, maybe only 7 of us doing IVF. I was obsessing about symptoms and trying to keep my mind off it when at 12dpo, there was blood on the tissue when I went to the loo. I left work and rushed to the clinic, but by the afternoon, AF had arrived. The call to the clinic confirmed what I already knew.
I immediately called my FS and hounded him into allowing me to do a stim cycle straight away, and when he relented, I scheduled annual leave for the duration of my impending TWW. DH and I went mad reading up on anything and everything, and we decided that bedrest was the way to go.
My third cycle (2nd stim) we collected 7 eggs and 6 fertilised. We transferred 2 grade 1 embryos, a 6 cell and a 4 cell, and the minute I got home, I got into bed and barely left it for two weeks. It was hell, but I wanted to give it everything we had.
Two days before my BT, my sister called. Her first words to me were 'How could this be happening to me?' She then told me she had 'accidentally' fallen pg to her new BF. She came straight over and did a HPT at my house, then called her BF and my parents to tell them the news from my home phone. I sat there being supportive but I was dying inside. The very next day, I started bleeding.
My FS thought it might be best if we went straight into an FET and we did, transferring 2 embryos the next month. I tried bedrest for a few days, and then went back to work. It was my fourth cycle, and in my mind, the law of averages meant that surely I would be pregnant by this cycle, but tbh I wasn't surprised to find myself bleeding again on 12 dpo. Christmas was coming, so we were forced to have a break now. I felt mentally and emotionally exhausted, and despite wanting to keep plugging along, knew it was time to stop for a little while.
That Christmas turned out to be one of the worst times of my life, as it happened. My sister was already showing, and all everyone talked about was her pregnancy and about babies. My mum joked about how I could stop trying now because she had enough grandchildren, my BIL joked that he was so virile that he could get my sister pg without trying. The look on my DH's face when he heard that broke my heart into little pieces. I felt like I would never ever smile again. I didn't know we could be so hurt or feel so alone.
When January rolled around, and a new (3rd) stim cycle started, everything else in our lives went pear-shaped. We got into a nasty custody arguement with my XH over my older kids, and my beloved furbaby of 11 years, my cat Trini, passed away unexpectedly, these events occuring all within a few days of each other. It seemed like all I was doing between injections was crying. So I suppose it was no surprise that when I went for my scan, they only saw 3 small follies. We discussed it with my FS and agreed to cancel the cycle. I was now on a break again, this time for two months.
In those two months, I read a lot, researched a lot, and decided that perhaps I had been too negative. People talked about being positive, and how visualisation helped them, so I made some decisions. I started seeing a naturopath and an acupuncturist. I even began going to a chiropractor. I began to excercise and lost 6 kgs and was on the road to losing much more when I started stim cycle number 4. A few blood tests into the cycle and my levels weren't moving. I called my FS to ask about it and he asked me what I was doing differently, and I told him about the alternative stuff and the weight loss. He immediately and sternly told me to stop trying to lose weight now, as my fertility issue was not weight-related, and I was likely stuffing my my cycle by dieting. I stopped dieting that very minute.
After a longish cycle, we did eventually manage to get 9 eggs, but of varying maturity. Only 6 fertilised this time, and we transferred 2 grade 1 at day 2. This cycle, I kept up the positivity. I sang to my embryos, talked to them, made plans for them, visualised them sticking and growing and evolving. I told my DH that I felt differently this time, and he agreed and said he did too. My BT was on Good Friday and we made plans to see my family, including my heavily pg sister, for Easter lunch. We had a good feeling.
On Good Friday, DH and I walked hand-in-hand to the clinic. This was the first cycle where AF had not shown up before the blood test and we felt it meant something. The clinic nurse also said she felt like this might be it, and we smiled at each other, feeling like we had a little secret between us. We got home from the clinic and the day yawned in front of us. The phone call couldn't be made until 2pm, so DH and I decided to nap until then. We fell sleep holding hands.
At 1.30pm, I got out of bed to prepare, and went to the loo.
I was bleeding.
I can't begin to tell you how dark the days that followed were for us. We didn't eat, we didn't speak, even to each other, all we did was walk. We didn't turn up for the Sunday lunch, and no one called about it either, which was a blessing. We just kept leaving the house at 11am and walking 4-6 hours, until we were both absolutely exhausted. Then we'd sleep, and the next day we'd start all over again, walking. I lost 4 kgs in 4 days, my DH even more. My DH talks about how he felt like we were alive, but not alive. I know what he means.
On the Tues, he went to work and that night, I broached the subject. I knew we couldn't keep avoiding it. We talked for hours and decided that this was changing us too much, that our older kids were suffering, that there needed to be an end date. We had gone from the people who everyone believed would be pg in no time, to the people at which the staff at the clinic looked at in sympathy. Even here on BB, it felt like everyone was moving on but me.
The next day I made an appt with my FS. We met with him and discussed our options. We'd only done day 2 transfers so far and I wanted to try something else. He suggested that we thaw our remaining embryos to blastocyst stage, and if that failed, we'd do a full stim blastocyst cycle. We agreed and I also said that as I had had not the tiniest trace of HCG in my system in all my previous cycles, I also wanted to try Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), which at that time, was incredibly new to Perth still. I had a well-documented history of failures to implant, I was a perfect candidate.
But FS said we'd try to blast cycles first, so we agreed. 3 more cycles at most.
The FET that followed was pretty much doomed from the start. The 4 remaining embryos we had didn't thaw well, and within a day, two had succumbed and the remaining two were looking worse for wear. I got a call from the clinic saying they thought it might be better if I transferred on day 3 than wait any longer, and spooked, I agreed. It was no surpise to any of us when that cycle, too, failed.
The next month, May 2005, my sister delivered a beautfiful baby girl by elective c/s. My sister had asked me to be the little girl's godmother and I had cried with gratitude. But going to see my sister and her new baby in hospital was sooo hard. My DH stood in the corner watching all the well-wishers and the new mum and bub with the saddest eyes I'd ever seen. I almost couldn't bear to look at him.
That night we talked and realised that something was changing in us. We were looking to a future without a child. Not out of choice, but nonetheless, we could now see it. It was more real now to us than it had ever been, and we were finally starting to accept it. We had at that stage done 7 cycles - 4 stim cycles, 3 FETs - and had not registered the slightest trace of HCG in all that time. Add that to the 3 years we tried naturally without any succcess, and we believed the writing on the wall was clear: we had to face the fact that we might never have a child together.
We moved into our 5th stimulated cycle with wariness. We were therefore surprised when my levels went off like a rocket and we collected 10 evenly matured eggs at EPU. 9 fertilised and of those, 3 went on to become blastocysts. Five days after EPU, we transferred two Grade 1 blastocysts and froze the last.
The TWW was very short, only 9 days, but I knew I was a quite jaded at that stage, and felt in my heart we were just going through the motions. I did an HPT at 11dpo, and when it came back -ve, I was resigned to another BFN. My brother came on a visit from overseas at that time, and the day before my BT, he came for dinner. We talked about our journey with him, and I told him that if DH and I never ever had a child together, that I would still consider myself so very blessed to have the life I have. That night DH and I talked about how I was feeling, and I told him I hadn't the slightest symptoms, where in previous cycles I'd had many. The only thing I was feeling was very bloated, to the point of discomfort, and it was why the clinic had asked me to come in for my BT a day early, fearing OHSS. We planned our next cycle, both aware that it was to be our last.
The next day I went for my BT then shot off to a work training session. DH was given instructions to call the clinic at 2pm and to sms me the result we were both expecting. When 2pm rolled around and I didn't get an sms, I started getting peeved, thinking he'd forgot. When my phone rang at 2.15pm in a deathly quiet training room, I got angry with him. I picked up the phone ready to give him a piece of my mind.
But my big, 6ft 4in, strong-and-silent husband was crying. "You're pregnant" was the first thing he said.
And that's when I started crying too!
Charles Alan was conceived on our 8th cycle. He is the light of our lives, the spoilt younger brother of 3 much older siblings, and the very much loved, very precious grandson to both sets of grandparents. He was born at 1.59pm on the 16th of April 2006 (Easter Sunday!) weighing 7lb 14oz. He was worth every minute of every day of our journey, and to this day, I cannot believe he is here and he is mine.
And even though he's here, I am truly changed forever by the experiences DH and I had, and will be a LTTTCer at heart forever.
In Dec 2007, we transferred our last blastocyst embryo and it didn't stick. Our TTC journey is now over, but never ever forgotten.
Bookmarks