On September 25, 2008 we visited the Advanced Reproductive Technologies Clinic at the University of Iowa. It was an initial appointment and consult. It was an interesting and emotional day. We learned all about the in vitro procedure and how it would apply to us. We learned we were a very unique case. Basically, any assistive technology out there, we needed it to help us get pregnant. But, we were ready to try and to go through their process. We expected to start right away, but quickly learned they operate in 6 week cycles. We were unable to make it work to fit in the very next cycle so we had to wait until January of 2009 to start. At first I was devastated we had to wait longer. I am a basketball coach and January is right in the middle of basketball season. I thought our in vitro cycle would cause me to be unable to coach, but it didn't. And ultimately I knew having a child was much more important to me. There is more to this coaching story later.
In December I had to take one month's worth of birth control to get my body regulated. Then, in January the drugs and shots began. Without looking it up, I couldn't tell you the name of all the drugs I had, but I can tell you how it worked. It started with one shot in my leg every night for about a week. I gave myself the shot. We had to travel to Iowa City about every other day to give a blood sample and/or to have an ultrasound to see if I was producing eggs. Then, we added a shot in my stomach, which I gave to myself. A few days later, a shot in my back was added, which Justin had to give to me. He didn't want to at first because he didn't want to hurt me, but I told him we were partners through this whole process and there was no one else I wanted to give me the shot. So, three shots a night and several trips to Iowa City. Once they determined my eggs would be big enough to harvest, I got one free night with no shots and then one night with one shot to tell my body to release the eggs. I had to take that shot 36 hours before my egg retrieval surgery. After that the shots in my back continued to help my body think it was pregnant.
On February 2, 2009 we went to Iowa City for my egg retrieval surgery. It is a fairly simple process. I was put under and the doctors go in and retrieve the eggs from my ovaries. It was pretty painless for me and for once in my life I didn't throw up from the anesthesia! On that day, from all the drugs I took, they retrieved 14 eggs. The next medical step we needed is called ICSI, which is where they took 14 of Justin's sperm and tried to inject one into each of those 14 eggs. It only worked on 11 of the eggs. The other three were not mature enough to be fertilized. Then, they are basically put in an incubator for 3 days to let them grow. This whole process is measured in 6 days. Egg retrieval day is day 0. By day 3, our "children" were 3-5 cells. On day 3, only 8 of them were still going. If you read my previous post, remember our 1 in 8 chance. This is where it starts to show up. As you can see, our numbers dropped off as the days progressed. At this point, the genetic testing process begins.
The University of Iowa is a fabulous place for helping couples get pregnant. They have amazing doctors and nurses who we grew quite fond of in our experience there. But, even they couldn't do everything for us. They connected us with a company called Reprogenetics in New Jersey. Reprogenetics plays a part in the next step. On day 3, the embryologist took one cell from each of our 8 embryos and sent it off to New Jersey to Reprogenetics. Reprogenetics then injected dye into the cell that would attach itself to each end of the number 1 and number 10 chromosomes to be sure all the information was there. If they could see color on each end, it meant the child would be balanced like Justin or completely normal. They were unable to tell the difference between balanced and normal. At this point, we could have had every chromosome analyzed; found out boy or girl, if there were any other problems, etc. Of course that would have cost money and we wanted to try and be as "normal" as possible.
The most interesting thing about sending those cells to Reprogenetics is that the doctor at the University told us we had one superstar embryo and the other 7 weren't looking too good. In fact, by day 4, she said there were really only 5 that were still alive. She knew what she was doing because the results came back from Reprogenetics that the "superstar" was balanced or normal and the rest were not. It is important to point out that it was very possible none of the embryos would have been normal and we would not have had one to transfer on day 5. So, when they told us we had one, we were ecstatic and thought we had cleared our biggest hurdle!
On Day 5, February 7, we went to the University to have our 5-6 cell child transferred back into my uterus. It was an easy procedure in which I was awake the whole time. The hardest part was having to drink a bunch of water and not being able to go to the bathroom for an hour. The rest of the day I needed to lay down as much as possible and take it easy, but from then on, I had a baby growing inside of me! The next step was to come back to the University 10 days later for a pregnancy test.
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