Once I dropped off the sperm to the lab the embryo making process started immediately. They did the ICSI method. ICSI is Intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Here is what this means, Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is an in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure in which a single sperm cell is injected directly into the cytoplasm of an egg. Because the doctors didn’t know how mobile Stephens sperm would be once they got them out, they decided that this was the best option to achieve the goal of having embryos.
We were told that once they had a firm count of fertilized embryos they would give us a call and let us know. That call came the next morning, and they told us we had 8 embryos!! We were shocked and ecstatic. They then told us that they would call us every day around 4 PM to let us know how many made it through that day. Embryos go through stages, once they are fertilized they are called a zygote and then after a few days they turn into a blastocyst. A healthy blastocyst is what you want to be able to achieve a healthy pregnancy. After day 3 we had 1 of the embryos that was already a blastocyst so they went ahead and froze that embryo. The others were a little slower at developing but we had up until day 6 to freeze any other blastocyst. By day 4 we only had 2 more that were starting to become blastocyst. On day 6 they called me and told me that the 2 had started to deteriorate and that they weren’t good enough to freeze so we just had the one blastocyst that was frozen on day 3. This sounds weird, but it’s almost like a loss when you lose the rest of the embryos. We were a little upset because we only had one shot, but then we remembered how blessed we were to even have this one! So the lab would keep this embryo frozen until the day of our Embryo Transfer.
I started on my shots and medication immediately after Stephens surgery and went in every other day for bloodwork and ultrasounds to make sure my uterine lining was thickening for the transfer and that my hormone levels were where they needed to be. This went on for a few weeks, and let me tell you they were rough weeks. I had huge knots on each side of my upper butt from the progesterone injections I had to do everyday, and man were they painful. They finally told me that everything looked perfect and that my body was ready for the transfer. They set our transfer date for November 28th, 2018.
Our appointment was downtown at the lab where they made all the embryos but just on the other side which was Piney Point Surgery Center. I had to go in with a full bladder so that way the ultrasound was more clear for the doctors. So we waiting for about 20 minutes and then we were brought back into a room where we both changed. I put on the hospital gown and Stephen had on what looked like a hazmat suit… LOL. Then finally I had to ask the nurse if I could pee a little because I thought my bladder was going to burst from drinking so much water. Then our doctor, Dr. Griffith brought in the picture of our embryo(above) and that’s when the nerves set in. It’s crazy to be able to see your baby at the embryo stage.
We were brought back into a dark room with a bed for me, chair for Stephen and a big ultrasound machine. The nurse tilted the bed all the way back so my body was at a full slant and my head was towards the ground. Finally the doctors and the ultrasound tech came in and got a look at my uterus just to double check everything. Once they could see everything was fine the embryologist brought in our embryo. They throughly check to make sure they have the correct embryo, scan my arm band and then scan the test tube with the embryo.
They then insert a small catheter into my uterus, it sounds much more painful than it really is. I could barely feel anything. We could see on the ultrasound screen that the catheter was inside the uterine lining and then they told us to watch very closely because in about one minute we would be able to see the embryo shoot inside my uterus. It was like a small little flash on the screen and the embryo was inside my uterus. The picture above shows the arrow pointing to the embryo once it had been implanted. We had to stay at the surgery center for about another hour and then they discharged us with strict instructions to stay on bed rest for 3 days, pretty much just be a couch potato. They also told us that the core of a pineapple helps with implantation, so I made Stephen go buy like 3.
For the next 3 days I did nothing but binge watch Netflix and lay on the couch and try to not worry about if this embryo would stick and grow into a healthy baby. But it was HARD! That’s all I could think about, it seriously consumed me. I had to continue my shots every day and add estrogen pills along with it. Our HCG blood test to tell us if we were pregnant or not was scheduled for December 13th. It seemed like a lifetime away. I continued to go in every other day for blood test and they would call me and tell me to either up my medications or lessen them. Every time they would tell me to up my meds I would immediately go into a full blown panic thinking something was wrong and I would call them and the nurses would laugh and tell me to calm down.
December 6th is a day I will never forget, for two reasons. Let me back track to December 6th, 2017. This is the day that our old doctors told us that we would never be able to have our own children. Fast forward to December 6th 2019. I went in for routine blood work like I had been all the other days before then went back to work and waited for my email to either up my meds or stay the same. So around 1 pm I get a phone call, and I panicked. I walked into our back conference room and our nurse Jenny was just talking to me and asking me how I was feeling and that everything looked good with my blood work and to keep my medicine the same and then she screamed “oh also YOU’RE PREGNANT!!!!!”. My whole body went numb I immediately started crying (quietly because I didn’t want anyone to hear me). I was like WHAT?? It’s only been a week are you sure?? She told me my HCG levels were through the roof and that they were very sure! I was seriously dying inside because I didn’t want to tell Stephen over the phone I wanted to tell him in person. I had to wait 4 freaking hours to tell him! So I left work around 5 and went to target and grabbed baby booties and a hat and wrapped it up for him since his birthday was 3 days away I just acted like it was an early birthday gift. He opened it, looked at me with complete shock and goes WHAT? I told him they called me today and they snuck in an HCG test while I was giving my routine blood today and that they called me and told me I was pregnant! We hugged and cried and were just completely shocked still. This was actually happening. After all the pain and heartache we went through for 2 years we were finally going to have a baby.
We continued to go in for blood work and then they scheduled our first ultrasound for December 18th and we were so excited to see the baby, even though it was a tiny dot. We got to hear the heartbeat and we went back every single week for bloodwork and an ultrasound just to make sure everything was progressing correctly.
In the next post I will go over our minor scare at 11 weeks and our last few doctor visits with Dr. Griffith before we were discharged to my OB.
Xoxo-
Macey
Macey Buquoi 