Wednesday, June 17, 2009

My InVitro FAQs

I'm not the most private person out there. Those years of "Sounds" Musicals and District Musicals, getting dressed in a big room with a bunch of other women made me quite immodest in general. And growing up with my awesome parents and siblings where no subject is "taboo" made me pretty open about my life. I like it that way.
Anyway, so that explains why I want our friends and family to know what we are going through with our infertility issues. Coming up in just a few weeks we're going through with In Vitro. I should know if that's one or two words, but I really don't. So here are my FAQ:

FAQ #1: "Why don't you just 'let your love blossom' and see if you get pregnant on your own?
Answer: While "let your love blossom" is probably the best euphemism I've heard for "doing it" lately, we were told by the fertility specialist that we have a "snowballs chance in hell" of getting pregnant. I've never met a snowball who went to hell and came back to tell the tale, so I'm getting those aren't good odds.

FAQ #2: "Well how did you get pregnant with Brighton then?"
Answer: Who the heck knows? The Dr. guesses that when we got pregnant 3+ years ago, Aaron probably had the minimal number of sperm needed to get pregnant. Probably 20 million or so, and then over the last three years they've just gone down so much and now he literally has about 20. His last sample they found two motile guys. That's also why we're doing it so soon. We really can't wait longer because if his numbers are decreasing that much, there might not be ANY left in a few months, let alone years.

FAQ#3: "So how does it all work?
Answer: Basically I go on all sorts of crazy drugs. Three injectable drugs, two pill forms to make my body produce multiple eggs in one cycle, instead of just one. (Not really produce, but just develop into a mature egg.) So after I've been on the drugs for the set time they'll start doing ultrasounds every day and when all my eggs are mature I go in for an out patient surgery where they take out as many as I have, hopefully 20 or so. Then since Aaron has limited spermies, they'll literally poke a tiny hole in the egg and inject each sperm into each egg. Then they incubate for a few days and then they put them back in me! Yay! Then we just hope they implant to my uterus. That's pretty much the jist of it.

I'll have to be on total bed rest for two days and then modified bed rest for 10 days. If you know me, you know it's really not that hard for me to take it easy so I'm guessing it won't be too bad. :)

This all will happen around the middle of July, so I'll try to keep everyone updated. I'm guessing I'll be partly psycho with all the hormone drugs, so you might want to lend Aaron some support right now! LOL.

Love you all! Please pray for us that this works!

3 comments:

Gregg said...

I love that you referred to them as "spermies".

daneandlinds said...

Brooks-
This is your old roomie, Linds and I will tell you right now (after experiencing in vitro twice) that I have some awesome tips on how to deal with the ups and downs of the process. I wish you best of luck and be prepared for lots of pricking and prodding. Let me know if you want to talk to an expert in this dept. Good Luck!!!!

Linds

Karen said...

Best of luck to you, Brooke! We're finding that getting pregnant with #2 is harder than we expected as well! What's up with that??? Maybe I'll be following in your footsteps soon. :)