Breaking the Silence With Good News

Many of you know that at the very end of October we embarked on our 3rd round of IVF.  After the heart break of our ectopic pregnancy in August we took a break and traveled to Hawaii, just the two of us, to heal and re-group.  It was such a refreshing time which got us ready for a fresh round of IVF in November.  We met with our doctor beforehand, and he assured us that ectopics were flukes and he was very confident that we would get pregnant.

Since it was a fresh round, we started from scratch.  It definitely didn't go exactly how we planned, but that rarely happens in life.  We were shocked on the day of the retrieval when our doctor told us that there were only 5 mature eggs (apparently 32 is not the new 22 when it comes to producing massive amounts of eggs to be fertilized).  We were hoping for a lot more so we would have countless tries at frozen rounds.  My acupuncturist was so encouraging through the whole round reminding me that we were looking for quality embryos not quantity.  Out of the 5, we ended up with 3 strong embryos.  We were also set on using 5 day embryos, not 3 day ones because it seemed like my body responded the best to the 5 day ones.  Thankfully our doctor felt the same way and let our embryos grow for 5 days despite how few we had.

Then, on November 13th, we transferred a 3AB and a 4AA (these only make sense if you speak IVF) embryo.  We had a sense that this had to be the one and that one of these babies was going to stick.  It was pretty much our last shot.  See picture below of our two "beautiful" embryos.

I was an absolute mess during the wait after the transfer.  I was still recovering from the egg retrieval and trying to stay relaxed.  When we went in for our first blood test I was convinced it didn't work.  We got our results at the lab and it said I was pregnant.  The lab techs who were there knew me from our many months of blood draws, and they were literally jumping up and down with excitement.  I still felt a little nervous because with the ectopic, we found out on the second blood test something was wrong.  

So we waited another 48 hours for the next test and the number more than tripled.  Then it tripled again, and more than doubled after that.  I think our nurse immediately thought twins but for some reason I felt like it was one strong baby.  Our almost 4 year old thought differently.  From the start she has claimed that it is two babies.  We tried to prepare her that it could only be one, but she wouldn't accept it! 

Then we waited another two weeks for our first ultrasound on December 10th when I was 6.5 weeks pregnant.  What do you think showed up??  Two sacs of course.  I immediately asked if there were babies in those sacs, and the doctor showed us two beautiful babies in two sacs.  We held back tears as we saw them for the first time and heard their strong heart beats.  Everything looked great.  The twins were growing right on target and had strong heart beats at 124 and 125 bpm.  You can hardly see them in this picture because how tiny they were and Twin A was nuzzled close to the lining.

Sorry for the length of this post, but there's been a lot to cover!  On December 23rd we had our second and final ultrasound at the fertility clinic when I was 8.5 weeks along.  That's when we saw two thriving babies with strong heart beats.  We even got to see them wiggling around, and they were very active.  Twin B is the one that is harder to see and was definitely the more active one.  After this appointment we were officially released to a regular OB.  Our doctor was so pleased with how they looked.  We are very grateful for all they did for us to help our dreams come true. 

There is never a "safe" time to announce a twin pregnancy, so I wanted to blog to share our story but also to ask for more prayers for these two babies and this pregnancy.  We still feel like we have a long road to travel to hold these babies in our arms, but we are taking it one day at a time and celebrating every milestone along the way.  Today I am 9.5 weeks along and working through lots of typical pregnancy symptoms.  Every day I am in awe of what God has done in giving us these amazing Christmas presents.  

We are so grateful and excited about what is ahead.  Please cover these babies in prayer as they continue to grow.  I will head back to the doctor January 7th and probably every couple of weeks after since it is twins.  We are so thankful for your support and prayers! 

A Wish for Another Chance

My new favorite app is Timehop.  Most of you know I am a picture freak, and I constantly over share with the rest of social media, so my Timehop every day is full of old pictures from the past few years.  I love looking at it in the morning and remembering those times.  The best ones are pictures of Anna from 2 and 3 years ago.  I hardly remember what it was like when she was so small.  This, among many other reasons, is why I'm asking for one more chance.

To spare you from reading through the many blog posts I've written, I'll sum it up.  We have been experiencing secondary infertility for two years mostly because of my body reacting poorly to my emergency c-section and wrapping the important parts of my reproductive system up in nasty scar tissue.  I am coming up on my one year anniversary of the laparoscopic surgery that brought the news that would turn our world upside down.  Our doctor informed us that the only way to expand our family would be through IVF.  The silver lining of the c-section drama is that we have a beautiful little 3.5 year old girl for whom we will be forever grateful as she blesses our life every single day.

We switched over to the infertility world about 6 months ago and have undergone two rounds of IVF (one fresh round and one frozen).  Throughout this time we have felt so thankful for what we have but still yearn for one more child or children to complete our family.  So all 3 of us have a huge wish.  We wish to be able to do this all again, to welcome another baby to our family.  It's hard not to want another one when I look at my sweet girl and her pictures from baby days.

So God please give us one more chance.  I promise we will love and welcome another Cribbs baby into the lonely crib that has been laying dormant in our garage for a while now.  We trust in your timing and hope for good news soon.  I mean how could you not want another one after seeing this picture?  Yes I am extremely biased!

The Journey Back to Zero

Last week I traveled home to celebrate the life of my amazing, 98 year old grandmother who passed away at the end of August. At her memorial service I talked with several of you who have followed my blog.  Not only did you have amazing things to say about my grandmother but you took the time to acknowledge the loss we have been through and that was really touching.  It made me thankful for the community I have, even if right now it is an online one.  Thank you for your encouragement to keep going and fighting for this dream we have in our hearts for another child.  Thank you for reminding me that we are not alone in this struggle.

We are now almost 4 weeks post miscarriage.  I have had some time to process the loss and get some clarity on things.  I will spare you the details of course because they aren't pleasant.  Since I did not miscarry naturally it was a little tricky.  My doctor gave me the MTX shot to end the ectopic pregnancy, and several days after the shot my number went up instead of down.  I was so nervous about getting another dose because it made me very sick.  Thankfully a few days later it began to drop.  It was slow going at first and very painful physically and emotionally.  Finally last week my number dramatically dropped back down to an 8 which is almost normal.  We were so relieved to hear the news that my body is pretty much back to 0 which is the goal after a miscarriage.  Plus no more blood draws for now!  I think I had 16 of them in one month.

So, what's next?  Right now we are just relaxing and enjoying a time of no medicine, doctors appointments, or needles.  We are even going to take a trip to Hawaii for some R&R after 6 months of ups and downs.  In the late fall we will start thinking about trying another round.  From what we have read, ectopics are kind of a fluke thing that can happen.  My body wanted to get pregnant, but unfortunately our embryos didn't implant in the right place.  Hopefully with some new things we are trying it will cut down on our chances of a repeat ectopic.

Thank you for your prayers especially ones for clarity.  We started this process knowing we would give it our best shot.  We contemplated all the different options to add to our family and had a peace about using our time and resources to go forward with IVF.  A lot of people have asked why we don't go down other roads, and that is our reason.  So we have one more shot at a fresh round of In Vitro, and we will give it our all.

The night my grandmother died, her family and caregivers recited Psalm 23 to her as she slipped away and joined the great cloud of witnesses.  This Psalm has taken on new meaning knowing how it comforted her.  We may "walk through the darkest valley," but we don't have to be afraid of what's next.  I know if she were here right now, she would hold my hand and gracefully tell me in her comforting way, "This too shall pass."

Bad News Bears

Over the past fews weeks we have received nothing but bad news.  Our pregnancy seemed to be doomed from the very start.  We did continue to hope despite the weird numbers that we would be that one pregnancy that made it.  Our faith was tested multiple times as we rode the IVF roller coaster that seemed to be very cruel to us.

Today I had some sharp pains, and because of the risks the doctor sent me right to the ER to be evaluated.  We spent 4 hours waiting, and waiting, and waiting.  Apparently the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy sends doctors into an absolute panic.  It is a very scary, life threatening miscarriage to go through, and it is really important to catch it before it does any damage.

They wheeled me away to the radiology department where they did a very thorough, extremely uncomfortable ultrasound.  The tech was very by the book and didn't tell us anything.  We knew it wasn't good news when she kept listening for a heart beat and found nothing.  After all the waiting it was time to get Anna from school.  Michael waited until the last second and then bolted to pick her up. Of course the doctor came while he was gone to give us the news.  Thankfully I had some amazing friends to talk to as I received the news.

He said it was an ectopic like everyone suspected.  They searched and searched for a baby and found nothing.  No sign of a baby anywhere near the uterus.  This makes them assume it's ectopic and somewhere wrong like the tubes.  We left knowing the final outcome of this crazy roller coaster ride.

Tomorrow I will have a shot to end whatever cells exist in the tubes.  Like I said, we are extremely lucky they discovered this early enough to not have to do an emergency surgery to remove the tubes completely.  We are sad, mad, crushed, and also relieved that we FINALLY have an answer.  I will continue to get blood work done until my level has gone back down to 0.

We will be taking a few months off to recover from this heart break and will do another round of IVF in the fall.  I have decided to also take a break from blogging.  It has become too painful to write through the sadness.  I will never understand why this has been such a struggle for us and for others it seems so easy, but that's not for me to know.  I will blog again when we have actual GOOD news to share.

The Saga Continues

I have gone back and forth over whether I should share this part of our story for anyone in cyber space to read.  Then I remembered that when we started this journey I was so frustrated with the silence that went along with infertility.  I wanted to break that silence and share with others so that people wouldn't be ashamed by what they are going through.  To do that I realized that I have to be vulnerable about sharing what's going on even though our natural tendency is to keep it a secret.  Infertility and miscarriages are SO common among women, and they are incredibly terrible, painful things to go through.  So if I haven't said it before, welcome to the ups and downs of trying to expand our family through In Vitro.

The last time I blogged I asked for prayers that a miracle would take place in my body and we would not lose the pregnancy that we longed to keep.  My beta number did not look good, and my next one wasn't much better even though it went up.  At that point we thought we lost the pregnancy completely until a few days later when my beta doubled like it was supposed to.

There is no way to know exactly what happened, but most likely I was pregnant with twins.  It has been my life long dream to have twins.  Well soon after both implanted, one of the twins did not make it.  This made my beta drop from 23 to 22 because it was a combined number.  Obviously we don't know what number each twin comprised, but the drop gave the appearance of a total loss.  A couple of days later the bleeding began, and I miscarried the twin.  Despite the intense bleeding and cramping, my number continued to double showing that the other twin continued to grow.  We had no idea if this other baby would be able to survive with the conditions being like they were.  I am sad we lost the twin, but I don't want to give up on our other one!

After a couple of doubling my number continued to increase but not quite double every 48 hours.  The doctor likes an 80% increase every 48 hours, and I've been at around 67%.  Basically it is doubling every 60 hours.  From what we've heard and what our doctor has said, this is not a good thing MOST of the time.  They think it could be ectopic or a blight ovum (sac but no baby), or that I just have weird numbers and there's a perfectly normal baby growing in there.  They did tell us that sometimes it goes on to be a healthy pregnancy.  Could we be in that small minority?  I certainly hope so, but at this point only time will tell.

We have spent the last 15 days asking the question, "What the heck is going on?"  Things are not progressing like a "normal" pregnancy, but also in a "normal" pregnancy your HCG levels aren't tested every 48 hours starting when you're 3 weeks pregnant.  I didn't even know with Anna that I was pregnant until at least 5 weeks along.  It was so simple.  I took a pregnancy test, did one blood test, and a couple weeks later we saw her for the first time on a sonogram.  There was no stress or percentages to meet.  This is NOT the case with IVF.  They monitor any and everything.  Hence why I've had 8 blood tests in two weeks.

So here we are again at a crossroads believing that I am an exception to the 80% increase rule.  We have shed so many tears over the loss of one baby and the stress of what the unknown has brought with this new challenge.  We have prayed over and over for God to end this pregnancy naturally if it's not healthy but to grow it if it is.  A miscarriage is terrible, but one that drags on for over two weeks is even worse. I am continuing to take my medicines including a nightly progesterone shot in hopes of supporting the baby trying its hardest to grow for us.  Fight little baby fight!

My levels are finally getting high enough to be able to do an ultrasound.  So I will have another blood draw on Tuesday, and if the numbers are high enough, then they will do an ultrasound either Wed. or Friday.  Hopefully that one will rule out an ectopic pregnancy (which they are very worried about) and give us more clarity about what is actually going on in there.

We still haven't been able to celebrate our first positive pregnancy test in two years or feel any sense of relief.  Technically, I am pregnant according to my blood tests, but it doesn't feel like it at all.  We are staying hopeful despite the circumstances, but it has been a very challenging time.

Basically to sum it all up, the saga continues.

You're Pregnant, But...

I've been a little silent on my blog lately.  It was the only way to emotionally survive the waiting game we've been through.  Here's a quick recap before I tell you our newest roadblock.

Our transfer was almost two weeks ago.  It went almost perfectly.  Not only did both embryos survive the thaw, but they were already beginning to hatch by the time we saw a picture of them.  We were ecstatic at the news and felt so encouraged that our little ones were ready to do their thing.  We nicknamed them the go-getters.  The transfer went well, and I took it easy for a few days.  Then we started the waiting period.  I felt some strange pains early in the week, and we hoped and prayed it would be our embryos implanting.

On Wednesday I went in for my first blood test.  Our doctor doesn't tell us the results of the first one.  Last cycle we went back to the hospital on this day and found out our results.  It was hard to get the negative and still have to continue shots so we decided this time around to wait until the second test when the clinic called us.  We were very tempted to get them early or take an at home pregnancy test, but we resisted.

That brings us to yesterday.  We waited for the clinic to call hoping to hear "Congrats you're pregnant, and your numbers look great."  The nurse finally called and with hesitation in her voice told us that I'm pregnant, but my hcg number dropped in 48 hours instead of doubling like it's supposed to.  For most people this might not seem like a big deal because when you miss your period you take an at home pregnancy test that says positive and you move on.  Maybe you take one blood test but that's it.  With IVF and other infertility issues you have to get one every 48 hours.  Your numbers are supposed to double in that time frame.  My first test was a 23 which indicates that one embryo implanted, and the other didn't make it.  My number on Friday was a 22.  The nurse said that there was either a glitch in my test or it could be a chemical pregnancy which is basically an early miscarriage.

So tomorrow I will go in for another blood test that will determine if we keep going or start all over.  We are feeling pretty desperate for a miracle.  Tomorrow the number absolutely has to double.  Please pray that our numbers more than double and that this baby goes on to grow perfectly for 9 months.  This is just another example of the emotional roller coaster that is IVF.  I have longed for almost 2 years to hear the words "You're pregnant."  We felt sideswiped by the "but" part of the you're pregnant, but we are holding on to hope that everything is going to be okay.

Thank you for the response everyone is having to our newest challenge.  I went back and forth on whether I should post this blog, but I wanted to update everyone on what's going on.

Good to Go

I am now good to go for our next IVF transfer next week.  I had my lining check today, and it's nice and thick and ready for an embryo or two to implant.  Wow, I have gotten very technical during this process.  As I sat and watched my insides on the screen for the umpteenth time I whispered silent prayers to God asking Him to put a baby or two in there.  Who knows, maybe the next time I get an ultrasound it will be to look at an actual baby.  I don't even remember what that was like!

So, next week they will thaw out our sweet, strong blastocysts and transfer them into their natural habitat.  As soon as that happens I will be considered pregnant again and will hopefully stay that way for 9 months (power of positive thinking).

I downloaded the Time Hop App, and it keeps sending me pictures of sweet Anna 3 years ago at this time when she was a cute, chubby baby who couldn't even sit up.  If I had known how hard it would be to have another I would've cherished the baby days more.  I am just holding on to hope that we will get another chance.

I'm tired, emotional, and hormonal.  At the moment I'm wearing 3 estrogen patches, taking a steroid, and still doing Lupron shots.  The best part is that not only have I developed an allergic reaction to what's in the shot but also my stomach has gotten so tough that it takes a couple of stabs to get the needles in.  They need to make sharper needles for those who have gone through multiple rounds of IVF.  The good news is that it's almost in the past.  I have one more Lupron shot tonight, and then I start the inter muscular progesterone shots (a.k.a. butt shots) tomorrow night.  So if you see me waddling around for a few days that's why.

I honestly don't know how I feel about going through all of this again.  This is why it's awesome that I am surrounded by positive, encouraging people including my amazing husband.  The fact that he still wants to be around me after all of these ups and downs is a miracle in itself.  He keeps assuring me that this will be the one.  I don't feel confident enough to come out and make that kind of statement, but I'm glad one of us can.

So if you think of us next week please say a little prayer for our "babies" and for our sanity.