The weeks passed and we met with our doctor about doing an FET, which is basically the last half of an IVF cycle. The meds that you take to prepare yourself for it are different, but since they already have the embryos, you don’t have to do the retrieving of the eggs, just preparing your body for transferring the embryos back. These cycles take about a month from start to finish, and while the hormone medications aren’t as intense, they still do have an effect on your body, and you take the shots for a longer time than with the IVF cycle. I was very positive going into this FET. There was about a month from the time that we got our negative test results until I started the next. I felt as though I had given myself enough time to heal, although in retrospect I’m not sure if I did or not. I know I looked at it as if I wasn’t sure if I ever would feel fully healed from the negative cycle until I got a positive one. I could have waited months, and I may still have felt the effects of that last cycle burdening me. But I know I was excited to start again. I felt hopeful, I felt like my bad luck was behind me. Surely, I wouldn’t have two negative cycles in a row, so this one was bound to work.
It is pretty incredible how God brings people into your life just when you need them. I had a friend, my IVF friend, whom I had met through my sister, but she and her husband shared a similar experience to what we’d been through. She and I had reconnected in the fall and I let her know that we were getting ready to start another cycle, and surprisingly, she said they were going to be starting some frozen cycles soon too. She and I walked through so much of these cycles together. They were getting ready to start their first FET at the same time as we were. I still had the support of my friend from back when we cycled with Tessa. She and I e-mailed often and she would send me reminders that she was praying for me, just when I would need it. She had been through this, and lent her support. I also had my new IVF friend who was walking through this at the same time, so she and I offered each other a mutual kind of support. It’s amazing that how no matter what trial God chooses for us to walk through, He gives us what we need to survive it. And let me say, I have yet to mention my family as my support. They will get their own section. That’s still coming.
We started the cycle March 1, and our transfer was set for April 7. I was nervous, of course, but I was ready. I felt good about this cycle. These FET cycles were very different. I had to take less intense medications, in my opinion, but for a much longer period of time. The cycle felt like it was dragging on for forever. I just had a pretty constant feeling of, ick. It wasn’t severe pain or major awful feeling like I felt from the medicines during my IVF cycle, just kinda like a sick cloud looms over you, you never feel great, but never feel terrible either. Emotionally, there were quite a few highs and lows, that part of me never stayed the same. Thank you to my sweet David for putting up with me. As the transfer was drawing near, one of my friends who had been through IVF before said that she took home pregnancy tests after her transfer. She had started the day after and kept taking them until they turned positive. At this point in my life, I had never seen a positive home pregnancy test. I took them all the time during that year we were trying on our own, and I got so discouraged seeing negative after negative after negative, that even after I knew I was pregnant with Tessa, I never took one. I had such a phobia of them that I just figured I would jinx it somehow and it was turn up negative, so I never did. This time though, I decided I was going to.
So on April 7, we transferred two more embryos. I just knew this one had to work. The very next morning, I took a test, it was negative, as I knew it would be. Saturday morning I took one, negative again. But again, I knew it still should be negative at this point. Sunday was the first day that I was hoping it might turn positive, but it was still negative. Then I figured by Monday morning, it should be positive if it was going to turn positive, but it was still negative. I almost didn’t take one on Tuesday because I figured it should have already turned by now, but I did anyway because there were still some left in the box. My whole head turned fuzzy when I looked at the test and it said “pregnant.” I kept looking at it over and over, waiting for the “not” to show up in front of it, but it didn’t. I took a picture of it on my phone and texted it to David, who was already at work. About 20 seconds later he called me screaming. I just couldn’t believe it! I had never seen a positive home pregnancy test, and here it was, right here in front me. I was so elated that my hand shook as I held it. I called my mom and my sisters right away, and they were all so ecstatic. Our second miracle had come! Thank you Jesus! The next day, I took another one just to make sure the first wasn’t a fluke, and it turned positive faster than the day before. And I took another one the next day and it was even faster. Friday morning was my blood test. I practically skipped into the office. I told the nurse that I had cheated and took a home test that turned positive on Tuesday and the nurses congratulated me and told me we would probably expect to see high numbers, and we did. Then they tripled over the next 2 or 3 days, my family really thought I was having twins.
I was living in a dream world, I just couldn’t believe it. Every night, David and I laid hands on my stomach and prayed protection over our babies (we didn’t know if there were one or two at the time, so we prayed over them both). It was the most amazing miracle we had experienced since Tessa. My first ultrasound was scheduled for the day after Easter. Oh what a joyous Easter we had celebrating our risen Savior and the wonderful miracle He had given us. We kept telling Tessa that she was going to be a big sister, and my sister even made a couple really cute Big Sister shirts for her with her name on it and everything. My mom gave us an Easter basket for the baby with a boy and girl sleeper, and little brother/little sister onesie sets, and a pink and a blue pacifier. Could things get better? Not to mention that even though I wouldn’t get a due date until I went in for my ultrasound, I found an online due date calculator for FET cycles, which figures up a little differently than a normal pregnancy due date. The baby’s due date was my birthday, or right around then. Not only was it incredible that it was my birthday, but I was going to get a Christmas baby!! Having a birthday on December 21st has always been something I have loved. I love being a Christmas baby and I have always wanted to have a baby at Christmas time. This was it! I say it again, could it get any better?
Monday at lunch time was our ultrasound. David left work over his lunch break and met me at the doctor’s office. When the tech started doing the ultrasound, she wasn’t saying much, and I could see the ultrasound screen, and I wasn’t seeing anything. I knew that my now they would look for a gestational sac (or two), but it was taking her such a long time. My heart started racing. Then she started asking me questions about the cycle we did and when our transfer was and was my hcg blood test results were and how long ago that was. I knew something was wrong. She told me that she couldn’t find anything on the ultrasound and that she should be able to see the sac at this point. She said maybe it was too early, but she just wasn’t sure why it wasn’t visible. My heart is absolutely pounding at this point and once again, I feel the walls crumbling around me. When I came out of the room, the nurse said we were going to retest my blood to see what my hcg level was and that she was sorry, she knew this wasn’t what I wanted to hear today. Again, this was another big clue that this wasn’t going to end well. I was so scared when we left, but was trying to hold it together. All hope wasn’t lost yet. I prayed harder than I had even prayed in my life. I had to go to back to school for the afternoon, but my mind was totally somewhere else. I spent every spare second I had searching the internet for message boards or doctor websites, somewhere, someone to tell me that they had gone in for an ultrasound at 5 ½ weeks and didn’t see the sac but that their pregnancy turned out just fine. I found it, I found people that were in the same situation as me and had perfectly normal pregnancies, but I found a lot more people that didn’t have such good news. I prayed, and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. I wanted the miracle. About a half hour before the end of the school day, the nurse called and said that she was sorry, but my hcg level had dropped down to 8, and that I was so stop all my medications, we had lost the baby. It was what I knew she was going to say, but hearing it out loud made it real. Once again, my loving teaching partner took my class for study hall and I went home. The dream had slipped through my fingers once more. This was now four babies I had lost in as many months.
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