Pregnancy after IVF

Hello!

Julia asked a question yesterday that sparked an idea for a future blog post, but I need to think about it longer to come up with a good outline. To answer your question, Julia, they just transferred one embryo! At my clinic, they had a list of "qualifications" essentially that made you eligible for transfer of more embryos. Basically, they don't want to have a lot of multiples pregnancies because twins/triplets/etc bring more risks to both the mother and the babies. Plus, on a more cynical note, fertility clinics submit stats every year, and it looks bad for them if they have too many multiples resulting from their treatment. In my case, I was ineligible for transfer of more than one embryo because I'm young and I'd never had a failed transfer before.

I suppose the natural progression of yesterday's post is to talk about the actual pregnancy part! Or at least what I've experienced so far.

So as I discussed last time, after the FET (frozen embryo transfer), they had me come in for beta blood draws, which show the amount of pregnancy hormone in your bloodstream. If the number doubles in 48 hours, they consider that a good sign of an ongoing pregnancy. However, as many as 1 in 4 pregnancies end in a first trimester miscarriage, so we weren't out of the woods yet. We nervously waited until our first ultrasound, which was to take place at 7 weeks of gestation. They can sometimes do ultrasounds a little bit earlier than that, but the advantage to waiting until 7 weeks is that there should definitely be a heartbeat by then if it's a viable pregnancy. If you go earlier than about 6 and a half weeks, then you're likely to see things like a fetal pole or a gestational sac, but the heartbeat might not yet be visible, which causes some major anxiety for people.

So we went in at 7 weeks, and it was somewhat disastrous. The heart was beating, but things were measuring too small, about five days behind. Since they knew exactly when they put the embryo in and how developed it was at that point, this wasn't a positive sign. My nurse told me that I could come back in a week, but I was likely to miscarry. The staff at the clinic proceeded to act as if there had been a death as they got me scheduled. It was not a good time. Thanks to some of my online friends (I got pretty enmeshed in an infertility support group online during our time trying, which I would recommend to anyone going through a tough medical situation), I knew that the nurse might have been a little bit TOO confident in her abilities with the ultrasound, and that it was possible she just couldn't measure it accurately because things are so small at that point. I held onto this and the fact that there'd been a heartbeat over the next week, but mostly my husband and I just tried to keep ourselves as distracted as possible. We built Hogwarts out of Legos and rewatched IT Crowd.

We went in for our 8 week ultrasound, and it was a completely different experience. It was measuring on track, there was a strong heartbeat, and we were released from the fertility clinic to a regular OB. It was so exciting! I still had to keep going with my estrogen patches and PIO shots until later in the first trimester, but it felt a lot more worth it at that point.

We were cruising along until week 10. I was allowed to stop estrogen supplementation at this point, which was cool. My husband had a business trip scheduled, and I decided to go with him. On Sunday afternoon after lunch, I discovered bleeding. Like, a lot of blood. I called my OB's office, even though I'd never been in, and got the worst on-call OB. He was like, "Well, worst case scenario is that you go to the ER and miscarry in the ER bathroom. You should probably just come into the office tomorrow and we'll take a look. Really there's nothing anyone can do for you if you're miscarrying." OKAY COOL. I told him I was out of town, so he responded, "Oh, well, I guess you can just go to the ER then." My online friends were once again my safety net though. From them, I knew that bleeds from subchorionic hemotomas (SCHs) are really common during IVF pregnancies. Basically, a little clot of blood forms in your uterus, and it can cause bleeding during the first trimester, but the pregnancy continues. So I was worried, but not TOO worried, especially because I wasn't experiencing any major cramping. But I wasn't planning on waiting until the end of the week to find out if I was right, so my husband and I headed to the emergency room where we waited FOREVER. But we eventually got an ultrasound. The heartbeat was strong, the thing actually looked a bit babyish now and was measuring right on track, and they saw...a small SCH. So we had an answer for my bleeding, which cleared up on its own over the next couple of days.

Life continued on. I was a bit nauseated and tired, but I got lucky for first trimester symptoms. As an emetophobe, first trimester was kind of my worst nightmare before pregnancy, but I actually managed to make it through without throwing up once! The constant nausea wasn't great, but it was manageable. At 11 weeks, we were able to cut down to every other day with the PIO shots and then at 12 weeks, we were able to stop entirely! My husband was very glad to be able to stop administering shots to my poor, abused butt muscles, and my butt rejoiced. I went to my OB for the first time at 12 weeks, too, and he was much nicer than the on-call OB had been when I had my bleed.

The second trimester was actually pretty smooth. We found out that it was a girl baby. The anatomy scan went well, and we got some cool pictures of a VERY baby-looking thing in there. Overall, I felt like a very normal pregnant person by this point, since I wasn't taking any extra IVF-related medications anymore and I was seeing a regular OB. My anxiety decreased once I started being able to feel the baby move on a more regular basis.

Third trimester arrived, and with it a bit more discomfort. I'm just UNWIELDY now. I was hanging out with my 18 month old nephew, and he started waddling around. Since he's been in a stage of mirroring what people around him are doing, I felt personally attacked, lol.

We have hit a bit of a speed bump recently though. I went in for my 32 week appointment, and the OB heard a heart arrhythmia. I went to a high risk OB for a more detailed ultrasound. They think it's probably all okay (and will likely resolve on its own), but there's a slight chance that it could develop into tachycardia, which would be bad, so they're monitoring the baby weekly to make sure the heart rate is staying within normal range.

So now I'm 36 weeks! The baby is due May 2nd, but I wouldn't be opposed to having her earlier, particularly because a few people who have done ultrasounds recently have mentioned that this baby has a giant head.  I'd already been worried about a vaginal birth because I have narrow, little boy hips, but now I'm somewhat terrified. I plan to talk to my doctor about the possibility of a c-section, but I'm fairly sure that he'll be opposed to that plan. Regardless, I'm excited to meet her and for my husband and I to finally get to be parents. 

-Leah