The "Official" Meeting with Dr Murrain

After discovering that Thomas and I did indeed need to do IVF, I figured that because we had already met with Dr Murrain, we were good and just had to schedule the time. Well I was wrong. We still had to check off the "official" meeting with him.

I went into this meeting thinking he had already told me everything and that there was nothing new to expect. I was wrong. He went over cost, which surprised me, potential problems, which when seeing them written on 1 sheet of paper was shocking, he quoted me a few more statistics, and then he mentioned I would have to do a baseline blood work again. Needless to say I walked away a little frustrated. I don't know why, I just was.

The cost I got over because really, we have no choice. So here it is. Because I couldn't find the breakdown anywhere before this. And everyone is different. This is not including the cost of medication or the cost of any other doctor that is needed.

The risks are just that, risks. They could or could not happen. Out of my hands, but scary at the same time. Did you know multiples are a risk? That was a little weird to me. And then there is Ovarian Hyperstimulation that happens in 10% of women, ectopic pregnancies in 1-3%, adnexal torsion in 7%, and imprinting disorder which is 1 in 16,000. Wow.

The statistics were hard because he said even when a woman is completely healthy with all the scores being the best possible, there is still only a 2 in 3 chance the most healthy woman will become pregnant. Seriously?!?! That was hard to hear, but I have to remember God has taken us this far. And it has definitely been our story.

Oh, and the paperwork! You would think that we were buying a house the amount of paper work we had to sign!

And then I scheduled a blood work appointment. Always blood work day 3 of my cycle.

Because people, this IVF thing needed to get started! It was go time!

The Stages of In Vitro

Just to get IVF in the books you have to:

Meet with Dr Murrain Officially

Starting Birth Control

Scheduling Your IVF Month

Procuring the Medication

The Sonohysterogram

Injection Training

The once IVF starts you have to:

Stopping Birth Control

Wait For Your Cycle to Start

Ultrasound and Blood Work Appointments

Shots, shots, and more shots

Aspiration (Egg and sperm retrieval)

Waiting while the embryos grow

Implant

Testing Day! Are we pregnant or not?

All of these will have their own post, up next!!!

Ethical Discussions

If only it were this easy.
Because this is beautiful.

The problem is, for us it is not so easy.

So many ethical discussions to have.

How many embryos do we implant?

Are we being responsible with our money if we only put 1 in?
But then we could have twins!

Do we freeze the rest? Donate them to science? Throw them away?
Do we freeze them only to put them up for embry adoption if our family is complete down the road?
(Because those are your 3 options)

Do we deviate from the plan the doctors give us and try to be a little more natural?

Do we try to do this with less harsh drugs?

Or do we just do it as they explain because it costs so much to mess with the path they set forward?

There are so many ethical questions that Thomas and I have had to talk through. It has made us stronger, on the same page, and it has made us know each other in ways most couples do not have to question their pre-parenting lives.

I am so very thankful that Thomas and I have always been on the same page. We would discuss an issue and then one of us would say we felt this way and almost always the other would agree. God definitely allowed us to talk and agree at every ethical decision.

I would love to tell you our decisions if you want to know.
Needless to say, we are here now and we know exactly what we feel God has directed us to do with every single one of those questions.

Tracking the Hormones

Knowing that we had to track my hormones for a month before we could do IVF, I decided to do that right away so we would know if there was anything going on in my body that we needed to take care of. And thus began the tracking month.

Hormone Tracking Month

So.... This was all me. For a whole month, they follow your cycle.

Day 1 - You call and make your Day 3 appointment
Day 2 - You wait
Day 3 - They do blood work and an internal ultrasound where they look to see how many follicles you have on each ovary. They also did our cystic fibrosis blood work at this appointment.
They also tell you no sex or exercise for the next week.
I had about 20 follicles between the 2 sides that looked good.
My hormones came back. The normal range is less then 50 for estrogen (I was 25.8) and for FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormone) normal is less then 10 (I was 8.01).
Day 4 - Day 11 - You wait
Day 12 -  9 days after Day 3, they do another internal ultrasound to see how the follicles have progressed.
I had 5-6 follicles ready to go on the right side at 8 and 10 mm.
Day 15 - Another internal ultrasound.
My follicles were 10 and 18 mm. Goal is 20 mm or greater.

There is usually one more ultrasound to see when my follicles reached optimal size, but I had a business trip, so that did not happen. I used ovulation predictor urination sticks to guess when I ovulated to tell the nurses.

I learned that my progesterone from the Day 12 blood work was low. It is supposed to be above 15 and mine was not.

If you want to read more about my reaction to that meeting, you can read it here.

They are also looking for how many follicles are in the ovaries. If there are more then 12 follicles in an ovary, that means you could be susceptible to polycystic ovarian syndrome. This is something that they would watch for because the drugs they give you for IVF would effect it.

There needs to be more then 15 mature follicles total.

And! They finally told us that there are over 110 different cystic fibrosis genes. And both sets have to match perfectly. By the way, I do NOT have the gene. 1 less thing we have to think about.

So! Between knowing what Thomas is dealing with and knowing what I am dealing with, we know that the next step for us is IVF. And the next step in IVF is schedules.
Ours were crazy and it took us months to get it in the books.
But here it is. The Stages of InVitro Fertilization. 

Meeting with Dr Murrain

After our meeting with Dr Kim and his suggestion that Cystic Fibrosis may be in our genes, we decided to book an appointment with Dr Murrain.

Interview with Dr Murrain.

Dr Murrain is a genetic infertility specialist at the Gyft Clinic. He was great. And he gave us hope.
And at that moment when we found out that there were so many obstacles, we really needed hope. We talked to Dr Murrain and he explained to us that we could get pregnant even with all of the issues we had run into this far. In fact, he went so far as to point out that we could be pregnant within the month! For a couple who just heard that it would be near impossible to get pregnant, this was what we needed.

During this initial meeting with Dr Murrain, he talked through a little bit about what to expect, the cost, and some of the problems that could arise. But looking back now, he was a bit vague. The Official Explanation Meeting (which is coming soon!) is when he really went into detail. Wow.

But at this point, we had hope, we had a plan and since we already know where Thomas stood with the whole process, they still needed to find out what my body was doing.

Next up, the month of tracking my hormones and doing the blood work of whether or not I had the Cystic Fibrosis gene.

The Sperm Sample

This is one of those awkward posts. I wish I could just leave it as… a sperm sample was given.
But this was also one of the steps I struggled with. So here we go.

The Sperm Sample...
We actually gave our first 2 semen analysis' at Seattle Reproductive Medicine, but from there we switched to the Gyft Clinic. We did end up having 2 additional analyses' with the Gyft Clinic.

My struggles were when my husband walked into a room that there would be magazines and DVD's just sitting there available to him. I was not ok with that. So after many question, this is what I learned.

1. There is the option to give a sample from home if you can get it to the Gyft Clinic with in 30 minutes. 
2. As a wife, you are also allowed in the room with him at the Gyft Clinic if you you are not able to work out the at home option.

Learning those options was a HUGE relief to me, being that again, this is the most awkward point. But hey, that is just me.

There are many things women have to do during this whole process, but I don't think any of them are quite as awkward as this. So we marched in there together, laughed our way through, and came out the other side with the results. We definitely needed a Urologist.

4 tests later. Yep, still need a Urologist.

So we headed to the Urologist and discovered we will need what is called ICSI (Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection). Basically we needed to be able to get a really concentrated amount of swimmers that we can only get through a procedure with Dr Kim. Our Urologist. He is great. Although he told us we might need to be concerned about Cystic Fibrosis. That is a whole other story.

Ironic? Yes. Hehe.

And since I was searching for Dory pictures, this is my other favorite quote from Finding Nemo.

Soon I will have my own squishy! And they shall be mine!

The Stages of Discovering Infertility

The story that Thomas and I have is probably very similar to many people out there when it comes to infertility. 

We decided that we would allow ourselves 3 months for my body to regulate itself after being on birth control for years. 

After that, we would try for a year, which during that time I:

• Tracked my temperature daily
• Tracked my ovulation
• Started acupuncture
• Tried my best to not let myself be stressed

Because everyone tells you that as soon as you stop trying, you get pregnant right? 

Well not so for these kids. Because we have "not" been trying for a year now and still nothing.

When our year came up, we decided we needed to get things checked out. 

We have 2 fertility options in Tacoma.

The Gyft Clinic

Seattle Reproductive Medicine's Tacoma Office

We originally went through Seattle Reproductive Medicine, but when they wanted to refer us to a Urologist in Seattle, I decided to see what the Gyft Clinic had to offer. We have never looked back. We had prior knowledge that we might need a Urologists help, so we decided to start there.

1. Give a sperm sample.
Read it here.

2. Interview with Dr Murrain.
Read it here.

3. Hormone Tracking Month
Read it here.

I think normally you would talk to Dr Murrain before you give the sperm sample, but we don't do anything the normal way. Clearly :)

And if you have more questions, please let me know! I would love to answer any questions I did not cover!

And how do you feel about this font? Is it too hard to read?

Why I Am Telling Our Story - In Excessive Detail

When Thomas and I first decided to pursue our infertility, I had no where to start. I read lots of people's blog posts. I read articles. I did research. 

I only knew of 2 local options. I had a friend who went through the Tacoma branch of Seattle Reproductive Medicine and I had heard about the Gyft Clinic in Tacoma, but that was about it. I had so little knowledge going into this.

With this in mind, I am telling our story for 3 reasons. 

1. I want anyone else who is out there and is considering doing In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) through the Gyft Clinic to have more knowledge then I did going into this.

2. I want to have this all recorded for myself to look back on years down the road when I have my own little one in my arms.

3. For any family or friends that are out there, that are curious about the nitty gritty details (because I know I ALWAYS want to know them) here you are.

But be warned! There are lots of them! And some might be more detailed then others.

But here is what we went through from start to finish with the Gyft Clinic for our IVF adventure.