It was just a matter of time before I used that pun. After getting back to a pretty painful place late last night, I spoke with my nurse this morning and she wanted to lay eyes on me. Jess was so so sweet to rearrange her afternoon and take me in so that Hubs wouldn’t have to cancel his work day again.
So back we were at the clinic, and of course that led to being tapped again. Another 1800 mL!
I feel a good bit better, have some new nausea meds, will be starting lovenox shortly (to further prevent blood clots), and am praying praying praying for my body to equilibrate to these changes — and to the hopeful little one causing all this trouble.
The bloating is back, for better or for worse. (And don’t worry, my baggy shirt covered up my skirt button.) I’m going to keep this post short because I’m feeling really rough, this time some other fun symptoms mixed in like nausea, cramping, and getting (very) easily (very) tired. I am surprised the full feeling is this bad this quickly, although it isn’t yet as severe as it was yesterday.
I worked a 12-hour day today and I’m now thinking that was overdoing it a bit. Think I’m going to just work the morning tomorrow. According to the nurse a lot of people do fairly well with their OHSS symptoms in the morning but around 2:00 “It hits like a Mack truck.” Her recommendation: get everything done that you need to in the morning, then change into sweats at 2. I just may have to heed that advice tomorrow.
Trying not to be naively optimistic, but it also would be nice if all of this discomfort were not in vain, but leading up to a BFP on Friday.
This may seem like no small deal, but I can’t tell you how ecstatic I am about it. Last Tuesday was the last day I ate somewhat normally, and that evening I started feeling very uncomfortable in the abdomen. It’s been one rough week since & I wanted to offer an update here which I will try to keep brief. It is quite detail-y, so no hard feelings if you want to skip this one.
I chalked it up to GI issues related to the meds. Our transfer was Wednesday but by Thursday afternoon I was really struggling, with severe upper abdominal pain in addition to extreme bloating and was even having some shortness of breath. I checked in with my doctor about these symptoms and she wanted me to go to urgent care, where they were concerned about my high heart rate and could not rule out a blood clot (which one is at a higher risk of on these hormones), and so they sent me to the emergency department.
After blood work and some concerning results there (i.e. high white and red blood cell counts), an EKG, and CT scan the blood clot was ruled out but they discovered fluid in my abdomen. They gave me some good IV fluids and meds and chalked the heart rate and breathing issues up to related dehydration and the fluid in my abdomen pushing up on my heart and lungs. We left around 1:30 a.m. & had an appointment at 7 that morning with Dr. C. Three hours of sleep for us! Hubs was a trooper through it all.
I’d also like to give myself a little tip of the hat…have you had a CT before? They inject one substance in you that gives you a rush of heat throughout your body, then you have to concentrate on breathing normally which is harder than it sounds, then they inject you with another substance that makes you feel like you peed in your pants (but you didn’t) and then you have to hold your breath for ten seconds. After signing a consent saying they will do their best to not harm a potential fetus with some hardy shields, if s/he has stuck around since Wednesday. And of course all the while they are calling me pregnant which I’m both thrilled and terrified by. In the IF community there is a slang term, PUPO, Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise. I suppose they were following this line of thinking, but I couldn’t help but correct them in my mind each time, They may just be all wrong.
Although my hormone levels and other tests were within the normal range and I didn’t have many of the symptoms for it (some lower abdominal pain but not severe, normal estrogen and albium levels, no problems urinating), the next morning Dr. C diagnosed me with OHSS (ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome).
Some of my numbers had improved and I was able to force myself to eat and drink despite feeling so full that I didn’t want to, so we thought I was on an upswing and left it up to me whether they would “tap” me or not. Tap = insert long needle into fluid pocket and drain it. Because she thought I was improving and because it involved a rather long needle and the word “paracentesis,” I gladly declined. She put me on a strict diet of high sodium and high protein foods and I ate my approximate body weight in dill pickle chips and guacamole (not together) in the subsequent days. It was fun at first.
My abdomen expanded increasingly, however, and by last night it/I was gigantic, I really did not want to eat or drink, and it was very difficult to get comfortable. Basically what happens is the hormones cause your blood vessels to become leaky, directing the fluid into your abdomen and around the uterus instead of to the kidneys. This leads to the bloating but also to dehydration. I broke down and googled OHSS and allowed myself one professional site (Mayo Clinic) and one lay site (some IF forum). I learned on there that the full, pressured feeling can last 2-4 weeks, more if you’re pregnant, and that many people feel instantaneous relief from the tap. Tap, it is. There is just no way I could take this for much longer.
We went in today and — lo and behold — they drained almost 2 liters of fluid! My apologies for the gross detail (I will tell you what it looked like upon request). Also, because of the proteins in it, the fluid apparently is amazing for your garden but we politely declined the offer although we’d just gotten ours going this weekend. The procedure was a bit painful, but not terrible and compared to all the IF involves and relative to the ongoing pain of the last five days, it was totally 100% worth it. I highly recommend it for anyone with OHSS. They also threw in some IV fluids, my first and third IV all in a week. And I had room to eat a burger tonight! High salt high protein, yippee!
Dr. C and the nurses urged me to take advantage of the window of feeling hungry because — get this — often the fluid comes back and additional tap(s) may be necessary. They also urged me to wait as long as possible between taps. The fluid can return in women who are not pregnant, but is even more common in women who are. How will I not overanalyze this in the coming days? One of the wild things about OHSS is that it is triggered by the hormone HCG. This is the hormone contained in the Ovidrel shot that triggers ovulation pre-retrieval and also the pregnancy hormone, what the Beta test will detect to determine pregnancy on Friday. Last Friday my HCG/Beta level was 7, so the Ovidrel was almost out of my system but not completely. So there is a possibility that my OHSS symptoms weren’t resolving because I could in fact be pregnant — a possibility Hubs found assuring. I was more skeptical. However, I am a total freak and secretly hoping that the fluid madness returns. Oh, the things IF does to you.
Lastly, neither of our two final embryos made it. It still is so hard to believe, and hard to accept that we only got two viable embryos out of this process — especially after how awful the past week has been. We are pressing on, though, and actually feeling fairly accepting at this point, although I fear that will all come crashing down if it is negative on Friday. Of course we are praying like crazy for Friday and I’m hoping to have more energy to devote to that now that I’m feeling more normal.
Here’s something I got in the mail last weekend from my beautiful sis. One of my mantras through IF and she made it into a canvas. In our bedroom for now, but one day a nursery.
My sister is brilliant.
In honor of feeling a bit spunkier today, return of visual hilarity for you…
Reading for my Psychoanalytic Development class last Tuesday, the night before our embryo transfer. What are the odds?! Needless to say, I did not participate very much in discussion that night.
And Dozer the Dog — a fitter version of our little meatball, a YouTube video my sweet in-laws sent for entertainment over the weekend.
We got a text from our doctor this morning letting us know that of the four embryos, two were healthy blastocysts, the other two were at earlier stages. At the appointment I first had an acupuncture treatment (yum), then Dr. C and the embryologist came back and showed us a picture of the to blasts. They were beautiful (in my humble opinion). I asked why they were oblong — more like a figure 8 than a circle — and the embryologist said it is because they already have begun to hatch, even better!
The other two are still hanging on, but one seemed to be stalled in its growth and would not result in a baby, and the other they are going to let grow through tomorrow morning and then check in. If it has reached blastocyst stage (they estimate about a 50/50 chance) we will be able to freeze it for a later transfer. You know what I’m praying for.
So, in the end, having two healthy blasts, we decided to transfer one and freeze one for a later transfer. Both Dr. C and the embryologist were fine with whatever we wanted to do but felt more comfortable transferring one. The likelihood of either of them becoming a baby is the same whether they’re transferred at the same time or separately. So transferring one does a couple things for us: it reduces our likelihood of multiples, it gives us more than one transfer (praise God!!), and the second transfer may even be slightly more optimal than this one because the uterine lining tends to be healthier when your body has not just undergone stimming and retrieval. This second transfer could always even be for our second child down the road, if all goes well this go round!
All in all, the disappointment from the low fertilization rate has been quelled a bit and we are very grateful to likely get to have one other transfer from this IVF/retrieval process. I have to admit, physically I feel pretty cruddy right now. No one warned me how rough it can be post-retrieval!! This is the worst part by far! My ovaries will continue to be enlarged for another couple weeks, my digestion is whack thanks to the anesthesia and progesterone (which was so high it didn’t register on the clinic’s machine — just what they want to see), I’ve been sleeping terribly thanks to those symptoms and the side effect of the steroid, eating isn’t sounding so great but I’m guessing is kind of important for staying pregnant, and I overall feel like I just might pop. Of course it is all worth it to give the little pearl babies a fighting chance but I will say I am glad I’m taking off the remainder of the week from work to rest and recuperate.
So tonight I am more pregnant than I ever have been (or known I have been) before. Our embryo is with us, the beginning of a baby. I’m imagining it continue to hatch and slowly make its way to a comfy spot in my uterus to hang out for nine months. (We will know a week from Friday.) I’m connecting with it and praying for him or her. Trying to be at peace and in the moment in this emerging relationship.
Just got the update and all four embryos are still moving forward! We have two 8-cell, one 7-cell, and one 6-cell. Dr. C said she thinks we’re looking at one to two blastocysts on transfer day Wednesday and that she would be surprised if there were fewer, ecstatic if there were more.
I will continue to pray our four embryos fighting in the incubator down the road and that there would be four healthy blastocysts on Wednesday.
today i bought waterproof mascara 