Jsme těhotná is Czech for WE ARE PREGNANT!!

Let me back track a bit. I usually spot before my period and on Thursday I had a little spotting so I thought that I was out for this cycle but then it went away. Friday, riding the public transport felt like bring your worst smells with you day. Saturday, I woke up at 7am and took the pregnancy test and I didn't see a line right away - already feeling defeated because of the spotting, my heart sank. After I finished in the bathroom, I looked again and there was a faint line. WHAT!? Jason was still sleeping so I crawled back upstairs and said I need you to look at this because I think there is a line. He was groggy but I turned the lights on anyway and he said the line isn't as dark as the other one and that I should wait until tomorrow to test again. PSHA!! I ran downstairs and took the other pregnancy test and it was immediately positive!! I showed Jason and he agreed that it was definitely positive. And then I cried. Like sobbed. And Jason asked if they were happy tears (because although he didn't say it, I was ugly crying.) Once the tears ran out, I was in shock. This was the moment we have been waiting for but I wasn't quite sure I could believe it. We called the doctors office and went in for a blood test at 10am - it was Saturday but the nurse said that she would rush it so we could find out later that day. At 3pm she called and said the blood test is positive (I'M PREGNANT!!) and my hCG was at 107 (which is good because it was only 8 days after the transfer of our 2, 5-day old frosties) 

Now in a normal pregnancy, that would be it until your first ultrasound at around 10 weeks or so but with IVF they usually check your beta (hCG) a few times to me make sure your numbers are doubling properly. So within 48-72hrs the beta should at least double. This morning (48hrs after the first blood test) we went in and had my blood drawn again. The nurse called us an hour ago and said my hCG was at 462!! What a relief!! I am not sure that I'm going to feel safe for awhile - usually people wait to announce pregnancies after they are past 12 weeks due to miscarriage rates being higher before then but as we have been blogging, we can't and don't want to keep this a secret. WE ARE REALLY PREGNANT!! I really am in shock still. I keep announcing to Jason every so often that I am pregnant. And he has decided to start calling me "baby mama" - it is so silly but I don't care. So far, other than most things smelling bad, the other symptoms I have are sore boobs (ouch!!), feeling queasy, and one bout of vertigo and general dizziness. The vertigo happened on Sunday morning and I thought Jason was lifting the mattress and dumping me out of bed like a dump truck would do. I woke him up because I was yelling whoa! whoa!! Glad I haven't had that again!! But I'll take the slew of crazy pregnancy symptoms because it just confirms the pregnancy!!

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much for your support through this whole process. It has been a long road and while it has been hard sharing all of our struggles, I am happy to share some joy. We will keep posting updates as we will go in for an ultrasound in a few weeks to find out how many babies are in there! We'll be thrilled with one, two or three!! Estimated due date: July 3, 2016.

So much love - katherine

Try to be pregnant this time

As of this morning, we had 3 frozen embryos and the doctor suggested we select the best 2 for a FET (frozen embryo transfer) and those are the two from my eggs. This morning I called at 8am to see if both made it through the thaw. The woman I talked to on the phone said call back at 9am and we will know then. Know what?! I tried to get her to explain why we needed to wait an hour -- were they not looking good?? I waited for the English speaking embryologist and she said she was about to thaw them now so we would know in a hour. Whew!! At 9am I called and she said both looked good after the thaw and to come in at 10:30am. Yay!!!!!  This is an non-stimulation cycle but not to worry I still have plenty of drugs to take. They decided to hit me with all of the drugs this cycle to help my chances of becoming pregnant. I've been taking Prednisone once a day -- it is meant to help the body accept the embryo and not fight it off as if it were an intruder. I did a trigger shot Saturday night to induce ovulation (which occurs 36 hrs after the shot) so they would know when I ovulated because they want the FET to occur 5 days after ovulation. Now I have started taking the max dose of progesterone as well as added estrogen 3x/d. After the transfer, I will have daily injections of Fraxaparine, a blood thinner, that should help to prevent any clotting. The transfer went smoothly this morning and the doctor said to me -- try to be pregnant this time. It was very sweet and funny because of her word choice. She also printed an ultrasound picture after the transfer and said, now come back in 3 weeks and get another one! I want to say that I feel really hopeful (and part of me is) but also I am scared that this is not going to work but I am doing my best to stay positive. We keep joking that we could end up with triplets as we transferred 2 frosties and we also tried the old fashioned way this cycle as the egg wasn't collected after ovulation. Now THAT would be crazy!!

Our two blastocysts before transfer.

The red circle is where the 2 blastocysts are located (the bright white spot). See larger picture below.

The darker circle is my uterus/ uterine lining. And the bright white dot is where they are located. The white color is the media and air from placing them.

In other news, we are still torturing ourselves with the autoimmune diet and as an added bonus, we've both lost weight -- Jason lost 10 lbs since starting the diet (a total of 25 lbs since leaving home!!) and I've lost 8 lbs. Get ready for TMI -- although all the drugs are making me constipated so it should be more... We cheated a bit on my birthday and today for lunch because we didn't want to break our transfer ritual of eating french fries. Man were they yummy!!! Jason has been looking for jobs and has a promising lead in GJ. We miss our family and friends and would really love to go back to GJ. I found a house that I fell in love with and our friend Val went and looked at it for us while we FaceTimed her. It's tiny and adorable and perfect for us to start a family in but we didn't get it. I was pretty devastated - still am. It's hard to explain, but that house gave me something to look forward to. I could see Jason and I living there and our day to day life. The current owners have a child so the 2nd bedroom is set up for a nursery. It gave me something I could be excited for regardless of our outcome here. I keep hoping that somehow that house can be ours. We have a back-up contract in place so if anything happens with the first one then we could get it but it is unlikely. I've looked at other houses but nothing calls to me like that one and definitely not enough to put in an offer while not actually being there. I will say that I had been in the house a few years ago so I had a general feeling of what it was like. Speaking of coming home, we booked our tickets for our return and arrive the evening of December 14!! 

For now, I am taking it easy after the transfer. Keeping my feet warm (warm feet = warm uterus) and planning to eat a whole pineapple over the next 5 days (core and all). There is something in the pineapple that is suppose to help with implantation. I am willing to try anything!! For real. We are still soliciting love, well wishes, lighting of the candles, prayers and any other goodness you can send our way.

xo - katherine

Take #5

Another failed cycle. The emotions are overwhelming. I've, for the most part, been pulling back from everyone because I just don't want to feel what I am feeling. Jason gets to see the full range of emotions and it is probably not fair to him for me to be closing myself off from my friends and family.  It feels like he is the only one that really understands because he is going through it too (although logically I know that many people can relate even if they have never been though this themselves). At the same time, I just want to go home. I want to go back to the way things were. I want to see my friends, go for bike rides, go to book club, have dinner with the family. I want to have my job back and have a purpose. I want to walk Willie Nelson and have him snuggle with me on the couch. We came here saying - well, if it doesn't work , then at least we'll have an amazing experience. That has been true. We have had an amazing experience but currently my will to go explore has been less and less. I just want to go home.

Despite wanting to go home, I want more to have a baby. So I am taking control of what I can in my life. Here are a few ways I feel like I can. I have a few autoimmune issues and I am wondering if that might be one of the reasons that I haven't gotten pregnant. Autoimmune issues are complex and I'm not even going to pretend to understand how it all works but there is some suggestion that diet plays into autoimmune disease - and that I can control. I found a great website that explains the Auto Immune Protocol. The following explanation is from her website. It is basically paleo eating so no grains, no legumes, no dairy, no refined sugars, no modern vegetable oils, no processed food chemicals. A few other important factors are avoiding excessive salt, refined sugars, too many carbohydrates (but this doesn’t need to be a low carb diet!) and also trying to balance omega-3 vs. omega-6 fatty acid intake. But in addition, for the autoimmune protocol, I will completely avoid:

Eggs (especially the whites)
Nuts
Seeds (including cocoa, coffee and seed-based spices)
Nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, sweet and hot peppers, cayenne, red pepper, tomatillos, goji berries etc. and spices derived from peppers, including paprika)
Potential Gluten Cross-Reactive Foods
Fructose consumption in excess of 20g per day
Alcohol
NSAIDS (like aspirin or ibuprofen)
Non-nutritive sweeteners (yes, all of them, even stevia)
Emulsifiers, thickeners, and other food additives

Now I am sure that many of you are thinking this is a bunch of BS but I don't really care. It makes me feel like I am DOING something. And maybe, just maybe, it will help. In addition, I asked my doctor about having my Natural Killer cells (NK cells) tested to see if they are elevated. If they are then it is possible that my body is attacking the embryo -which would prevent implantation. I am not sure how to override this (if that is what is happening) but as it is related to autoimmune issues hopefully the change in diet will help the issue.

If you have any recipes to send me please do!! I am sure that I will get so bored eating this way. The hardest part will be the nightshades. I LOVE tomatoes and spicy peppers and not having those is going to suck. That and no more chocolate croissants. Boohoo.

So what else do people do when they feel like they have no control in their lives..... they cut their hair!! I haven't done it yet but I am planning to in the next week. I am thinking shoulder length hair and maybe some side bangs or something? Any thoughts? Send pics!! Seriously. I am doing it soon.

Ok, so the other way in which we are taking control is by lining up a donor for eggs. The one donor blastocyst that we currently have frozen was from a donor oocyte that was thawed and fertilized with Jason's sperm. This is not usually how it is done. Normally, they find a donor that matches the selected criteria (blood type, height, weight, ect.) and then she goes on the stimulation medications. All of the mature eggs retrieved from her are then fertilized with Jason's sperm and from there the process is the same (and usually there are a lot more to freeze for future cycles). I imagine that will happen for the following cycle. For this cycle, we will thaw one of the eggs I produced and the one from the donor. (We ended up having 2 eggs I produced frozen as an additional egg caught up and was good enough to freeze (yay)) If those both survive the thawing process we'll go with those two, if not then we will thaw the third one that I produced and hopefully transfer that one.

So that is the update. I am so thankful for all the messages, emails, and FaceTime calls we've received. I have been a bad friend and sister and am going to make an effort to reach out more. It is difficult because I want to reach out and I think I might explode all at the same time.

This is a picture of a dog at a shop in Rome. It makes me happy.

xo - katherine

Feeling hopeful.

Just to recap what we learned on Tuesday - there were 8 fertilized embryos from my eggs and 4 fertilized donor embryos. On Thursday (day 3 of embryonic development) we called and were told that all 12 of the embryos were either a Grade 1 or 2. Fabulous news. Friday they told us that quite a few had not made it and that a few were slow growing. All in all we had a total of 4 embryos - 3 were from my eggs and one was from the donor. The 2 best looking embryos were from my eggs and they were a Grade 1 and the other 2 (one from my eggs and the one donor were Grade 2). The rest they said they would keep in the growth medium and see if they might catch up. We expected that they all wouldn't make it as it is common for about only 1/3 of embryos to make it to the blastocyst stage. But the good news is that those that do make it are far more likely to result in a live birth.

This morning the numbers were the same but they were now blastocysts and were told to come in at 11:45 for the transfer. How exciting!! We decided to use embryo glue and assisted hatching for this cycle in hope of improving our chances. Now the next question was which blastocyst(s) to transfer? We already knew that we wanted to transfer 2 and at the suggestion of the embryologist, we decided to transfer the two Grade 1 embryos. We were warned that this might result in twins... (are some people surprised when they have twins after transferring two embryos?) The other two blastocysts will be frozen for the possibility of a future cycle.

Usually Jason has to wait in the room while I go for the transfer but this time he got to go with me. Our doctor came back from Moravia early so that he could do our transfer and we were the last transfer for the day so he invited Jason to come see the procedure. This was really special for us as that meant he got to hold my hand and see the blastocysts on the screen before they were transferred.

This is not the best picture of our two blastocysts but there they are!

We are feeling very hopeful for this cycle so keep lighting candles and sending love our way!!

xo- katherine

Holy cannoli!

On Monday we went in for the egg retrieval and they retrieved TWELVE eggs!! Holy cannoli! I can't believe it!!! My body kicked into gear. No wonder I was so sore and bloated. Today we called and 9 of the 12 eggs were mature and of those, EIGHT fertilized! In addition, we have 4 donor eggs that also fertilized, just in case. We are so excited and little in disbelief. We have more of our own fertilized embryo's this cycle than total eggs retrieved up until this cycle. Crazy.

Now we wait. We'll call back on Thursday to see the grading of the embryo's and a general update on their development. I believe we will probably wait until Saturday for the transfer as that will be day 5 but we will see.

Thank you for all the love and prayers and positive energy that has been sent our way - keep it coming!! We are hopeful that this will be our cycle!!

xo- katherine

Seven is my favorite number

About 3 weeks ago, after we found out that we didn't have an embryo for our last cycle, we had a meeting with the doc to make plans for the following cycle. We discussed using donor oocytes as the number of eggs I've been producing has been quite low. They clinic has frozen oocytes that can be unthawed and fertilized with Jason's sperm so we went through the list and selected the best donor with 6 available oocytes - she had a compatible blood type, somewhat similar height/weight, with brown hair and green eyes. We decided that we would do a blended cycle where I would do another medicated cycle and we would transfer one of my eggs and one of the donor eggs. There is a lower success rate with frozen oocytes but it gives us the opportunity for a blended transfer. So, after that meeting we got the meds for the cycle and headed out on holiday with our friend, Todd.

After a week of the stimulation injections and returning to Prague after a world-wind vacation, we went in on day 8 for our ultrasound to see how the follicles were looking and I had SEVEN follicles!!! We have never seen more than 2 follicles on our ultrasound. We are so excited and hopeful for this cycle. It must  have been the waters of Luscice bay on Hvar island in Croatia that is known to have fertility powers.

 In the past we have retrieved the eggs on day 10 but this cycle I am staying on meds longer so all the follicles can mature. That means that on Monday, day 13 of my cycle, we will retrieve the eggs and fertilize them along with the donor eggs. As long as we have 2 of our own embryo's then we will transfer only those. If we have less than 2 of our own then we will add in a donor embryo. Either way we are really excited for this cycle. 

I do have to say that I'm scared to transfer a donor embryo. I have so many different feelings surrounding this part of the process... I really want to be a mother and I am thrilled that we have this option. But I still have random thoughts like what if when the child finds out about the donor eggs (as we are being completely transparent with this process) that he/she will hate me. Or worse, what if I feel differently than I should as a parent. Logically, I know that it will all work out just fine and I'll be a great mother to any child but that doesn't meant that these thoughts don't cross my mind and keep me awake some nights. Mostly though, we are so thrilled and I really feel like this cycle will be the one. We will know more on Tuesday as far as how many eggs fertilized and when the transfer will likely occur so stay tuned and send us your love!

xo -katherine

Getting out of bed

Thursday morning, we called to check on our embryo and to find out when we should come in for the transfer - unfortunately, the embryologist informed us that the egg didn't fertilize. She did say that they would continue to watch it for another 24hrs just to be sure. This morning she confirmed the results and said the cycle was canceled. 

What a blow. I had such a good feeling about this cycle. For one, it was a natural cycle so my body wouldn't be all jacked up on hormones and might be more willing to accept the embryo. Then there is the old saying - third time's a charm! (I'll grasp onto anything at this point.) But mostly, I thought about the wonderful outpouring of support and love we have received. I was thinking of all the candles being lit. Of all the prayers and positive energy being sent our way. I asked people to take time out of their lives to hold space for our baby to be - surely the universe wouldn't disappoint.  

And yet, there I lay, sobbing in my bed after hearing the news from the embryologist. I cried and Jason held me. After awhile, I stopped crying and Jason got up to make us smoothies. I was sad and angry and trying to make sense of why this was happening. I proceeded to lay in bed and read my book, cry, and wonder what will happen if we never get pregnant. I got out of bed when Jason made us lunch and cleaned the dishes after (so I didn't feel completely worthless) and then hopped right back in bed and proceeded to repeat the mornings activities - read, cry, wonder. Late in the afternoon I decided to get out of bed and shower - my heart was tired and my body hurt from all the laying around. You would think after doing nothing all day I would have a lot of energy to burn but I just felt exhausted. I needed to get out of the house so we decided to go to the movies. I ended the day with some heart nurturing yoga and vowed that tomorrow I would get out of bed.

I realize that yesterday wasn't filled with a lot of nothing - it was filled with a lot of grieving. Jason says he feels disappointed about this cycle but remains hopeful and I vacillate between feeling completely hopeless and feeling like no matter what happens, I will be ok.  I am not ready to completely give up on my dream of being pregnant and becoming a mother but I also feel like I need to prepare myself for that possibility.

I feel the need to end this post on a positive note so that it is not so depressing for others to read, so that people don't feel uncomfortable, so that I can project this strong image of myself but I feel sad and depressed and I do want to crawl back in bed. Honestly, this blog has become a way for me to process my emotions and this is where I am right now. However, I will keep my vow to not crawl back into bed. 

I can't say thank you enough for all the love and support we have received. Each and every comment, message, phone call, and text are greatly appreciated.

xo - katherine