Two Moms Journey to Motherhood – Part 3: Transfer & the T. W. W.

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Two Moms Journey Part 3We have now come to the next part in our journey the transfer of the embryo and the two week wait for a pregnancy test. If you missed Part 1 and Part 2 of our journey be sure to check it out before continuing on. 

We decided to be very open about Krystal’s egg retrieval process with family, friends, and social media. However, with the transfer process, we kept the actual date under wraps and just filled family in on parts of the process. We knew that even if the transfer did result in a pregnancy there were a lot of “ifs” that we didn’t want to explain should the transfer not be successful. 

The preparation for the transfer of the embryos is much shorter than the egg retrieval process. During Krystal’s process, I was on birth control which thinned the uterine lining. After stopping birth control I took an oral estrogen pill to begin thickening that uterine lining for embryo implantation. Day 13 of estrogen pills was when the fun really began with progesterone in oil (PIO) injections. It is super thick to inject and I took 1 ml a day intramuscular. It was rough. I would get huge knots in my butt and basically lived on my heating pad to try and loosen the oil. 

Day 6 of PIO shots was the transfer on August 24, 2018. They tell you to arrive with a full bladder and forever the rule follower I showed up at my scheduled time at 11:15 a.m. with a full bladder. Well, 12:30 came and it was finally go time (they were short 2 nurses). I have never had to pee as bad as I did that day, but it achieved its goal and helped for a better view of the uterus. 

Our embryologist came and showed us the embryo we were going to transfer and said it was beautiful! She was also an Aggie so I feel like that was a good luck sign for us. Our embryo was a little stubborn and didn’t want to come out of the tube the first time so it took two tries. Here is the ultrasound of the transfer if you focus on the right side you can see the tub and the deposit of the embryo in the uterine lining and poof it’s done!

Since I did not have any history of infertility or hints that I would have a problem conceiving our doctor decided to only implant one embryo. As many know the chances of multiples with IVF are extremely high due to the fact that they often implant more than one embryo. Even with the implantation of one embryo, our chances of multiples was about 3%. Normal conception rates of multiples is about 0.45% maybe a little higher since Krystal is a twin herself. 

We also choose to do a FET (frozen embryo transfer) verses a fresh embryo transfer. What this means is after the egg is fertilized and progressed into an embryo it can either be implanted or it can be frozen. Our doctor said there is really no difference in the success rates of frozen versus fresh. We decided on a FET to lessen the stress and pressure. This way we could both focus solely on the egg retrieval process and then pivot to the transfer process. 

Post transfer my blood work came back low in progesterone so they upped my dosage from 1 mL to 2 ml…I was not thrilled, to say the least. But I couldn’t complain because we were PUPO (pregnant till proven otherwise). 

Next comes TWW (Two Week Wait), in reality, we had to wait 11 days till we could get blood work to see if the embryo had implanted itself in the uterine lining and we were in fact pregnant. During this time I was on no sort of restrictions and continued my PIO shots. They recommend not taking an at-home pregnancy test because the side effects of progesterone are often the same as the first trimester of pregnancy symptoms and a test can often result in a false positive. I didn’t have many side effects other than a sore butt and exhaustion because I had gone off caffeine. Thankfully I had bypassed the nausea side effect of PIO injections. 

At this point we are 10dpt5dft. Let me break that down. We are 10 days post transfer of a 5-day frozen transfer. The 5-day frozen transfer is the day the embryos were frozen after fertilization. Sometimes you will also see a 3dt or 5dt which would be a transfer of a 3/5 day old embryo (i.e. fresh).

Although Krystal and I are very much rule followers (especially her) we broke the rules and took a test a week in… the results were inconclusive (most likely negative). Day 10 (September 4, 2018) we were full of hope and gumption so we took another pregnancy test because my blood work was the next morning and we figured “Why not?”

Tune in for Part 4 to find out what the results were!

If you or someone you know is going through IVF allow me to recommend. Dear Coco Designs. This teacher by day artists by night, does custom watercolors of embryos and they are stunning. Go support a woman-owned business and follow her on Instagram.

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Madison O
Madison is a Texas A&M Graduate who is beginning her 6th year as a Technical Theatre teacher and 3rd year at Gregory-Portland High School. She and her wife moved to the coastal bend to be closer to family as they began the fertility process to grow their family. Madison and her wife were thrilled to welcome their daughter, Amelia, to the family in May via Reciprocal IVF. Madison has also begun working toward her Masters degree in Educational Administration at TAMUCC (gotta keep it in the Aggie family!) Talk about one busy mama! Madison enjoys time outside and has always loved to write for her own personal blog in her free time. She is so excited to start this new adventure of motherhood and to be joining the wonderful community of Corpus Christi Moms on the blog!