My success story to give some hope to the long haulers
TW: miscarriage, live birth.
While going through the trenches I loved to read success stories of people who struggled with ivf, it gave me hope, which allowed me to keep going. I figured I’ll share my story in case it helps someone.
Here’s the long breakdown of my fertility journey (unexplained infertility):
Ivf round one: 10 eggs, 8 mature, 6 fertilized, 5 embryos, 4 euploids.
Fet 1 - euploid, medicated protocol, fail
Fet 2 - euploid, medicated, added blood thinner and steroids, chemical
Fet 3 - euploid, medicated, added blood thinner and steroids, blighted ovum
Fet 4 - removed blood thinner as no indication after testing, tried Lupron but for 1 month only, fail
Ivf round two: 8 eggs, 7 fertilized, 5 embryos.
Didn’t test them as our euploid rate was good. New doc offered to do half conventional half icsi fertilization to throw some natural selection in the mix.
ET5 - fresh, icsi embryo, fail
FET6 - icsi embryo, modified natural, fail (suspect I might have been triggered too early but who knows).
I always suspected endo, and endo mapping showed some minor spots, so finally decided to do a lap. Doc found only 2 spots, so very minimal but still removed it.
FET7 - conventional embryo, figured that I only ever had implantation on blood thinners, so we added that and steroids back in, modified natural but this time waited for my natural LH surge.
Got a positive test on 4dpt but on 8dpt got bright red bleeding and tests got lighter, convinced that it’s over. The next day tests started darkening again so I was convinced it must be another blighted ovum (that’s how tests behaved for me). Beta was 52 on 9dpt so on a lower side, after it doubled well I was still convinced it’s doomed so got more betas done which slowed in doubling after 1000, further making me believe it’s another blighted ovum. To my surprise, 7 week ultrasound showed a fetal pole and a strong heartbeat. Pregnancy progressed well and relatively easy. I gave birth to a baby girl in March and while post partum has been challenging, the joy is unmatched and sometimes I still can’t believe that I finally made it to the other side.