2DPT: IVF 9 - Mo

I just read that Mo and Will lost their baby at just over 7 weeks. I am shocked. Stunned. She had absolutely PERFECT embryos, the best clinic on the blessed planet and still...it happened again.

News like this makes me despair that here I am, approaching 46, with one nearly perfect embryo (visually, not by PGD).

None of us are safe from this fate.

If you're a reader of her blog, or not, please stop by to share your support.

The Day After Heartbreak

My site has been down for a few days so beta day came and went without a post.

Since my last post on Sunday, any indication that I was pregnant disappeared with those stabbing cramps I hate late on Friday night. Swollen and tender breasts? Gone. Crampy uterus? Gone.

Quantitative bHCG: 3

It's clear as a bell to me that I had one hell of an immune attack on my single blast. It's exactly as my first IVF was 4 years ago. The only difference was the embryos were two days younger last time (but we transferred six) so who knows if one grew really fast or how many tried to implant that time. This time, I had one. One beautiful 5 day old blast.

I am sick over this. I haven't slept in 4 days. I fall into bed exhausted and sleep a few hours. But it's light sleep and the second I awaken, that's it. I'm done for. No chance in hell of falling back to sleep again. It's been like this since Saturday night when I realized what happened. I am sure that I look like shit by now.

So my 1st and 6th cycles I had implantation that lasted maybe 1 or 2 days at most, but it was attacked by something uterine in both cases. What did I do differently this time that might have helped me get this far?

1. I kept very hydrated
2. I tried to regulate my night time body temperatures (I tend to vacillate between freezing and sweating)
3. I took 1g of famivir a day (I have HSV-1 and HPV) to try to keep my HPV under control with all the estrogen that is surging through my body
4. I took 50mg of pycnogenol a day
5. I took 250mg resveratrol a day for 2 months (stopped in December)
6. upped to 8 fish oil pills
7. 1600mg predigested folic acid (double what I took before)
8. 100mg selenium
9. 2000iu vitamin D-3 (didn't take D3 in previous cycles)
10. Acupuncture before/after transfer
11. Day of ET: Near total bedrest. Light bedrest next two days. Really took it easy until Sunday night when it was clear that it was gone.

Most of this I already did before:
12. 400iu natural E (stopped after ET)
13. Whole Foods complete vitamins
14. 1200mg calcium
15. 6 days cipro before/after ER
16. No caffeine
17. No dairy once cycle started (I'm allergic to casein)
18. No slippery foods
19. No raw veggies after ET

I am heartbroken after knowing that this one was "close" but there is this silver lining in that I now know that at 45 I am able to make a good blast capable of implanting. If I had any doubts about my last hour ability to make a child, it is gone now. I may be close to the end of my rope, but I'm not there yet.

You might be saying how do you know you had implantation with a beta of 3. Besides the symptoms and coincidence of the pain, I also have at least one friend with a story.

A fellow IF friend of mine "A.L." said that she had 8 sequential losses with the same exact symptoms as mine. (We are both patients of the same reproductive immunologist). I asked her how she knew that the stabbing pains were from an implantation and she said that essentially in the first few cycles she actually got a BFP when she POAS...the stabbing cramps would happen and she'd lose it. After the first few losses, her body became more and more efficient at killing the embryo. Eventually she would get the stabbing cramps BEFORE a BFP showed up on a HPT. So...there you have it. There are lots of other similar stories in the reproductive immunology world and I have just added myself to the list.

I went to see my reproductive immunologist today. They weren't shocked. My symptoms were all too familiar to them. Apparently there is a lot of talk about "T Reg" cells and how they affect early loss. I will be getting tested for these T-Reg cells between CD9 and 14. They said that I could do three things to try to keep this from happening again:

1. add in humira to suppress my immune system (but stop 6 to 8 weeks before the cycle BEGINS) and
2. do LIT
3. do IVIg

Lovely.

Humira can kill me. Especially with having a high risk variety of HPV which, btw, only popped up during this IVF cycle. I have had clean Paps my entire life. Apparently IVF estrogen levels can unleash HPV as a nasty consequence. It should resolve on it's own in 8 months IF I STOP CYCLING. Stop cycling? They can't be serious.

My insurance doesn't cover IVIg. At $2500 a pop it's out of reach. Might as well get a surrogate at this rate.

LIT means I either fly to Mexico, UK, or Greece ...OR... I buy a centrifuge and set up a lab again.

My vote is for buying a centrifuge. Easiest fix I can imagine. And it works.

I am heartbroken. I prayed so hard for this cycle to work. I begged for my child to come this time, and try it did. The embryo did all the hard work of dividing and surviving to day 5. I was supposed to provide a safe place for it. Instead my toxic uterus killed it. My body let him or her down. There's a lot of guilt in a failure.

So I am picking myself up by my boostraps because it's all I can do at this point. I'm a hard one to beat down. Really, I am. There will be a 7th cycle, and an 8th if that's what it takes.

Sadness

A girlfriend of mine, MG (who isn't a blogger so I can only use initials to safeguard her privacy), just found out today, that she just lost her baby girl at 13 weeks. Her ultrasound was today and there was no movement and no heartbeat. It sounds like the amniotic fluid was on the low side and the doctor estimated that the baby had likely passed about a week ago.

MG had done CVS in the last few weeks and it had determined that her baby girl was chromosomally perfect. MG is an immune patient of Dr. B's and Dr. S's so she did the usual humira, lovenox, IVIg cocktail when she found out that she was pregnant.

Everything was fine. Fine until she did her CVS. Immediately prior to CVS her NKs were at about 22. Ultrasounds looked great. She had a SCH (subchorionic hemmorage) but it was handled effectively by cutting of her lovenox until it had subsided. Which it did. What is telling, however, is that after her CVS her NKs mysteriously skyrocketed to over 30. My take is on this that her CVS like introduced a uterine infection into the placental area that her body responded to with a full blown immune attack. We won't know for sure what happened until they are able to obtain a tissue sample for biopsy.

That CVS and amniocentesis can cause an infection that, in turn, can lead to miscarriage, scares the hell out of me. It's a strong arguement for doing PGD so that you can avoid having to do CVS or amnio at all. I think the risks for miscarriage due to CVS are something like 1 in 100. Maybe less. I remember when my friend Mary was pregnant last year, her NS showed her odds of a Down's baby were something like 1 in 300. The risk of miscarriage due to CVS was higher. 1 in 100 or thereabouts. They opted to not do an amnio or CVS due to the risk.

I thought they were being reckless. But you know, after hearing, tonight, about MG's loss, I really have to wonder if I will do CVS or amnio now. I'm not sure if we can afford to do PGD with each IVF. I doubt we can. But this really has opened my eyes to something I hadn't given much though to. Til now.

This was MG's second loss. The first came at 5 months and it was because her amnio showed DS. She terminated and she still lives with the torment of that decision. Today's loss was just another needle into her heart. And ours.

MG. I am so sorry for your loss. It's just utterly unfair.