Teaching Through Infertility- Here is my journey with IVF

InVitro Fertilization (IVF) is easily the hardest thing I have had to do mentally. I’m pretty open about my infertility journey and have had some time to process it, so opening up about it and trying to get rid of the taboo behind it helps me cope. 

I wanted to write this blog to share more information on infertility. When I tell people the details of what I’m going though, they are always shocked! As an elementary teacher, I know how important words can be and how important it is to spread awareness as well as give grace. You may never know what someone is dealing with behind the scenes, and infertility is DEFINITELY one of those things.

Speaking of being a teacher

Working with children all day, everyday, when you have no idea if you will ever have a child of your own, is a devastating pill to swallow. Teachers give our heart and soul to our students. We support them physically, mentally, and emotionally, and it feels like a punch in the gut each day to not know if I will ever be able to give the same love and support to my own baby.

Another challenge is the frequent appointments. They get INCREDIBLY stressful, because you aren’t given a calendar of the days you will have appointments. You go in for an appointment, and you get a phone call in the middle of the school day giving you the results of your tests, directions as to when your next appointment will be, and what dosage of medicine to be taking until then. I book the first appointment of the day at 7:30, but that still requires me to have some coverage for the first hour of the day. My students know that I see my doctor a lot, but it is absolutely not my place to speak about infertility with them, so I have to keep my answers pretty ambiguous, and I hate that they are so curious and not getting answers.

The unknowing also means you’re unaware of when your egg retrieval surgery will be.  This is when the doctors remove all of the eggs your body produces in that cycle. You’ll be giving yourself a final injection (called a trigger shot) 36 hours before your surgery, and the day of that shot is when they schedule your procedure. AHHHHH!

Ok- so why am I going though it?

Well- we have had a very difficult past year trying to start our family. We found out we were pregnant in November of 2021 and were over the moon! Miscarriage is something that I have always known could be a possibility, but I admit that I was one of those “it won’t happen to me” people. Unfortunately, that pregnancy did not last long and we were sad, but tried to wave it off as that one possibility. SURELY our next one would be our perfect rainbow baby! But the need to continue teaching that week after the painful news and going through my first miscarriage was so challenging, no matter how strong and positive I was pretending to be.

We got pregnant again in February, and we were SO excited!!! We went in for our nine-week ultrasound to see the heartbeat, but the baby measured behind, and the heartbeat was lighter than expected. We were scheduled to go back the next week to check progress. Unfortunately, the heart had stopped beating, and I was pretty certain mine had, too. Once again, I was going through that traumatic experience while trying my very best to not miss any work. We got pregnant one more time in July but lost that one around the same time frame as the other two. That one was a horrible, traumatic experience involving an incomplete miscarriage, and I did have to step away from work for a few days.

In 8 months, I had 3 back to back miscarriages. I could make a whole post about what that actually means (newsflash- it’s not just a period after a positive pregnancy test) but I’ll save that for another day. I truly felt my world was crumbling around me. 

Something that really hit me hard was how quickly I realized it was something people can’t truly understand unless they have experienced it, and they are not sure how to comfort (at no fault to them!)

Comments like “just relax, it will happen when it it’s supposed to,” “everything happens for a reason,” “you can have my kid,” or “just wait until you have kids” are not helpful. At all. Don’t say them.

1. “Just relaxing” won’t magically fix my infertility; we have a diagnosed reason. Also, infertility causes stress, not the other way around.
2. Everything happens for a reason feels like a slap in the face. What was my reason for losing my babies?
3. I’m sure your child can be trying at times… they are a KID learning how to navigate life. Saying that when they are having a moment, or when I offer my professional input for your child feels like you’re not realizing how incredibly blessed you are to have them when there are people out there that would do ANYTHING for a baby of their own.

Typically, people are put on birth control for 14-21 days prior to starting the ovary stimulation because it can improve the ovaries response and allows more flexibility in the scheduling of the egg retrieval. Because of the holidays coming up, my doctor and I made the decision to skip this part. 

The process starts the first day of your cycle, and mine was on a Monday. We ordered the needed meds, and I went in for labs the next day. My estradiol was lower than expected (thanks, stress-) so we rechecked that Thursday and I was given the go-ahead to start!

I started the ovary stimulating medication on Friday, November 11th. These shots help my eggs mature and become ready to be fertilized. The stims will be about ten days, and during that time, I will become a frequent flyer at my doctors office for sonograms and labs. I had my first appointment on Monday, and so far my follicles are growing great!! I was instructed to start my second evening shot on Tuesday night, making that one shot in the morning and two each evening. They really aren’t that bad, but I do ice the area for a minute or two before injecting and lay with a heating pad for a few minutes after. I also found that if Ethan rubs my belly while he injects it distracts my brain from the injection spot! The spots where I get injected is also a little tender, so I put a bandaid over it to keep it clean and to eliminate the rubbing from my shirt or pants. My next appointment is on Wednesday to see those follicles grow, grow, grow!!! 🤞

Next Steps

Like I mentioned before, I will take my trigger shot at the end of my stims. If everything goes as planned, I will return for my retrieval 36 hours later. If not, I will stim for a little bit longer to encourage more growth. When I get out of surgery, they tell me how many eggs they were able to retrieve.  Those eggs are then mixed with my husbands sperm sample with the hope they fertilize. Then, we wait. We wait to see how many eggs fertilized, then we wait to see how many grow to a healthy day 5 blastocyst, and then we wait while the ones that made it are biopsied and undergo PGT-A and PGT-SR tests to look for any chromosomal abnormalities. I hate waiting, especially when it is for something I want more than anything in the world!!!

We will get a call from the doctor regarding how many “good” eggs we have and move forward with the transfer process beginning on the first day of my next cycle!

But for now… more waiting. ⏳