First IVF attempt

Our first IVF attempt was back with doctor number one and we gave it our all. I had several medications that I had to inject myself with in the stomach and then some that I needed help with.

The stomach shots were no big deal, smaller needles and I was used to it with all the IUI's. The ones I needed help with though.... those were challenging and funny in some ways.

For my first injection that I needed help with, I asked our school nurse, who I had just met since I had just started working there that month. This was awkward to say the least but she was a great sport and was actually pretty good at it! I had to ask someone other than my husband to help me with these shots two nights a week since he is a firefighter and is gone for over 48 hours at a time for shift.

Besides the school nurse, I had one of my best friends help me. She used to be a medical assistant so she was used to giving injections. I had to do the shots she helped me with at night and so I had to drive to her house two nights a week while I was taking them for her help. On one of these nights, I had the shot ready to go and sitting in my cup holder next to me while I drove. At one point, I noticed that I was driving slightly faster that the speed limit at the same time that I noticed there was a cop directly behind me. You can imagine the crazy thoughts that went through my head at that moment! How the heck was I going to explain to this cop if he pulls me over that I am NOT a crazy strung out drug addict and that that syringe is NOT filled with whatever the hot street drug was at that time??? Great! I got lucky though, I never had to explain my syringe filled with medication to that cop, he never did notice the slight speeding on my part! Thank goodness.

After the injections, we went in for our retrieval. This was a weird experience where they gave me a drug to numb me but not knock me out, so I could see and hear everything but didn't feel much so I guess that was good. About 20 minutes after the procedure, I learned that he retrieved only 4 eggs........4!?!?!?!? I thought I was "young",  I mean isn't 29 still young? When he told us he retrieved 4 eggs, I cried. It already felt like a failure. How could we possibly get embryos? Oh, and by the way, only three eggs were considered viable. Just great! All we could do was wait to hear from the doctor the next day to hear about our embryos. When they called the next day, we heard that all three eggs were fertilized but that only two were growing. <Insert curse word here> Fantastic! Well, as many people so kindly pointed out at the time, "you only need one to work". Yeah well, that statement while I know was meant to make me feel better, did not help at all. I wanted insurance, ya know? I just wanted to know that IF we needed it, we had a back up and that we wouldn't have to go through all the fun shots and money that everything leading up to getting embryos entails.... but I didn't have that, I had two and I had to deal with that and hope and pray that was enough. On the third day, we did the embryo transfer and we waited, the dreadful "two week wait". This time I tortured myself with a pregnancy test on days 8, 10 and 12 (the morning of my blood test). All were negative. Even still, I held out hope. Until they called and said for sure. BIG FAT NEGATIVE.

The year 2010 was definitely one of the worst years EVER. I was happy to see it go.