IVF#1: 11dp3dt: One pink line

I tested this morning and I got a single pink line. We're going to wait until my Beta on Monday for the official announcement, but it looks like this cycle is a bust. I am sad and disappointed, but if something is going to go badly, I would rather it happen early rather than late.

My friend Emma sent me an email yesterday. One month ago she told me she was 18 weeks pregnant, and I felt like she had betrayed me by conceiving as soon as she started trying, and stealing my due date in January. Two weeks ago I heard that things didn’t look good on the ultrasound. And yesterday she told me that she delivered her beautiful baby girl at 22 weeks. They held her, said farewell, and then left the maternity ward empty handed.

I feel guilty at the anger I felt after her pregnancy announcement. How I said that I wanted both of us to be part of this Infertility and Loss community. How I wanted her to understand that the road to that first birthday is long and hard for so many of us. Well, now she understands it better than most. She’s part of the club now, just like I wanted (though my husband reminds me I never would have wished this on her).

My heart aches for her. Although I can’t imagine what she is going through, I am thankful for the blogs of women like Busted Babymaker and Awful but Functioning who have so graciously documented their grieving and opened their hearts to the world. Through their words, I am able to get a better understanding of what Emma is experiencing, and understand that this grief may be part of her forever. I sent her a letter of condolences, a candle, and gave her the address of Glow in the Woods . I wish that there was more that I could do.

IVF#1: 9dp3dt: Single line

To Anonymous: Thank-you for your comment. I am so glad that you found my blog and excited to hear that you are starting your first cycle. Send me an email if you would like an invitation to the next IVF Support Group dinner in three weeks.

Yesterday, at 8dp3dt, I saw my first single pink line of this cycle. I thought I was fine. It was still too early to know for sure. And even if this was a true negative, I thought I was okay. I knew the success rate. I knew that our low egg yield lowered our odds. I knew that slow embryo growth lowered our odds. I had been expecting this.

I told myself that even though each individual cycle only had a 25% success rate, the overall process of IVF in this country has a 51% chance of success over three cycles, and a 58% chance over six cycles (1).

I started planning the questions that I would ask at our follow-up appointment. What are the chances our 6-cell embryo would survive the thaw? Given no embryo reached the 8-cell stage, what are our chances of success in future fresh cycles? What are the waiting times to receive donor gametes? Can we sign up for donor gametes now while still attempting our own cycles? Can we source donor embryos from abroad? Suddenly I was overwhelmed by all these questions.

Then it was time to join my husband and two friends for a dinner out. They were discussing what bottle of wine to order, and one of them asked me if I liked champagne. I had no idea what to say. I couldn’t say “yes”, because then it would be odd when I didn’t drink any. I couldn’t say “no”, because that’s not true and they’d just order something else anyway. And I couldn’t say “I’m not drinking alcohol tonight”, because then everyone would think that I was pregnant. I just looked at my husband in desperation. He said something like “I don’t think she feels like drinking any wine tonight”.

And then, because I am paranoid and imaginative, I felt like I had just announced to our friends that I was pregnant. They didn’t say anything, but I thought that I could see their secret smiles. For some reason, I felt so awful. Like I was a fraud, pretending to the world that there was still hope.

And I feel guilty, when later as I confess all of this to my husband through tears, and I see the pain in his eyes. When he quietly suggests that maybe we should stop trying, because I take the negatives so badly. He has told me that I am all the family that he needs, and that my happiness is the only thing that is important to him. I feel like my sadness in this moment says to him that he is not enough for me. This is not true - I just get so mission orientated.

*****

Today is a new day, and when I saw the single line on the test this morning, I was okay. I think I will be okay no matter what the final verdict is. The point is to be happy, and right now, when I think about our little family, all I can do is smile.



1) Cumulative live-birth delivery after IVF/ICSI since the progressive introduction of single-embryo transfer
Reproductive BioMedicine Online, Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2010, Pages 836-842
D. De Neubourg, C. Daels, M. Elseviers, K. Mangelschots, M. Vercruyssen, E. Van Royen

IVF#1: 5dp3dt: Waiting

I looked at a calendar today to figure out how many days past transfer I was. Eight? Ten? No, five. It feels like my transfer was months ago, not just last Monday.

Physically, I am starting to feel much better. It took me a full week post egg retrieval to feel fully healed and back to my old self.

My new hobby is peeing on sticks every morning and watching my trigger disappear. Today is ten days past trigger, and I can still see a tiny bit of a line when I look at it just right. I'm guessing that by tomorrow it should be completely clear, and then I can start the more exciting process of waiting for the line to re-appear.


I think it's really mean of the pharma companies to make us trigger with hCG. Can't they just put a patch over the bit of the molecule that the home pregnancy test detects? I have even written this on my two-line tests (just in case a burglar breaks into the house and misinterprets them and sends me a premature 'congratulations'):



So glad it's the weekend! Even though I only had a four day week, it really seemed to drag on forever. I am looking forward to two relaxing days with my husband - catching up with friends and relaxing around the house.

Home Pregnancy Tests during the Two Week Wait

I know that many people warn against home pregnancy tests (HPTs) during the two week wait, but as my stash above indicates, I am not one of them. The last peer-reviewed head-to-head comparison of HPTs was by Cole and colleagues in 2005, so I picked the top brands from that study and then used the the manufacturers' own data on early sensitivity. I don't know the extent to which these results are directly comparable, as they were tested in different laboratories on different women. From these data, the First Response Early Result test came out looking the best, although all are equal by Day 0.



What about false positives? Cole and colleagues (2005) found no false positives in their lab test tests. Clearblue Digital reports a 0.49% rate of false positives on Day 0. First Response state that women over 41 years old could expect a 4% false positive rate on Day 0 due to high levels of pituitary hCG.

So here is my plan:

Thursday (3dp3dt): Daily tests until I get a negative result to ensure that the trigger is out of my system, then:

Sunday (6dp3dt): Daily tests until Friday 17th (11dp3dt).

Monday 20th (14dp3dt): Blood test.

Sources:
First Response Early Result true positives
First Response Early Result false positives
Clearblue Digital
Clearblue analogue colour change tip

Cole, LA et al., 2005. Sensitivity of Over-the-Counter Pregnancy Tests: Comparison of Utility and Marketing Messages. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association.
Echner, SF and Timpe, EM. 2003. Urinary-Based Ovulation and Pregnancy: Point-of-Care Testing. The Annals of Pharmacotherapy.
Cole, LA. 2004. Accuracy of home pregnancy tests at the time of missed menses. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Butler, SA. 2001. Detection of Early Pregnancy Forms of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin by Home Pregnancy Test Devices. Clinical Chemistry.