our long journey - part II - the bubble

just after the new year (2012) we came home to maryland from a long vacation in houston, texas to spend the holidays with my family.  after about a month of rest and relaxation to regain my focus and strength, we resumed with treatments - phase 3 - IVF - In Vitro Fertilization.

• IVF is the process of fertilization by manually combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish. When the IVF procedure is successful, the process is combined with a procedure known as embryo transfer, which involves physically placing the embryo in the uterus.

first, let me say, this was a very hard decision to come to. being catholic, IVF isn't considered a natural way to have a baby - it's viewed as messing with God's plan and God's way. it's viewed by many to be against our religion. honestly, the whole process of us trying to get pregnant through fertility treatments has been viewed by many as such - it made facing our church members really difficult even though they had no idea what was going on. i felt guilty almost every sunday at church facing the parishioners and priests like we weren't guilty of messing with God's plan. i prayed every day for God to give me His blessing, for Him to tell me that this really was His plan all along and that what we were doing to have this child was really okay. His answer came to me at the end of May.

after months and months of grueling, physically painful and emotionally painful shots, it was time for our egg retrieval.

• Egg retrieval is the process whereby a woman's eggs are removed from her ovaries. These eggs are later mixed with a man's sperm in order to facilitate fertilization. In order for egg retrieval to occur, a woman must first have follicle production stimulated by particular hormones. Once a number of follicles (potential eggs) are produced, fertility specialists can then remove these eggs from the ovaries in order to attempt fertilization. If fertilization is successful, the embryos will be placed back in to the woman's uterus.

up until this point, i thought the shots were hell and i wanted to just give up and crawl in a corner and cry. the shots had altered our social lives and really tested our strength and that of our marriage. until the egg retrieval, we thought we were going through the roughest part of this whole process. we were wrong. i had apparently responded to the fertility drugs like a champ and the doctor was able to retrieve a record of 61 eggs!!! when the doctors had told us the number of eggs we asked "is that good enough?" to our surprise, the norm was only 10-15 eggs. so needless to say, 61 eggs retrieved had many a nurse and doctor coming around to meet the little asian girl that they just retrieved 61 eggs from. "whoa" was said many times over upon meeting me and hearing our number. :)

to me, that was God's sign. 61 eggs!

the recovery from the retrieval was horrid. i was stuck in bed for a few days unable to even go to the bathroom on my own. 61 eggs = very enlarged ovaries = very bloated stomach = a lot of pain. i was thankfully being taken great care of by my aunt (Tita May) and of course, mark. they doted on me every single minute of every day till the day of our transfer - being pampered was pretty great! but it wasn't over yet.

6 days after the retrieval and laying in bed almost every single minute of every single day, we went back in for our transfer. to our joy, 41 of the 61 eggs fertilized normally - still a whopping big number. after much debate and advice from dr. o'brien, we decided to transfer only one embryo. if we had transferred more than 1 i would run into a lot of painful days ahead - a lot of painful bloating and bedrest. we first wanted to transfer at least 2 embryos because our journey had been so long and arduous that we wanted as many chances as we could get. but because of the risks, we finally decided not to.

and so, on the morning of may 31, 2012, dr. o'brien transferred our little "bubble" into my uterus and thus began the real journey.

may 31, 2012 - the bubble's first picture