the bubble gives us a scare

this is a pretty graphic entry, so if you're squeamish about blood and/or female happenings, i suggest you not continue reading. 

i've debated over and over about whether to publish this entry to the public or not. i finally decided that if i was going to tell y'all our story, it's only fair to tell you ALL of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

yesterday was one of the hardest days thus far through this whole journey.

i woke up around 8:30 am with cramps and felt that my underwear had gotten soaked. groggy and disoriented, i got up to go to the restroom to check things out and saw that i soaked my underwear in blood, bright red fresh blood. i screamed for mark to wake up and come to the bathroom; i screamed loud.

crying my eyes out, i tried and tried to wipe myself of all the blood but it just kept coming out. i finally got a little control of it enough to change my clothes and pick up the phone. i immediately called shady grove fertility and our nurse told us to come in right away - our scheduled ultrasound wasn't till an hour or so later. we got dressed and headed straight for the clinic. it became the longest 10 minute drive ever.

we got to the clinic after what seemed like forever, signed in and waited in a full waiting room. still very teary-eyed, mark and i sat down and waited... and waited. by the time they finally called us, it was the time of our original appointment. i couldn't understand it - why would they tell us to go ahead and come in, but not see us right away? i was so frustrated and so scared - i cried some more. i didn't even care a single bit that all these other patients were trying to discretely look at me. our little bubble was in danger - nothing else around me mattered. nothing.

finally, the nurse called us in. as we walked by the nurses station, she stopped to tell the other nurse to "go ahead and get dr. o'brien now." i was glad to know they went to get her specifically for our appointment. usually, they assigned a monitoring physician per day to oversee all ultrasound appointments. so, a lot of the time, the physician at your ultrasound appointment isn't your primary physician.

i sat on the exam table waiting, clutching mark's hand while we waited for dr. o'brien and the ultrasound tech to arrive. i felt another painful cramp and began to cry yet again. when they finally came in and dr. o'brien asked, "how are you?" i lost it. i cried. i cried hard. she told me to lay back and try to relax so we could get started with the examination.

within seconds, our little bubble appeared on the screen. there she was... (we're thinking it's a girl)... her tiny little heart beating so strongly at 157 bpm. her tiny little body clinging on for dear life. all i could do was stare with tears in my eyes as i clutched mark's hand tighter. i was so overwhelmed that dr. o'brien had to remind me to breathe. but she assured me that the bubble was doing just fine - she was measuring well for 8 weeks and her heartbeat was strong. she couldn't see where the bleeding was coming from and why it was happening.

bubble at 8 wks

i asked her so many questions... is the bleeding hurting the baby? "no." what is the cramping? "your body shedding the blood." etc. etc. etc. there were several different things that may be causing the bleeding she said - the placenta popping a blood vessel when it was attaching to the uterus, just some of the lining shedding, and other things. i couldn't remember it all. all the rang through my head was "the baby is fine. the baby is fine."

after a lot more tears and both her and mark trying their best to console me, dr. o'brien told us to schedule another ultrasound for friday, for me to be on bedrest, hugged me and left. i cried again a little more as i got dressed just worried out of my mind. yes, dr. o'brien said the bubble was fine, but why am i being put on bedrest if she's fine?

as we left the exam room to make our appointment, i some how realized that in my rush to get out of the house and to the clinic as fast as we could, i had forgotten to put my cross necklace on. it wasn't like me to forget something like that - i always wore it. even if i left the house to just go down the street, i put it on. i wore it everyday since my parents gave it to me right after mark and i got engaged. how could i have forgotten it this time? i would get my answer later.

as we walked to the pharmacy downstairs to pick up my medication, it came to me. God's trying to tell me something. i took this as God telling me to take better care of myself and our little one, to slow down, and to take things as they come - day by day.

i'm a planner - it's what i do for a living now. so naturally, the second that the first blood test was positive, i made plans. we decided on God-parents, began making travel plans to Houston, called the church for baptism plans, etc. etc. i planned like crazy and stressed over the timing and logistics of everything. i did probably everything a soon-to-be first time mom isn't supposed to be worrying about till later.

so, i took this scare as God telling me to slow down and just take things day by day. well God, i'm listening. i'm lying here in bed trying my best to take it easy and trying my best to take care of myself and our little one. please God, take care of us too. 

As for me, I look to the LORD for help.
I wait confidently for God to save me,
and my God will certainly hear me. (Micah 7:7 NLT)

our long journey - part III - the hardest part

they call it the 2 week wait - the longest 2 weeks of an IVF patient's life. the longest, scariest, most emotional 2 weeks of my life. it's the 2 weeks you lie in bed after your transfer, the 2 weeks you move slower than a snail, the 2 weeks you choose to do absolutely nothing and go absolutely no where so you won't do anything that may detach that little embryo from your uterus. it's the 2 weeks of hell that you have to wait to find out if that little embryo hung on for it's dear little life to your forever waiting uterus.

for those 2 weeks, i laid in bed as long as my mind and body could take it. i only got up for meals and to go to the bathroom and only if i got so bored i was about to go insane. as usual, mark kept my mind straight and catered to my every whim - it definitely wasn't easy for either of us. especially for me. being laid up in bed for 2 weeks, you tend to go stir crazy and the internet becomes your companion. i kept googling and researching when would be the earliest to test if you're pregnant - it was both great and horrible.

the second i was allowed to and found it safe to get up and about on my own, i pulled out my first at home pregnancy test, peed and prayed for a miracle. most sites had said that 6-7 days after your transfer, you can start testing. i waited 5 days and of course my heart sank. negative. so i waited again... on the morning of june 6, 2012, that second line appeared. i twirled like a ballerina. that's perfectly normal at the age of 32 right?

i showed it to mark - we cried and did happy (awkward) dances all over the house. i texted the photo to my sister and we talked for hours and said our prayers.

every 2 days after that until the blood test, i peed and prayed.

finally, on the morning of june 14th we went back to shady grove fertility to do the pregnancy blood test. after being in and out in less than 10 minutes, we had to do more waiting. a few hours later, the doctor called...

positive for hCg - the pregnancy hormone. according to the blood test, we were pregnant! so, normally, you jump for joy, dance like you've never danced before, call your family, etc. you celebrate right? WRONG.

in our case, as an IVF patient, you wait a couple more days and redo the blood test. so, on the morning of june 18th, we were back at shady grove running the test again. the goal was to see that my hCg levels were going up meaning the bubble was growing. crossing everything we could, we waited a few hours again...

hCg levels are up. perfect, right? again, not just yet. yes, my levels were up, but was the bubble growing like it should be? we would have to wait another week to find out at the bubble's first ultrasound.

june 25, 2012 - the ultrasound. it made my heart jump and hurt. there it was, our little bubble on the screen, squirming away on the screen. i began to cry happy tears and mark became speechless as he stared at the screen and held my hand - speechless but smiling. a few seconds later, the ultrasound tech moved the little wand around to check for the bubble's heartbeat, i began to worry. the look on her face and the doctor's face wasn't a good one. they both looked at each other and the doctor swooped in and grabbed the wand to move it himself. again, their faces didn't look promising - i began to really panic. according to the doctor, the ultrasound was showing that the bubble's heartbeat was abnormally slow, about 85 bpm. the hope was that it would be around 120-125 bpm. my heart sank and painful tears came rushing out of my eyes.

june 25, 2012 - bubble's 2nd photo

at the site of my tears, mark gripped my hand tighter and asked the doctor what this meant. the doctor said that the bubble is measuring as it should at 6 weeks, but the heartbeat is still hard to measure because it is still so small. most women don't even get to see their doctors for an ultrasound this early. he said the bubble is measuring well, so i should try not to worry too much just yet and to schedule another ultrasound in 2 more weeks. another 2 weeks of waiting... great. NOT!!

so here we are, july 10, 2012, 2 weeks and a day from that disappointing ultrasound. tomorrow morning we have the second ultrasound to find out if our little bubble's heart is beating as it should. wish us luck!

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