lologo3

Fertility

Special Delivery!

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After not sleeping the entire night, despite being told over and over to get rest (but how can you?) it was finally 6:00am. My family was arriving and everyone was sitting around me to say their best wishes and tell me good luck.

I had blankets prepared that I had snuggled with for weeks leading up to the delivery so baby girl could get familiar with my scent. I also prepared a short video that Toby could show her so she could see and hear me. This video was one of the hardest and emotional things I’ve ever recorded. I wanted it to be a light, cheery video just telling her how much I love her and I’m going to be holding her in my arms very soon. The second I started recording and speaking – reality of all the what if’s hit. What was going to happen to her during the c-section? Would she be ok when they fully anesthetize me? Would I be ok? We were at the finish line and everything seemed to be going great, I felt like at some point our bubble would burst.

A little while after recording the video, my nurse brought in the cutest little newborn beanie that she had cut and tied a big bow to. Things got REAL. I couldn’t wait to see this sweet little beanie on our cutie’s head.

A little while later, my anesthesiologist came in and started administering all the lines. I had a PICC line inserted in the side of my neck, normally it’s done while fully asleep – unfortunately pheochromocytoma and being pregnant don’t mix well for comfort and I had to be fully awake and aware for this one. I also had an arterial line put in, which goes in the front of your wrist, into an artery. These were all just in case the tumors acted up and they needed to administer medication fast to counteract them. They also inserted an epidural. You’d think that being fully anesthetized, you wouldn’t need an epidural. Unfortunately for pheochromocytoma – an epidural is a good way to block adrenaline from traveling up your body and reaching your heart. It was another precaution. The PICC line and arterial line both hurt and I remember them clearly, the epidural though is more of a fuzzy memory. I think it was quick, but uncomfortable. More so, just uncomfortable to have to lean forward while sitting and have a giant pregnant belly in the way!

Next, they wheeled me into the operating room. The surprisingly were going to let Toby be in the operating room, despite me having to be fully asleep. He was excited but SUPER nervous.

I was getting more and more nervous, but excited.

The last few seconds I remember being awake, they had put the mask over my face and I began choking and yelling I couldn’t breathe. I was terrified. I don’t remember these issues from past surgeries so I thought something was going seriously wrong.

Next thing you know, I was awake – still on the operating table with my sweet girl getting checked on right next to me.

The first thing I said was, “Is she pretty?”
My nurse took her beanie off and said “She’s beautiful!! She has a lot of hair just like you!”

I still don’t know why that was the first thing that came to my mind! Maybe because I just wanted to look at her finally! I was in and out of coherence and before I knew it, they had wheeled her off to the NICU and I was waking up in the ICU.

I had to wait to meet my sweet girl, but that was ok. She was in the best care possible. She was fine! She needed some extra oxygen, likely due to me having to be fully out during the c-section, but besides that was a healthy, tiny, beautiful little girl.

Little side note, while waiting for the ICU nurses to figure everything out on how to wheel me to the NICU, my sister and her husband wanted to grab me some lunch. They left and I fell asleep after for a little while. I woke up about 2 hours later and they still weren’t back. I was just confused thinking they decided to go eat lunch and were really taking their time getting back. I called my sister, Lindsay, and got no answer. I waited a bit and my dad came and hung out with me. Toby and my mom were with my baby girl. I finally called my mom to ask where Lindsay was and my mom sounded frantic when she answered.

“I gotta go, Lauren!! I’ll call you back!” Keep in mind – she was with my new baby!

I freaked out and made her tell me what was going on. Turned out my sister and brother in law had gotten side swiped on their way to get me lunch. They were downstairs in the emergency room.

How do these things even happen?!

Luckily, they were ok. Had a few cuts and bruises, their brand new car was totaled – BUT, this was a day of celebration, and now we were adding to the celebration that they were alive!

Anyway, back to baby news –

Finally around 6pm, after pushing, begging, and asking over and over – the night nurse in the ICU finally took a minute to bring me down to officially meet my baby.

On the way down I was so nervous. Was she going to recognize me? Would she be ok? Would I be able to hold her?

They began wheeling me into her room.

There she was.

My sweet Mila Reu.

All my wires still attached, hurt oxygen still in – we finally got untangled enough to snuggle each other. That second there, my life changed. My perfect little brunette, tan, beautiful little bundle.

  • 20190707Image In Love Photography by photographer Tobias Ogden.
  • 20190707Image In Love Photography by photographer Tobias Ogden.
  • 20190707Image In Love Photography by photographer Tobias Ogden.
  • 20190707Image In Love Photography by photographer Tobias Ogden.
  • 20190707Image In Love Photography by photographer Tobias Ogden.
  • 20190707Image In Love Photography by photographer Tobias Ogden.

Go Time!

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Go time for me looked a lot different than I expected it to. First and foremost – with all of our struggles to reach this point, I honestly never thought there’d ever be a “go time.” I was and still am so thankful there ever was! We were lucky. Looking back, we were lucky everything worked the first time. We were lucky my cancer didn’t ruin this for us. We were lucky we were about to have a healthy baby girl.

Our go time looked like me getting admitted to the hospital at 12pm on June 30th. I was admitted to a labor and delivery hospital bed. I was hooked up to a doppler where they monitored our baby girl. After a few hours, I was administered an alpha blocker to began to control my heart rate and bring it down. This alpha blocker WOULD travel through the placenta and reach out baby, which was the main reason for the monitoring in the hospital, otherwise this medication can be taken safely at home.

The thought of a heart medication reaching our baby was absolutely terrifying for me. Plan A was everything going smoothly until July 5th, C-Section done the morning of July 5th after alpha blocker medication was slowly raised in dosage and everything going just fine. Plan B looked like the doppler picking up abnormal heart rhythms and performing an emergency c-section and hope the alpha blocker wear off quickly on our baby. We made it this far and I felt like I was about to put our girl in a dangerous situation. There was a lot of guilt, a lot of not wanting to do this, a lot of what ifs.

I trusted I had the best team to do this for us.

A few days went by and baby girl and I were having no adverse side effects. Thank goodness!

July 4th came and we knew the next day we were going to be getting ready to become a family of three. Toby and I spent a lot of time together that day just laying low, watching the doppler like crazy because we had ONE day left and just elated for the next morning.

I remember everyone telling me to get as much rest as possible. I didn’t sleep AT ALL. I watched the doppler literally every second that night to ensure there were no issues. I felt like Murphy’s law – if something was going to happen, it would of course be the very last second.

Nothing bad happened. We would be meeting our sweet baby girl in the morning.

“You look like you were due last week!” And Other Things to Not Say To Pregnant Women

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Aside from the cancer recurrence, my pregnancy was going well! I was enjoying feeling every little kick, punch, and hiccup from our baby girl. I enjoyed walking around while having a conversation with the little lady growing inside me, even if I looked like a crazy person while doing it.

Over the last few months of the pregnancy – May, June and July, I got a lot of stuff done! We were gifted a baby moon at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar, which was AH-mazing! We finished decorating baby girl’s room and it for sure is the most peaceful, aesthetically pleasing room in our home. I had a pamper day at Glen Ivy with my mom and my sister, had my BEAUTIFUL baby shower, where holy moly, everyone showed so much love for me and for our baby girl, and lastly had the help of our good photographer friend, @kimberlyelysephotography to shoot our maternity photos.

I learned a lot about how to waddle around with a bump the size of a basketball on your front side, I learned how to make yoga pants work for any occasion, because let’s face it – maternity jeans are STILL jeans and that’s just not comfortable, and I learned how to brush off all the ridiculous comments people say to you while you’re pregnant. Well, maybe not brush them off, but definitely vent to Toby about each comment. “You look like you were due last week!” from the employee at the DMV (I still had two months left), “chubbers,” “you want to eat more?!” Yes, give me more food.

We were coming towards the end of June which meant we were getting closer and closer to game time and finalizing the “plan.”

  • 20190602Image In Love Photography by photographer Tobias Ogden.
  • 20190602Image In Love Photography by photographer Tobias Ogden.

Reassurance and Rest – Just What The Doctor Ordered

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The day after we returned from our Kauai vacation, we had an appointment at the earliest available – 1pm. I laid in bed up until this time preparing myself for the worst news. I was terrified of what we were going to be told. I tried to remain positive, but set my expectations low.

We went in and the ultrasound started. They looked around for a bit and soon after, saw the heartbeat. Halle-freaking-luja. We were SO relieved.

So what caused all that bullshit bleeding and bed rest in Kauai?

A blood clot bigger than our baby was resting RIGHT against the embryo. This is dangerous. We were able to celebrate for a moment that our baby was growing and still there, however, we were told that this pregnancy could really go either way. Our doctor didn’t seem to have a great outlook on what was going to happen in the next few weeks and simply said “Time will tell.” I was told to stay on strict bed rest for the next week and we would reassess the situation at our next appointment. It was suggested to me at this point to find a good perinatologist.

I wasn’t familiar with the term, Perinatologist, but started googling and making phone calls. Literally, every single one was booked at least a month out. I started growing frustrated. I asked my endocrinologist for a recommendation and she ended up coming through with a great one. (More on that later.)

The week went by, lots of bed rest, more progesterone, more ways to administer progesterone – oooo fun, and more rollercoasters of emotion. Literally everyday seeing more blood at certain points, then none, then more. It was a stressful week.

The week went by and we were at our next appointment. The blood clot had not gone down in size, but my fertility doctor said it was standard that no matter what, he send people back to work at this point and stop the bed rest. I wasn’t sure about his opinion on this. I felt less stressed with my feet up, doing my best to take it easy and let baby grow and thrive while fighting off this evil blood clot.

The day before I returned back to work was the day the morning sickness took over my life. I could not get down even plain WATER! I began living off Vitamin Water Lemonade with the 0 calories and steamed sweet potatoes. I could tolerate a good bowl of macaroni and cheese from Boston Market down the street too.

I returned to work and could barely make it out of the bathroom. Mind you, our building is two stories, the stairs are inconveniently located on the opposite side of the restrooms and the elevator ALWAYS breaks and locks you in. Not ideal for someone battling morning sickness. Before I knew it, I had my first appointment with my perinatologist and he immediately signed me out of work for various reasons, including the nausea and stress. I was so relieved to be able to relax and let the blood clot diminish without causing harm to our sweet, growing baby.

The Hardest Test to Take

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If you know anything about me, you know that being told to wait for something when I have the tools to make something happen on my own is near impossible. I was in the that long, limbo waiting period between implant and wait to find out if our little embryo attached and I was officially pregnant or get some dreaded news. During the time I had a lot of thoughts going through my head. I refused to even imagine anything negative. I only prepared for a positive outcome.

Days 1, 2 and 3 were definitely long days where there was not tempt to taking a test, just relaxing and enjoying the process. I spent the majority of my time laying on our comfortable couch with blankets, my memory foam pillow, comfy knit socks with an IVF mantra on them that a couple of my sweet girlfriends got me and watched a LOT of trash TV (if you consider Real Housewives of Orange Country trash, but hey..I fit in with a couple of them now through this thing called IVF, so eh..why not?). 

When day 4 began, I started getting a bit more tempted to test. I had returned to work and as you can tell, I’m an open book – so all of my coworkers were aware of what I was going through. To me, this was the best way to prepare myself as well as my coworkers to be a bit more understanding with my emotional state, being absent from work randomly throughout the last few months and preparing them to hopefully be very excited for me! I needed as many cheerleaders as I could get!

Day 5 came and the urge to test was getting stronger! The next day was Thanksgiving and I knew I’d be surrounded by my family who would want to shower me with love. They are just as excited as I am to hopefully be welcoming a sweet baby soon. I knew that the test is most accurate with the first morning urine so before I could keep contemplating, I peed and flushed and did NOT test. I was proud of myself and knew that if I let that most “optimal” test time pass, then I’d be in the clear for at least another day. 

Day 6 came – Thanksgiving. I did the same thing as the day prior, peed and flushed. Went downstairs and began making a yummy paleo dish to bring to my sister’s. The entire time I was cooking I was thinking about the facebook IVF support groups that I’m a member of and reading about countless women who got their positive test results as early as 3 days. Some women didn’t get their positive results until 10 days. I was so torn, but I got the urge to run upstairs and just DO IT. 

I remember I was shaking so bad I could barely hold the test strip in the stream. I was bawling my eyes out without even knowing the results – positive or negative this was going to be a very emotional day. I started thinking “Did I just ruin my Thanksgiving?” “My family is totally going to notice that I’ve been crying all day and if they bring up any baby talk I’m not going to be able to hold it in.” 

The test says to wait three minutes for most accurate results. I had already skipped the most important part about first morning’s urine so I figured I better just put the test strip down and count down so I’m not freaking out for a few minutes.  I told myself to breath. Breath, and it’s all going to be ok no matter what. 

Three minutes had passed (let’s be honest..probably was more like 1 minute and a few seconds). I grabbed the test strip and there is was! 

For the first time EVER, I saw TWO pink lines! That’s a positive test, baby!!

I cried!! 

I knew that although Toby was unaware I had taken the test and told me to just wait, he would be just as elated as I was and I couldn’t wait to tell him. I ran out of the bathroom with the test strip and started filming on my iPhone as I stumbled down the stairs. (That video is unfortunately just me stumbling down the stairs covering the screen with my sweaty hands and the lens is all smudged. I couldn’t get it together, obviously!)

Toby was in the kitchen working on his famous mashed sweet potatoes and looked at me with the test strip in hand, still bawling my eyes out and he says “It’s negative???!” I could barely get out the words and just said “No, babe! It worked!! We’re pregnant!” 

He didn’t believe me or his eyes! He looked at the test strip and just said “Are you sure? The line is kind of faint” If there’s two lines, there’s two lines! I replied “It’s positive!!” And we both cried. 

We finally got our positive test. We finally are on our way to parenthood together. 

 

Relax, Regroup, and Implant!

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After receiving the news that we had five embryos make it to freeze, we had a lot going through our heads. Was this enough? Were they healthy embryos? Do we need to do another retrieval? 

It was stressful to say the least, but again, remembering that lesson I learned – trust the process. After retrieval, you are in recovery mode. The swelling from retrieving the eggs can leave you retaining a lot of fluids in your ovaries and it’s imperative to get that fluid and swelling down! I was advised for the first few days after retrieval to stay away from drinking water and instead drink coconut water and Gatorade. Small side note: I am not one for putting things into my body that contain processed sugar or food dyes, so I stayed away from Gatorade! I survived off LOTS of coconut water. 

After about five days, I started to get feeling like things down there were returning back to normal. I could move around a lot more comfortably and the puffiness in my tummy hard started to reduce. Yay!

The next step in the process is waiting for your period to start. I heard it normally takes about ten days. Ten days go by and of course, no Aunt Flo. The entire rest of the schedule depends on when she makes the appearance and of course, she was dragging it out! Finally at day 14, it arrived! 

The next step was to visit the fertility clinic again to make sure I would actually be able to do an embryo transfer that cycle. They needed to make sure the fluid retention had gone away. Low and behold – it did! The miracles of coconut water! Woohoooooo!

Now for the fun part, again. Shots, shots, shots! These ones were a bit more intimidating because if you do some Facebook searches and googling, you’ll find women complaining quite a lot about the discomfort of these shots. Aside from the fact that with these progesterone shots, you definitely would have a hard time doing them yourself, the needles are long, and you have to draw back on the syringe to make sure you didn’t hit a nerve. What the…?

Of course on the night of the first progesterone shot, Toby was photographing a wedding. I had psyched myself up that I would be able to handle the first progesterone shot on my own. When the clock struck about 7:55pm, I was in the kitchen getting it already, twisting in a weird position to grab a bit of flabby muscle on my lower hip/butt cheek and said, “Nope!”

My sister called me asking how the shot went and I just cried “I can’t do it!” She was nice enough to drive over late at night with her family and help me out. She came in and we tried putting the right needle on the syringe to draw up the progesterone from the vial. The needle didn’t fit onto the syringe! Thanks, CVS!!

We were baffled. We drove to the nearest pharmacy and said it was an emergency we get the right needles and syringes and they had three extras that would fit. I was in luck, but it seemed like a lot of stuff was going against us. Anxiety had built up so much by this time that I didn’t want to wait any longer to get the shot over with.

We got back home and my sister jabbed the needle in! The needle was so thin that she could barely get the serum through. The tip of her thumb starting bruising and I just started laughing. I felt like this was the definition of a shit show. 

Finally, after about a minute, the serum finally worked its way out and I was fine! It really didn’t hurt. As days went by, we went to more ultra sounds to check the lining and continued getting nightly shots until the final countdown of when our little embryo would implant. 

We had a mock transfer where they fill your uterus with fluid and stick a type of measuring straw into you to see the size of needle they will need to implant. The procedure was easy and the doctor felt confident that the transfer would go very smoothly.

The morning of the transfer finally arrived. I had done a lot of googling of how to prepare. I had a good hearty meal enough for a few leftovers in the fridge – Paleo Pad Thai Soup, yum – so there’d be no stress when I arrived home and got hungry. I read to eat a hearty meal, not too big, before the transfer, not drink or eat anything too cold, only warm or room temperature liquids and I lived by that! I wasn’t taking any chances to hurt the embryo! I wanted to be as stress free as possible and I achieved that with my preparedness. 

When we arrived, the doctor and nurse came in triple checking my name and date of birth. Obviously, you can’t make any mistakes on which embryo was being implanted! That would be a major whoops! The doctor informed me that they would do assisted hatching on the embryo to give it the best chance possible to attach. 

When the doctor came back about 20 minutes later, he was ecstatic. He informed us that our little embryo immediately hatched on its own and was looking super strong! We felt good. The nurse came back with the straw like object that our little baby was in and he carefully inserted it. I was advised to stay laying down for about 20 minutes. I just began to cry after the doctor left the room. There were still so many uncertainties, but I believed that I might truly have a chance at becoming pregnant and this could be the beginning of carrying this little baby inside me. It was so surreal.

We went home shortly after, taking the most scenic route to just relax and enjoy what was happening. We got home and immediately parked it on the couch, where I’d basically be remaining for the next three days (advised by my fertility clinic). I rested a lot, wiggled my toes to keep some sort of blood flow moving and just visualized a positive pregnancy test. 

From there, we had to wait 10 days before we could go back in to get a blood test letting us know the outcome. I thought the last waiting period was tough! Holy moly, this was on another level.