The infertility journey has a lot of waiting…
Waiting for your period to start (slap in the face each month) so you can start your medicine protocol
Waiting to see how your body is responding to your medicine protocol
Waiting for test results to see if you can get any insight into why you aren’t getting/staying pregnant
A lot of this waiting comes with awful side effects based on the medicine protocol you are on. So if you have been wondering where I have been the last month since my last blog post, it’s been napping and fighting off migraines.
So let me catch you up on what’s happened since my last blog post about the uterine biopsy procedure.
Luckily, instead of having to wait over 3 weeks for the results (because our doctor was going to be out of town when we should have received the results), she called us before she left to review the results and talk about next steps. To recap, the uterine biopsy was used to perform 2 tests: ERA (Endometrial Receptive Assay) and a ReceptivaDx Assay. The ERA test will determine if my body needs an extra day of the progesterone shots before a transfer (so 6 days instead of the usual 5 days of shots) and the Receptiva test will look for signs of endometriosis, adenomyosis and other inflammatory conditions in/on my uterine lining.
The ERA test showed I’m ‘Receptive’ which means the 5 days of progesterone injections before transfers is what my body needs for the ideal implantation window. We assumed this was the case since I did get pregnant on our first transfer with 5 days of injections but it’s nice to be sure moving forward.
The Receptiva test gave us 2 answers. The main use for this test is to look for the protein marker that measures the presence of endometriosis. This test gives what they call a ‘H Score’ and if your H score is over 1.6 there is the presence of endometriosis. My H Score was 1.4. So while my score didn’t indicate the presence of endometriosis we are right on the border so my doctor said let’s move forward assuming there’s a low scale endometriosis present. To help quiet any form of endometriosis, I will add a daily injection of Lupron (given in the stomach) during our frozen embryo transfer prep. There are 2 types of Lupron injections. One puts your body into forced menopause (luckily that is not the one I am doing). The other puts your body into mini menopause (the hot flashes are real!). Along with the Lupron injections, I will also add in a 5-day dose of Letrozole. When I asked my doctor what this was used for, she said it is to make sure my estrogen levels don’t get too high. Apparently with endometriosis it can cause your estrogen levels to rise and since I will be taking estrogen pills daily to help build my lining, the Letrozole is going to work with the Lupron injections to keep everything where it should be.
The other result we got from the Receptiva test is that I have endometritis (basically inflammation of the uterine lining). Apparently it’s very common to get endometritis after a miscarriage (I’ll post another time about how pissed off I am about this as our doctor pointed out this is why our second transfer failed….good to know after that heartache and loss of money and embryos). I will take antibiotics to during my transfer prep to treat the inflammation.
So now here we are...in the middle of prepping for our third (and hopefully last!) frozen embryo transfer. Here is my medicine protocol:
Birth control pills for 19 days (starting on cycle day 3)
Daily injections of Lupron (10 units) in the stomach
2x a day of Doxycycline (antibiotic for endometritis)
4x a day of Estrace (a.k.a. estrogen)
5 day regimen of Letrozole
5 days of progesterone in oil injections (in the backside)
3 days of antibiotics (for both J & I) leading up to the transfer
3 days of steroids after the transfer
Along with this protocol I am also doing:
Baby aspirin
Prenatal vitamins
Levothyroxine
DHA supplement
Zyflamend supplement (to help my body naturally fight the inflammation)
Vaginal care probiotic (to help keep the good bacteria in my body while the antibiotics kill the bad stuff)
Eating as much of an anti-inflammatory diet as I can
Weekly fertility acupuncture sessions
It’s definitely comforting to know we are doing a different protocol for this transfer than the last 2. I don’t know if I could have handled our doctor saying “Let’s just try it the same way again and see if it works this time”. So for now, we have to trust this is the protocol that is going to bring us our rainbow baby.
Fingers crossed and send us all the baby dust!
**This is not meant to be medical advice. Be sure to consult your doctor with any medical concerns. This is the account of my personal journey through infertility**
Commenti