The next steps

We went back to IVF Canada last week for our first visit since our LO arrived. It was exciting and nerve racking at the same time, but I'm glad it is done and we are once again on the road to trying for another baby.

Our Dr. feels that IVM is once again the best option for us. I don't know how I feel about it considering we had the genetic surprise last time and only ended up with two fertilized eggs, even after ICSI from 9 mature eggs. After that surprise, our Dr. mentioned that we might go for IVF next round to increase our chances by retrieving more eggs. But we conceived and carried our LO that round, so obviously what they did last time worked. I just hope we are as lucky this time round.

Our first steps before this round of IVM are :

• Public health blood work - done and results already back

• My ultrasounds and echovist - done and results on the way to IVF Canada

• Semen analysis with sperm DNA fragmentation (something new this round) - still to be completed

And after the semen analysis is back the ball is in our court. We will have to decide when we are ready to try another round. So cycle day once of our chosen month - I'll call and we will start the process once again.

No title seems quite right...

I'm not even sure how to begin this blog, I feel like I need to post something spectacular but at the moment I seem to be short of any spectacular words. So I will begin with - this has been an amazing year full of firsts for both myself and my husband. After struggling with our infertility, we conceived, maintained a healthy pregnancy and I gave birth to our daughter. That is a sentence I thought I might never be able to write, but it happened and I am so thankful everyday that it did happen for us.
Our daughter is what I would call an easy baby! I still follow many blogs that I started following while we were trying to conceive. And thankfully, all of those bloggers also gave birth either late last year or earlier this year. But from their various posts, I have come to the conclusion that our LO has been very kind to her parents. She has been a good baby, so good that we often joke that she is tricking us into having another sibling so fast. I highly doubt that we will be let off so easily next time - there is just no way we could get such an easy baby twice.
But the addition of a sibling is why I have started blogging again. The first time I started blogging my life was very different. I was working full time, desperately trying to have a baby and seemed to have lots of time to complain about my fertility issues. This time I am staying at home with our daughter full time, have a precious baby already but want another (I'm not desperate yet...just excited about having another wee baby and a sibling for our LO), but I'm sure once fertility treatments start I will once again have lots of complaining to do regarding our fertility issues.
We have always wanted children, my husband used to say 4 or 5 kids and I always thought 3 was my magic number. When we decided we would start trying, neither of us knew about any of our current infertility. We tried for just under a year when I thought something was wrong. Our doctor explained that it can take time and she wouldn't be concerned until at least after a full year of trying. But I knew something wasn't right, I tracked all of my periods and we tried every month when I was supposed to ovulate, but still nothing. So, I talked to my mom who works as a nurse with a fertility doctor. A month or two later I was diagnosed with PCOS, metformin and clomid were proscribed and blood work showed I was responding well and hyper ovulating with that combo - so we tried a few more months. Finally, when I still wasn't getting pregnant they decided to test my husband - who in short ended up having really crappy sperm. But he still had sperm, so the next step was IVF with ICSI. Since I have PCOS, which put me at an increased chance for hyper stimulation during a IVF cycle, we tried IVM. Basically the same thing but they retrieve the eggs before they are mature, which decreases the risk of over stimulating the ovaries. Every thing seemed to work out during our cycle - they retrieved a good amount of eggs, all but one matured and ICSI was used. However, there was an unexpected variable - my husband and I seem to have a genetic incompatibility. So from our 8 embryos, only 2 made it to transfer, which thankfully gave us our daughter. I guess it only takes one to make a baby - but the genetic incompatibility worries me about our next infertility treatments and there outcomes.
So I guess that is going to be the start of this blog, my worries about possible treatment. I have lots of thoughts regarding these worries, but I will have to discuss them further in another post since blogging with a LO is a bit harder.