We're Moving On

Today, Drew and I met with the RE.  The good news?

We're moving on and doing In-Vitro Fertilization or IVF.

We sat with Dr. H and he told us that it was time to move on.  I figured that it was coming.  So, we discussed a lot of things that are going to be answered in the coming weeks. 

At this point, after doing the IUI's, we know that the issue more than likely lies with me.  Drew produces excellent numbers.  Since I have primary infertility, some concerns that we will be taking a look at are my eggs, including maturity, number, and quality, whether my eggs have a hatching problem, and whether I have an implantation problem. 

The first thing that we are going to test is my uterine lining to make sure that it's sticky for implantation to occur.  A fertilized egg can't attach to my uterus if my lining is ideal.  Here's the analogy that he used:

In your lawn, you want a nice, thick, green grass.  You don't want any crabgrass.  In order to get that nice lawn, you have to do fertilizer and proper maintenance.  So, he says that my endo is crabgrass, and that I could possibly have some crabgrass in my uterus, meaning it's not sticky. 

The first thing that he will do in this IVF process is a biopsy of my uterine lining.  He will send that off to a lab to test the stickiness of it.  If it is not sticky, he will do something, which could be equated to using a dethatcher on your lawn, in order to help my lining.  I actually didn't go into too many details about this with him, because I'm going to stay positive that my lining is not the issue.  We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

So, assuming that the biopsy comes back good, as soon as I get my period, we can start the stimming process.  Basically, I'll just be bombarded with hormones to stimulate my ovaries, then the doctor will do an egg retrieval, the ICSI to fertilize the mature eggs, then an embryo transfer.

We have a mountain of paperwork to go through.  I'm excited, anxious, nervous, scared, hopeful, there are a million emotions running through me.  I do plan on blogging about this.  While this struggle has not been a pleasant one, I don't want to forget it.