Year 5: Fall 2009…After trying everything under the sun that medicine has to offer except IVF (in vitro fertilization), we finally broke down and decided that we would borrow the money ($12,000)…yes we had to borrow the money and no we have not even come close to paying it off…and try a round of IVF. Really quick, I’ll give you a run-down of what IVF is and how it works. The woman takes medication to stimulate follicles in her ovaries. The follicles are removed vaginally. The man gives a specimen. The sperm are joined with the follicles in a petry dish in hopes that they will form an embryo (that’s the baby). The embryos grow in the petry dish for a couple of days and then are placed back in the woman’s uterus. If all goes well, the embryo(s) attach in the uterus and the baby grows until birth. Believe me…it’s a LOT more complicated than those few sentences but that’s a quick summary for you.
Now…for our IVF experience. Let me warn you that although this process only lasted about 6 or 7 weeks, it felt like an eternity. If you get tired of reading…I completely understand.
Ok, so first of all Allen had to go through a detox for 60 days to rid his system of all non-natural supplements such as caffeine and so on. (Side note-my husband drinks at least a 2 liter of coke every day!) Along with the detox he had to take some kind of herbal supplement every day for 60 days prior to the cycle. As for me, I had to take the strongest round of infertility medications they offer since my body had not responded well to earlier medications. In the past, Allen had been in charge of keeping up with everything that had to do with the medicines. He always made sure to get the correct instructions from the nurse and had become a pro at giving me shots. So naturally, he would handle the medicine this time as well. Now, if you have ever gone through IVF or lived with someone that has, you know how BIG of a task this actually is. (We had to go out of town one night during our IVF cycle and I had to carry a separate bag just for my medicine. It’s ridiculous!) As I mentioned, a round of IVF costs about $12,000. Between $3,000 and $4,000 of that is the medicine. That makes each day of medicine about $400 to $500. Another thing about IVF medicine is that it has to be mixed together. For us, we had to mix 2 different powders with some type of liquid solution. Of course all 3 chemicals are in different viles. In order for the IVF to be effective, you have to get the medicine mixed just right. There is NO room for error! The first night Allen and I went rounds about the mixing of the medicine. I made him talk me through what he was going to do several times before I would let him start mixing. I kept thinking that something just wasn’t “adding” up. The math just wasn’t coming out right for me to get the prescribed amount of each medicine. He insisted he was right and mixed the first injection. When he got finished, he realized I was right and that the way he had mixed the medicine, I wasn’t going to get enough of one of the specific powders. I had a complete melt down. (Although we ended up having just enough to cover the one mess up. Thank goodness.) I don’t think it was that I was mad at him or that I knew he was doing it wrong all along. It’s more that sometimes I get angry because we are even “having” to do this kind of thing in the first place. In the end, I ended up figuring it all out. In my rant though, I decided I would be mixing the medicine from then on and that I would give myself the shot. I locked myself in our bedroom for close to half an hour because I was so frustrated. I finally let Allen in for moral support but was determined to do it “by myself”. Here’s the thing about these injections. They either have to go in the back of your arm (not an option for me since I was now giving myself the shot) or in the stomach about an inch or so from your belly button. The whole ordeal of giving the shot was a lot more complicated than just sticking in the needle and pumping in the medicine. With one hand you have to pinch the skin between your fingers. With the other hand inject the needle. (By the way…it took SEVERAL countdowns before I actually got the needle in. J) Then, without letting go of the needle, you have to let go of the skin and with that hand inject the medicine. At all costs, you can NOT let go of the needle! Now, that sounds a lot easier than it actually is. It’s kind of like that game where you interlock your fingers and someone points to a finger to move and you have to make yourself move only that finger without the others moving as well. You’ve got to admit it takes you a while to get the correct fillange sometimes. J And let’s be honest, my brain does better at solving equations than injecting needles anyway. For the rest of the days that we had to do that type of injection, I mixed the medicine and we took turns giving the injections. After a couple of times in the belly, my stomach was getting bruised and sore. I had no option but to have Allen do it in the back of my arm some times. If you are following my dates and times of the year, you may have realized that since we were doing the IVF cycle in the fall; that means we had to deal with all the interruptions of high school football. One thing with the medicine is that you have to give the injection the same time every day. Well, of course we had an away football game on one of the nights I was supposed to have an injection. You should have seen me. Rushing to the school bus after the first quarter to mix medicine and inject myself by the stadium lights coming in the window of the bus. It would have been a very awkward moment if someone would have seen what I was doing.
Alright, enough of the drama about the shots…after 6 days (I think it was 6 days) of injections, we got to the “monitoring” stage of the cycle. That’s where you have a vaginal ultrasound and blood work done every 1 or 2 days until they decide that your eggs are ready to be removed from your ovaries. It started that we went every other day. Then the last 3 days we went every day I believe. Keep in mind that we were driving from Elba to Montgomery every morning! We spent a lot of time on the road and money in gas! Once the eggs had grown to the correct size, we had to go to Birmingham for one of the doctors to remove them and for Allen to give the specimen to mix with the follicles. (Most of the time we stayed overnight when we went to Birmingham…add an additional $75 for hotel fees.) In order to remove the eggs they sedate the woman. My doctor, Dr. Honea, was not on call the week of my cycle…which I was not happy with by the way…so one of the doctors in her group did my procedure. I remember him telling me that if it began to hurt to let him know. At first everything was fine, but then I started to feel a pulling that was hurting pretty bad. I think I told him and actually tried to get up off the table…but that’s the last thing I remember. I woke up in recovery about an hour later with Allen at my side. The nurse came in and told us that they had retrieved 8 eggs. I got kind of upset because the odds are that the number of eggs that die each day while maturing was like 50%. That meant the first night 4 would die, the next 2 would die, the next 1 would die and we would be lucky to have just 1 embryo to transfer. I know you’re supposed to be positive but any idiot could do the math on that! And besides, I was really hoping that we would have some embryos to freeze for the future. Boy, does God have different plans than me or what!?! Once the eggs were removed we had to wait another couple of days for them to be combined with the sperm and begin to grow in to embryos.
As hard as it was, we returned to Elba and our everyday lives as teachers and coaches. A nurse called us every day and gave us an update on the progress. The first day was not good news…2 of the eggs had not taken to the sperm and had died. I was devastated! I found Allen outside on the playground with his kids immediately to tell him the news. The next day was just as bad. Although 4 of the remaining 6 eggs had taken to the sperm, the other 2 just weren’t looking good. They ended up not making it. The last day we lost another, which then left us with 3. It was like someone punched me in the stomach every time I got the call from the nurse.
Finally, on day 5, we were ready for the transfer. We left early the day of the appointment and even though the transfer was in the morning, we made plans to stay the night. I just wasn’t going to get in the car and have my babies tossed around in my tummy while they were trying to implant in to my uterus. I mean come on now, what kind of mother would do that? Before they did the transfer, they took a picture of the 3 embryos and gave it to us. The same doctor that did the egg retrieval did the transfer. He told us that the embryos were not in the best shape, but that on a bell curve, they certainly weren’t at the bottom. (That statement would come back to haunt us a few weeks later. L) Once we were released to leave after the transfer we walked across the parking lot to our hotel. That moment was one I will never forget. It had been raining earlier that morning so there were puddles on the pavement. Allen and I walked hand in hand and just knew that we would be having not just one baby the next July, but triplets! No one would have been able to convince us of anything else. We were over the moon with excitement about what the future held for us! Once we made it up to our motel room I immediately hit the bed. I meant I was going to lie still for the next 24 hours come rain or shine. Allen went out to get us some lunch and I just lay there, hands on my belly, praying for my babies. We went home the next day. It would be almost 2 weeks before the pregnancy test to announce that we were indeed pregnant. At church the next Sunday some missionaries came to speak to the congregation about their work in distributing bibles to foreign countries. At the end of the service they took an offering for donations to go towards the purchase of the bibles. We donated money for 3. One for each of our miracle children.
Since it was fall, we were right in the middle of football season and low and behold, the week we were to find out that we were indeed expecting was homecoming. As the cheerleader coach I stayed busy the entire week with assemblies, pep rallies, parades, painting signs, and selling t-shirts. I methodically planned my week however to be able to take off Wednesday…the BIG day. We went to Montgomery for the blood test. After the blood test we went on a little shopping trip. We bought some sports onezys and a polo blanket for our babies. We returned home to Elba a little after lunch and just waited for the phone call. I went to bed hoping to wake up to the most memorable phone call of my life. Allen couldn’t lay around…he went outside to piddle. This is what he does when he gets anxious. Finally my cell phone rang. The moment had arrived. I imagined what it would be like to go outside and tell Allen the news. I contemplated whether I would run out the sliding glass door and into his arms shouting the news or if I would just causally walk out there with a smile on my face. There was also my plan that I had since day 1 of trying to conceive about the way I would share the news with him that I was pregnant. I bought a set of Auburn pacifiers when we lived in GA. I always imagined that I would be calm enough to wrap the pacifiers up and have him open them and realize the news. I answered the phone with meek confidence. (I know that’s an oxymoron…but I was nervous and sure all at the same time.) The nurse gave away the news right away by the tone in her voice. “Mrs. Maness…I’m sorry but the test was negative.” That’s all I remember hearing. I’m sure she probably tried to console me but the second I heard “I’m sorry” my ears and heart stopped. I’m not sure how much time actually passed between the phone call and Allen coming in the back door but I think it was only a matter of seconds because before I realized what was happening Allen was holding me. (As I write this now, I still feel the overwhelming sense of loss that we felt that day…it was horrible. I never thought I could feel worse.) I don’t really remember if I even told him the news or if he just knew…knew to come inside, knew that we would not be parents in 9 months, and knew that in order for me to survive he would have to be there right at that exact moment to catch me as I began to fall. He took me to our bed and we lay in each other’s arms for hours. We both cried…actually cried is not the appropriate word. We wailed. There were times when I had to sit up because I was drowning in my own tears.
Finally, around 9 o’clock, Allen suggested we go to town and get a blizzard from DQ. It had been almost 6 hours since our heartbreaking news. We knew that we could not live in the lose forever so we got up and headed to town. When we got home I cried some more, but we finally went to sleep. The next day, I got up, put on my school teacher face, and headed to school. Thankfully, I was thrown right back in to the middle of Zion Chapel Homecoming. I’m not even sure that anyone knew what was going on. (If they did, they did a really good job of hiding it.) You know…when I found out that we would be getting our news the week of Homecoming I was really upset…upset that I would not be able to take off and rush to Troy and Camden to tell our parents that they were going to be having a grandchild. When the news turned out to be negative, I saw it more as a blessing that it was Homecoming week. I never really had time (other than the day of the test) to wallow in my sorrow. It did take a while before I was completely “back to normal” (if you consider my overwhelming/obsessive desire to be a mother “normal”). But I survived.
We had to go in and see Dr. Honea a couple of weeks later for the post-IVF appointment. She brought us in her office and began the explanation that pissed us off more than comforted us. She proceeded to inform us that the embryos were indeed “not in the best shape”. She said that from the way they looked before they were transferred, their chances weren’t very good. Allen explained to her the bell curve picture that the doctor that did the transfer told us. She said that she would never have used that to describe our situation. She gestured that in her opinion the embryos would not have been on the side of the bell, but on the bottom/flat part. After that visit we left her office with no plans to return…and we haven’t...although as I mentioned earlier...every month I am forced to revisit this horrible time in our lives as I write the stinking check for a couple hundred bucks to pay for...well NOTHING! Tear.
Ok, so first of all Allen had to go through a detox for 60 days to rid his system of all non-natural supplements such as caffeine and so on. (Side note-my husband drinks at least a 2 liter of coke every day!) Along with the detox he had to take some kind of herbal supplement every day for 60 days prior to the cycle. As for me, I had to take the strongest round of infertility medications they offer since my body had not responded well to earlier medications. In the past, Allen had been in charge of keeping up with everything that had to do with the medicines. He always made sure to get the correct instructions from the nurse and had become a pro at giving me shots. So naturally, he would handle the medicine this time as well. Now, if you have ever gone through IVF or lived with someone that has, you know how BIG of a task this actually is. (We had to go out of town one night during our IVF cycle and I had to carry a separate bag just for my medicine. It’s ridiculous!) As I mentioned, a round of IVF costs about $12,000. Between $3,000 and $4,000 of that is the medicine. That makes each day of medicine about $400 to $500. Another thing about IVF medicine is that it has to be mixed together. For us, we had to mix 2 different powders with some type of liquid solution. Of course all 3 chemicals are in different viles. In order for the IVF to be effective, you have to get the medicine mixed just right. There is NO room for error! The first night Allen and I went rounds about the mixing of the medicine. I made him talk me through what he was going to do several times before I would let him start mixing. I kept thinking that something just wasn’t “adding” up. The math just wasn’t coming out right for me to get the prescribed amount of each medicine. He insisted he was right and mixed the first injection. When he got finished, he realized I was right and that the way he had mixed the medicine, I wasn’t going to get enough of one of the specific powders. I had a complete melt down. (Although we ended up having just enough to cover the one mess up. Thank goodness.) I don’t think it was that I was mad at him or that I knew he was doing it wrong all along. It’s more that sometimes I get angry because we are even “having” to do this kind of thing in the first place. In the end, I ended up figuring it all out. In my rant though, I decided I would be mixing the medicine from then on and that I would give myself the shot. I locked myself in our bedroom for close to half an hour because I was so frustrated. I finally let Allen in for moral support but was determined to do it “by myself”. Here’s the thing about these injections. They either have to go in the back of your arm (not an option for me since I was now giving myself the shot) or in the stomach about an inch or so from your belly button. The whole ordeal of giving the shot was a lot more complicated than just sticking in the needle and pumping in the medicine. With one hand you have to pinch the skin between your fingers. With the other hand inject the needle. (By the way…it took SEVERAL countdowns before I actually got the needle in. J) Then, without letting go of the needle, you have to let go of the skin and with that hand inject the medicine. At all costs, you can NOT let go of the needle! Now, that sounds a lot easier than it actually is. It’s kind of like that game where you interlock your fingers and someone points to a finger to move and you have to make yourself move only that finger without the others moving as well. You’ve got to admit it takes you a while to get the correct fillange sometimes. J And let’s be honest, my brain does better at solving equations than injecting needles anyway. For the rest of the days that we had to do that type of injection, I mixed the medicine and we took turns giving the injections. After a couple of times in the belly, my stomach was getting bruised and sore. I had no option but to have Allen do it in the back of my arm some times. If you are following my dates and times of the year, you may have realized that since we were doing the IVF cycle in the fall; that means we had to deal with all the interruptions of high school football. One thing with the medicine is that you have to give the injection the same time every day. Well, of course we had an away football game on one of the nights I was supposed to have an injection. You should have seen me. Rushing to the school bus after the first quarter to mix medicine and inject myself by the stadium lights coming in the window of the bus. It would have been a very awkward moment if someone would have seen what I was doing.
Alright, enough of the drama about the shots…after 6 days (I think it was 6 days) of injections, we got to the “monitoring” stage of the cycle. That’s where you have a vaginal ultrasound and blood work done every 1 or 2 days until they decide that your eggs are ready to be removed from your ovaries. It started that we went every other day. Then the last 3 days we went every day I believe. Keep in mind that we were driving from Elba to Montgomery every morning! We spent a lot of time on the road and money in gas! Once the eggs had grown to the correct size, we had to go to Birmingham for one of the doctors to remove them and for Allen to give the specimen to mix with the follicles. (Most of the time we stayed overnight when we went to Birmingham…add an additional $75 for hotel fees.) In order to remove the eggs they sedate the woman. My doctor, Dr. Honea, was not on call the week of my cycle…which I was not happy with by the way…so one of the doctors in her group did my procedure. I remember him telling me that if it began to hurt to let him know. At first everything was fine, but then I started to feel a pulling that was hurting pretty bad. I think I told him and actually tried to get up off the table…but that’s the last thing I remember. I woke up in recovery about an hour later with Allen at my side. The nurse came in and told us that they had retrieved 8 eggs. I got kind of upset because the odds are that the number of eggs that die each day while maturing was like 50%. That meant the first night 4 would die, the next 2 would die, the next 1 would die and we would be lucky to have just 1 embryo to transfer. I know you’re supposed to be positive but any idiot could do the math on that! And besides, I was really hoping that we would have some embryos to freeze for the future. Boy, does God have different plans than me or what!?! Once the eggs were removed we had to wait another couple of days for them to be combined with the sperm and begin to grow in to embryos.
As hard as it was, we returned to Elba and our everyday lives as teachers and coaches. A nurse called us every day and gave us an update on the progress. The first day was not good news…2 of the eggs had not taken to the sperm and had died. I was devastated! I found Allen outside on the playground with his kids immediately to tell him the news. The next day was just as bad. Although 4 of the remaining 6 eggs had taken to the sperm, the other 2 just weren’t looking good. They ended up not making it. The last day we lost another, which then left us with 3. It was like someone punched me in the stomach every time I got the call from the nurse.
Finally, on day 5, we were ready for the transfer. We left early the day of the appointment and even though the transfer was in the morning, we made plans to stay the night. I just wasn’t going to get in the car and have my babies tossed around in my tummy while they were trying to implant in to my uterus. I mean come on now, what kind of mother would do that? Before they did the transfer, they took a picture of the 3 embryos and gave it to us. The same doctor that did the egg retrieval did the transfer. He told us that the embryos were not in the best shape, but that on a bell curve, they certainly weren’t at the bottom. (That statement would come back to haunt us a few weeks later. L) Once we were released to leave after the transfer we walked across the parking lot to our hotel. That moment was one I will never forget. It had been raining earlier that morning so there were puddles on the pavement. Allen and I walked hand in hand and just knew that we would be having not just one baby the next July, but triplets! No one would have been able to convince us of anything else. We were over the moon with excitement about what the future held for us! Once we made it up to our motel room I immediately hit the bed. I meant I was going to lie still for the next 24 hours come rain or shine. Allen went out to get us some lunch and I just lay there, hands on my belly, praying for my babies. We went home the next day. It would be almost 2 weeks before the pregnancy test to announce that we were indeed pregnant. At church the next Sunday some missionaries came to speak to the congregation about their work in distributing bibles to foreign countries. At the end of the service they took an offering for donations to go towards the purchase of the bibles. We donated money for 3. One for each of our miracle children.
Since it was fall, we were right in the middle of football season and low and behold, the week we were to find out that we were indeed expecting was homecoming. As the cheerleader coach I stayed busy the entire week with assemblies, pep rallies, parades, painting signs, and selling t-shirts. I methodically planned my week however to be able to take off Wednesday…the BIG day. We went to Montgomery for the blood test. After the blood test we went on a little shopping trip. We bought some sports onezys and a polo blanket for our babies. We returned home to Elba a little after lunch and just waited for the phone call. I went to bed hoping to wake up to the most memorable phone call of my life. Allen couldn’t lay around…he went outside to piddle. This is what he does when he gets anxious. Finally my cell phone rang. The moment had arrived. I imagined what it would be like to go outside and tell Allen the news. I contemplated whether I would run out the sliding glass door and into his arms shouting the news or if I would just causally walk out there with a smile on my face. There was also my plan that I had since day 1 of trying to conceive about the way I would share the news with him that I was pregnant. I bought a set of Auburn pacifiers when we lived in GA. I always imagined that I would be calm enough to wrap the pacifiers up and have him open them and realize the news. I answered the phone with meek confidence. (I know that’s an oxymoron…but I was nervous and sure all at the same time.) The nurse gave away the news right away by the tone in her voice. “Mrs. Maness…I’m sorry but the test was negative.” That’s all I remember hearing. I’m sure she probably tried to console me but the second I heard “I’m sorry” my ears and heart stopped. I’m not sure how much time actually passed between the phone call and Allen coming in the back door but I think it was only a matter of seconds because before I realized what was happening Allen was holding me. (As I write this now, I still feel the overwhelming sense of loss that we felt that day…it was horrible. I never thought I could feel worse.) I don’t really remember if I even told him the news or if he just knew…knew to come inside, knew that we would not be parents in 9 months, and knew that in order for me to survive he would have to be there right at that exact moment to catch me as I began to fall. He took me to our bed and we lay in each other’s arms for hours. We both cried…actually cried is not the appropriate word. We wailed. There were times when I had to sit up because I was drowning in my own tears.
Finally, around 9 o’clock, Allen suggested we go to town and get a blizzard from DQ. It had been almost 6 hours since our heartbreaking news. We knew that we could not live in the lose forever so we got up and headed to town. When we got home I cried some more, but we finally went to sleep. The next day, I got up, put on my school teacher face, and headed to school. Thankfully, I was thrown right back in to the middle of Zion Chapel Homecoming. I’m not even sure that anyone knew what was going on. (If they did, they did a really good job of hiding it.) You know…when I found out that we would be getting our news the week of Homecoming I was really upset…upset that I would not be able to take off and rush to Troy and Camden to tell our parents that they were going to be having a grandchild. When the news turned out to be negative, I saw it more as a blessing that it was Homecoming week. I never really had time (other than the day of the test) to wallow in my sorrow. It did take a while before I was completely “back to normal” (if you consider my overwhelming/obsessive desire to be a mother “normal”). But I survived.
We had to go in and see Dr. Honea a couple of weeks later for the post-IVF appointment. She brought us in her office and began the explanation that pissed us off more than comforted us. She proceeded to inform us that the embryos were indeed “not in the best shape”. She said that from the way they looked before they were transferred, their chances weren’t very good. Allen explained to her the bell curve picture that the doctor that did the transfer told us. She said that she would never have used that to describe our situation. She gestured that in her opinion the embryos would not have been on the side of the bell, but on the bottom/flat part. After that visit we left her office with no plans to return…and we haven’t...although as I mentioned earlier...every month I am forced to revisit this horrible time in our lives as I write the stinking check for a couple hundred bucks to pay for...well NOTHING! Tear.
Mrs. Maness.. WOW. What a strong woman you are. I am sure that God knows exactly what he is doing through all of this, and I am so glad He has given you such a wonderful supportive family. Even before I finish reading, I want to thank you for sharing this story. I know it must have been hard, but part of healing. Praise God for you and your witness.
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