Another BFN

We didn't get a Christmas miracle.  Instead, we got another BFN.  In the world of virtual infertility support, BFN stands for big fat negative.  

I went to Labcorp on that following Monday for my blood pregnancy test, and that test was ordered STAT so that I could have results by the end of the day.  But the end of the day came and my nurse said they still hadn't received the report.  We knew the answer, though, because I took another home pregnancy test and it was negative.  

I got the call from my nurse the next day after she finally got the report and the negative was confirmed.  My HCG level dropped to <1.  I think we had already processed the emotions of sadness and anger, so at this point we felt pretty numb to it.  I mean, this is nothing new to us, we've been here before.  

We have two embryos left.  We want to find answers.  We want to know why I've miscarried and why I've lost 6 embryos that could have been our babies.  We want to get this figured out before going through another transfer.

So, we've started doing our own research and we've made an appointment with a Reproductive Immunologist (RI) for a consult.  We've always thought that my body was fighting off pregnancies and rejecting the embryos, ever since I got super sick with our first pregnancy (miscarriage), second pregnancy (Chase), and at least the first IVF transfer.  We've also wondered if our blood types are incompatible for conception.  We have a lot of thoughts on what might be going wrong, and it's frustrating that no doctor has been looking for it.  Of course, we've only been working with Reproductive Endocrinologists (RE) and they don't typically consider the immune system nor do they typically play nice with an RI.  So, we are taking this into our own hands and doing our own research and advocating for ourselves.  We don't know what the outcome will be, but our consult with an RI is on January 12th as is our regroup with our RE.

In the meantime, I've joined two Facebook support groups specifically for women/couples who have failed IVF multiple times and are seeking reproductive immunology care/treatment, and I'm learning a lot.  I'm also reading this book and have become obsessed with learning everything I possibly can:

  

Chase knows that we are trying and that the doctors are trying to help us, but he also knows that it isn't working out.  He will pat my tummy or his tummy and say that he is sad, and it breaks my heart.  As juvenile as it sounds, it's just not fair.  It's not fair that we can't have the family that we've dreamed of.  It's not fair that Chase can't have a sibling no matter how hard we try.  It's not fair that my body won't do what a woman's body is supposed to do.  And it's not fair that we have to have such a huge financial burden to try building our family (because health insurance doesn't pay for any of it).

Hoping that the RI can give us some answers and help us.  It will take a lot more time, and we are all getting older, but I'm so hopeful that the wait will be worth it.

We are also coming to realize that we may need to seriously seek out a surrogate in case we can't be helped.  I don't want to go through an agency or someone I don't know (nor can we afford it after paying for 4 cycles of IVF).  If we have to go that route, I'm hoping to find someone that we know and trust, that has had no issues with conception, and that would allow us to be a large part of the pregnancy.  But fingers crossed that this is not the path we have to go down.  Hopefully we will find out soon.