August 8, 2019: I’m feeling extra reflective and thankful today, since on this day last year we had our first successful embryo transfer. This was our third frozen embryo transfer after three failed IUIs, three years of fertility treatments, and five years of waiting for a baby. Starting a family was not easy for us, but now that our little Enzo is here, it makes all the struggles worthwhile.
I know some people may consider family planning to be a private matter, but I’ve become an open book about this stuff so I feel comfortable sharing. Planning a family through IVF is quite different than planning one naturally. It’s not just a matter of “when are we going to start trying again?” We have a lot of faith and confidence in our doctor, who is amazing and thorough, so we are very optimistic that our next transfer will be successful. In spite of this, there’s always doubt and thoughts about “what if.” Through our experiences, we’ve learned to approach this process very logically.
Our original plan was to wait until Enzo was six months old and then begin another embryo transfer cycle, but since I had to have an emergency c-section we have to wait a year before getting pregnant again. Our reasons for having little time between pregnancies is because we want our kids to be close in age, and because I want to be done having kids by the time I’m 35 to lessen the chance of pregnancy-related complications.
My OB told me to wait 12-18 months before getting pregnant again, which I believe is the standard timeframe recommended by any OB. However, I also spoke with my fertility doctor’s office, and they said we can do another embryo transfer as soon as I have a normal menstrual cycle (which I haven’t had since I am still breastfeeding/pumping). Obviously, we want to be cautious and make sure the c-section is healed completely prior to getting pregnant again. I also am enjoying pumping and being the sole food source for Enzo so I am in no hurry to stop. It’s important to me that I be able to feed him breast milk for the first year. As a result, I plan to keep pumping until December; I have also been pumping and freezing a good supply to feed him from January-April.
I’m hoping that after I stop pumping in December, that we are able to do the next embryo transfer in February if everything goes well. If not, then hopefully March. We will forego doing a transfer in April because we don’t wish to have a Christmas baby, so May would be the next option for us. The next embryo transfer we do will be another male embryo, which we only have one left of. If the next transfer is unsuccessful, then we will need to do another egg retrieval… which I would not look forward to. My first experience with that was not good and I’d really rather not do it again. However, the first egg retrieval was perhaps more emotionally exhausting than physically (if that’s even possible), and this time it wouldn’t be since we already know what to expect and there’s a sense of relief since having a very successful retrieval previously.
If all goes as we hope, then we will do our next embryo transfer in February which will give us a due date of October. It will be a c-section as well, so we will have to wait a year before doing the next one. Yes, we want three kids! The third one will be a female. I keep trying to convince my husband that we should have four… so we will see. Haha. I’ll post more updates as we get closer to starting our embryo transfer cycle.
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