that's the saying, "fourth time is a charm", right? well, it's gonna be my saying. whoever was the one who coined "third time is a charm"? what do they know anyway? I'm only assuming it was a man. my husband and I had our follow-up IVF consult with the doc today. he's the one who actually said 4th time will be the charm. (his words to my ears.) I feel beat, exhausted, deflated. every emotion that goes with defeat is how I feel. he said my uterine lining was the perfect thickness, the embryo thawed beautifully, the transfer went just as it should have gone. yet the end result is failure. then what the fuck happened? it's what I don't understand. three times now this is what he's told me and yet three times it has failed. the doc said, "well, it's time now to really start looking at these things. this is all just window dressing." huh? "a window at bloomingdale's may be completely gorgeous on the outside, but the quality of the merchandise in that window may be crap." oh, finally terminology I can understand, fashion.
so where does that leave us? tests. and more tests. there is bloodwork that can be done. they use the same tests on women who repeatedly get pregnant, but have miscarriages. it's an issue with clotting. IF it comes back that I have this issue, then I take medication, a blood thinner. there's a catch. in the patients with recurring pregnancy with recurring pregnancy loss it is a proven fact this medication will work. however, with IVF patients, it is not proven. it's just taking another shot in the dark and hoping something will stick. literally. the bloodwork also costs thousands of dollars. there is a chance our insurance will cover it, but we have to get it authorized. it's a test that he highly recommends though. so now I'm waiting to see if our insurance company will authorize it. if it doesn't? then it's a question of do we spend the thousands of dollars on a test that MAY come back positive and the medication I take for it MAY work. it also may not.
in addition to this test, there's another route we may take. as of now, I have 4 frozen embryos left. although on the exterior these embryos look "beautiful" they could technically be abnormal embryos. this is where the whole window dressing thing comes into play. so there's another test. genetic testing where they test each embryo to see if it's normal or not. a woman my age with my AMH levels should have about 50% normal embryos. it may come back higher, which would be great. or it could come back lower, which would suck. the test involves starting with a fresh cycle (which is certainly more invasive), retrieving all my eggs, fertilizing them, turning them into embryos and then genetically testing them. this way we would know for sure the embryos being transferred are 100% normal. sounds awesome, right? oh yeah, the insurance has to approve this too. sigh.
and that's where we are, waiting for insurance approval for everything. double sigh. my husband's company switched to a new insurance policy the first of the year so we are back at stage one with the authorization process. listen, I know how fortunate we are for having insurance coverage on this process. I know how expensive it is. I apologize for sounding like a bitch, complaining about the insurance process. it's just the last 3 times, it was already approved. we knew what we were dealing with on the former insurance company. and now there's a chance that none of this will be approved. then what?
then, I thank my lucky stars for the gorgeous son I already have. I thank my lucky stars every day for him, believe me. he's my world and I love him so much. he's what keeps me going everyday. he's what keeps me going thru this process. I love him so much I want to bring another one into the world.
