Pregnancy Journey

Alisha says: We did IVF to have Skye and had extra embryos left over to grow our family. After Skye turned one I started looking for a fertility clinic here in Phoenix. I found one I liked and we set up a consultation in November 2016 with Dr. Mark Amols at New Directions Fertility Center. We discussed our situation and that we had frozen embryos at a clinic in Seattle. We decided to have our embryos transferred to the clinic in Phoenix and start the process to do a frozen embryo transfer (FET). There is still medication, lots of injections and many trips to the clinic involved but overall the process is much easier than the egg retrieval part. We got set up and did a single embryo transfer in January 2017. I waited impatiently for the first blood draw to measure my hCG levels that would indicate if I was pregnant or not. Unfortunately the test came back negative. We were sad but felt fortunate that we still had several embryos left and set things in motion for another transfer. In March we transferred another single embryo. This time I got a very small hCG level reading but it didn't increase like it should have at the follow up blood test and by the third blood test the level had dropped meaning that the transfer was once again unsuccessful. The emotional roller coaster of this process is a lot to take. I couldn't believe we were going to have to do a third transfer! I really thought we would do the first one and then be happily pregnant. Of course life doesn't always go how we think or plan. We had a meeting with the doctor and we decided to try a little different protocol for the third transfer. On May 19th, 2017 we did a third single embryo transfer. I had my first blood draw 5 days later and got a positive hCG reading of 17! Yay!! This was good news but we would need to do a few more blood draw to make sure the number was raising like it should before celebrating too much. The amount is suppose to double about every 48 hours so two days after my first blood draw I had another one and the number us up to 59, 3 days after the second blood draw it was up to 224 and a fourth and final blood draw came back at 651. This was all very good news and we were so excited! My first ultrasound was on June 8th at 5 weeks 4 days pregnant. It was to early to hear a heartbeat but we got to see a little mass of cells. This was my last appointment at the clinic as you transfer to an ob for the rest of your pregnancy care. We really liked the doctor and had a good experience at the clinic.

I continued to give myself daily progesterone injections until I reached the 12 week mark. After we returned from our summer vacation I had my first appointment at my regular ob office on 7/24 at 12 weeks. It was so fun to see a little baby on the screen! It is crazy how much they develop from a mass of cells to something that resembles a baby in 12 short weeks. Crazy!

My next appointment was at 16 weeks and while Dr. Beck was doing the ultrasound he said he would try to see if he could tell the gender. It took what felt like forever as he couldn't get a good view but after a while he told us that he thought it was a girl but not to paint any nursery walls until our next appointment to confirm the gender. Dave thought it was a girl going into it and I wasn't sure so I was guessing it was a boy but were thrilled at having another daughter and for Skye to have a sister.

At 20 weeks we had our anatomy scan where they do a detailed ultrasound of the baby to make sure everything is good. We were able to confirm that we were having a girl and that she appeared to be healthy.