Ok, time to post our success story! I kept meaning to do this, but I've been so busy with our twins. But now they're sleeping through the night, which gives me uninterrupted JM time!
My husband and I started trying for children late in life (35 for both of us). We were perplexed why we had not conceived after a year of trying, so we went to the doctor who diagnosed me with thyroid disease and a blocked Fallopian tube. After that conceiving was easy. It was staying pregnant that was hard. To make a long story short, I conceived four times (3 via IUI), three of them long enough to see that beautiful heartbeat on ultrasound. But each pregnancy ended in heartbreak. After our fourth loss, we decided to try IVF. We went into debt for our one try so I was a nervous wreck until we got our BFP! Then I was a nervous wreck until our girls were finally born without complications in August 2008. They are beautiful & perfect in every way!
There were many decisions intitially. ICSI or IVF? Should we do PGD? With my history of recurrent miscarriage, coupled with the karyotype we had performed after miscarriage #3 (which showed a trisomy abnormality) we decided on ICSI with PGD (genetic screening of embryos).
Prior to start of IVF cycle:
I have an over-active immune system (Hashimoto's thyroiditis), so I had that working against me as well as a blocked Fallopian tube, which was corrected with surgery. I threw everything but the kitchen sink at my infertility!
I started Lovenox injections on CD6, which I discontinued about a month into the pgcy because of excessive bleeding (bleeding which made me think I'd lost the pgcy, on Christmas eve no less!). In addition to prenatals, I was taking dexamethasone, baby aspirin, fish oil, folic acid, B-complex supplement, vit D, vit E. I started acupuncture, chiropractic & massage two months prior to my transfer. I went on an all-organic diet, which I cheated on, and ate every 2 hours to keep my blood sugar levels steady, which I did not cheat on. This was supposed to help tame my over-active immune system. My reproductive immunologist suggested a procedure called LIT (lymphocyte immune therapy) which is not performed in the US, so I traveled to Mexico to have it done since it was the closest country. Basically, they draw your husband's blood, spin out the white cells, and inject them in 8 small sites under your skin (4 in each arm). I have no idea if this helped me to hold on to the pgcy, but as I said I was willing to try anything! It was relatively inexpensive and I thought, no side effect could be worse than the pain of infertility.
IVF cycle:
I took Menopur and Bravelle. I continued with the Lovenox and switched from 1mg daily Dex to 10mg prednisone. At some point I started progesterone injections.
We had 17 eggs retrieved, 13 of which were mature. 11 fertilized with ICSI. 8 continued to grow and were biopsied for PGD. 4 passed PGD (a high number - the doctor said at my age, then 39, he was expecting a maximum of 1/3 to pass). If I were to do PGD again I would not order the more expensive 24-panel testing, since the abnormal embies had multiple errors which would have been caught by fewer panels. I expected only one gene pair to be affected.
Of the four embies that passed PGD, only three continued to grow. My doctor said that PGD is intrusive and can damage embryos, which may be why we lost the one. But sadly I think it was still worth doing because otherwise we wouldn't have known which of our 8 embryos to transfer.
One of the three embryos wasn't growing too well, according to my doctor, so he recommended we change our initial decision of transferring only two embryos to three. So we transferred them all.
And all three implanted! My RE was grinning from ear to ear. My husband and I were ecstatic. In shock, but elated! TRIPLETS!!! It seemed like all our suffering had ended and life was beautiful again.
But that was not the case. Next came the sad part of the story.
Warning - reduction mentioned.
Baby C split and became Babies C & D. Suddenly our doctor was looking very grim instead of grinning from ear to ear as he was when he discovered we had triplets. He said the chances of us having a successful pregnancy diminished quite severely with quads, and he recommended reduction of the identical pair (since ID pairs have more risks). We agonized, we cried, we prayed for a solution. We didn't have to decide right away, though the doctor said the longer we waited, the more risk to the entire pgcy. But I couldn't go through with it, and so we waited and tried to wrap our minds around the most terrible consideration ever - do we kill two children to possibly save two?
Then at around 13 weeks, it seemed like nature had made up our minds for us. The doctor said Baby C had developed a condition called hydrops, and on ultrasound he looked like a balloon with a head, because he was so distended from all the excess fluid he could not release. The doctor said this is a physical abnormality that could not be tested for with PGD, and is anomalous. Because they shared a placenta, both babies would not survive to term.
I asked for odds and my RE referred me to a perinatologist, who said it would only be a matter of days for Baby C, and with Baby D, it was a 90% chance he would either die or be disabled by a severe stroke once his brother passed because of the shared blood flow. She said it was pointless to reduce now and sent us home to let nature take its course, with the warning that if Babies C and D didn't pass on their own, we could only wait so long (17 weeks) before having to make the decision about the reduction because the babies would be getting so big the entire pgcy would be threatened.
So we waited...for an entire month... every 2 or 3 days we'd get another ultrasound, and I can't describe how heartbreaking it was to see our little fighter hanging on and even though I was supposed to be "hoping" he had passed, in the back of my mind I was both cheering him on and at the same time wincing because he looked like he must be in terrible pain (it didn't help that our u/s tech said he must be suffering). I was a mess. I was praying that little baby D would make it despite his brother's condition. He doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size from the swelling. I didn't see how he could possibly still be alive but there he was, heart beating strong. We agonized because his large size and the sheer number of babies inside me meant our entire pgcy was at risk. And hadn't we gone through all this to have a healthy baby?
Finally, 17 weeks came and we simply couldn't wait anymore. The doctors again recommended we reduce both babies, this time with real urgency. With Baby C's size, it was like having 7 or 8 children in my belly. With a heavy heart we agreed to the reduction. If I had to do this over again I don't know if I could go through with it, but then again, maybe this is the reason our two daughters survived and are so healthy. Reduction is purely a horrifying experience (mentally, not physically) and even though before the IVF I didn't think I'd have too much of a problem with it, believe me it isn't something you ever want to have to do. Things change drastically when you see those babies on an ultrasound.
But, I still consider this a success story because we now have our two beautiful daughters, who were carried to term (38 weeks is all our peri would allow for twins) and delivered by c/s due to one baby being transverse and the fact I had not started labor by 38 weeks, and my peri didn't feel induction would be safe. Leigh and Lucy were 6.8 and 6.7 lbs, had no respiratory issues whatsoever and spent zero time in the NICU. They did have some jaundice, and the doctors were especially worried about Leigh, and so they spent some time under the bili lights.
While wonderful, they are a handful!
If you think you want twins, be warned you will need lots of help to save your sanity and keep those babies happy! My biggest worry is that each doesn't get enough bonding time with mommy.
However they are beautiful and the lights of my life.
***Update: I am now pregnant with baby #3! Since my doctors gave me a 2% chance of ever conceiving on my own (and that was when I was 2 years younger than I am now), DH & I stopped preventing. I am now 16 weeks pregnant with a little boy. We consider him our miracle baby! It also makes me wonder, since my odds were so crappy at conceiving on my own, did the LIT actually work? Maybe there is something to that after all. Also, I've been eating very healthy since I've been breastfeeding this whole time. No alcohol either, which I hear can affect egg quality. Just wanted to share!
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IVF success story!
Congrats!!!!! If I had read this earlier, I would have said that pulling is ligament pain & is normal, the heaviness is normal, and I don't remember about the progesterone, but being pregnant made me moody as heck. Don't know why. But you can ask my husband. 
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