The truth is, I’m scared. I have been navigating uncharted waters for some time but I’m ready to share my truth. So here it is: Jacob and I want another child, and the best way for us to do this is through in vitro fertilization also known as IVF.

On January 7th, Jacob and I had our first consultation for IVF. We talked to the doctor and he explained how IVF works and what I could expect throughout the process. I am only 24 years old (25 next week), so talking about IVF at my age is intimidating. I will not get into the “why” behind our decision for moving forward with IVF because it is very personal. All you need to know is that we are doing IVF because it is the best way for us to have a healthy baby.

After the doctor met with us in his office we went into the normal exam room where I had to do an ultrasound of my uterus. The doctor checked how many follicles I had for future eggs to go in. He also checked some other things to make sure there were no major concerns.

Then came the blood work and man… I was not prepared. The nurse came into the room with a little basket full of vials so I knew that this was about to get very uncomfortable. If you’re new to my blog, just know that I am extremely squeamish around needles and getting blood drawn almost always makes me pass out.

I had six large vials of blood taken from me to test my hormones and for other things including infectious diseases. I felt so sick from the blood draw that I laid down in the exam room for an additional twenty minutes. I finally got up to check out at the front desk with Jacob but started to pass out. The doctors had to bring out a wheelchair and wheel me back into the exam room to lay down. They had ice packs on me and I had to get my vitals checked to make sure my oxygen levels and blood pressure were okay. It was equally embarrassing as it was scary.

IVF Process

The first step in the IVF process is a consultation. For me, after that, it was the saline ultrasound. I did this ultrasound a few weeks ago and it wasn’t too bad. Basically they put a catheter inside of me and shot saline down it to look at my cervix to see if there was anything that would prevent a baby from being held in there. During this ultrasound, I found out that I had polyps in my uterus that I will need to get surgically removed before getting pregnant via IVF.

Jacob and I will start IVF meds soon, which are better known as “stims”. Jacob will be administering all the injections to me and the injections will go in my stomach. We will do 2-3 injections a day for at least ten days to create multiple eggs. Naturally, your body releases one egg a month when you ovulate but these meds I will receive will make numerous eggs for my doctor to surgically remove and then combine with Jacob’s sperm in a lab.

From there we will have all of our embryos that make it past five days tested in a lab to make sure they are genetically healthy. Typically, about half of the embryos don’t make it past five days even if you’re the most fertile person in the world. The remaining embryos that we have (the ones that make it past day five) will be sent to the lab for genetic testing. The embryo testing that we are doing will take about six weeks. Once they test all of them we will hopefully have enough embryos to start transferring for a pregnancy.

So, right now we don’t really know when we’ll get pregnant. It could be three months from now or even six months. A lot of it will depend on how I feel physically and mentally. I want to make sure I am feeling 100% before we decide to transfer the embryo, considering I will have to do injections again for over nine weeks once we decide to transfer. These injections will be a lot more strenuous. The needles for these injections are very long so they can go into the muscle and they tend to make you feel sick. So I may wait a bit after we get results before planning a transfer to get pregnant.

Feelings about IVF

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared out of my mind about this entire process. Not even for the shots and frequent blood draws but more so for how it’s going to make me feel mentally and physically.

It’s now time for me to get my head in the game. I will have shots in the morning and then eight straight hours of work after. It would be fine to work after getting a shot normally if you weren’t pumping yourself with hormones and other things that are bound to make you freaking crazy. So I am nervous that I won’t feel well and I will still have to grind through that full workday.

I really debated whether or not I was going to share my IVF journey on my blog and social media because it is such a personal thing for me and my little family. But I realized I have never shared a struggle of mine in real-time. It almost felt wrong to not share. As always I hope that sharing my stories may help other women going through something similar. I want to ALWAYS keep it real for you.

At the end of the day, this is real life, it’s not some fairytale you see in the movies. For a lot of women having a baby is a long tiring process. I want to be able to share the ups and downs of this IVF journey that we are embarking on because it wouldn’t feel natural for me to hide it. I feel like I share everything with you and I want to be able to share this too even though it scares me.

That being said, I am excited to start this journey because Jacob and I want a baby so bad and Hudson wants a sibling even more so.

I will continue to do Q&A’s every week and answer your questions but please be sensitive to the fact that this is a super personal process. As a reminder, I will not talk about “how long we have been trying to conceive” or “why we have to do IVF” or “If we tried other things before IVF.” All of those things are pretty personal to me and Jacob and so we would like to keep that between us.

It will be hard for me to be super vulnerable on social media and through my blog while I am going through IVF, but I want to because I want you to come on this journey with me. Although this IVF journey will be hard, I know it will strengthen me and my relationship with Jacob.

If you have any advice or tips for me, please send them my way. I love you all and I am so thankful for every single one of you! I feel so lucky to have such an amazing community I can lean on for support and share my life and struggles with. Now… LET’S MAKE A FREAKING BABY!!!

Much Love,

Mayci J