Plan #5 and an exciting new option - "Mini PGD"

My goodness... are we really on Plan #5 now?? Well, this one I think will be a lot less painful. I recently found out about a new option, called "Minimal Stimulation IVF" or "MS IVF" (with PGD of course). Basically, instead of having to give yourself injections, pumping your body full of drugs, hyper-stimulating your ovaries and forcing them to produce a ton of eggs, many of which are of very poor quality, you get a more natural approach. Instead of injections, you get oral medications (it looks like usually Clomid is the main one used), and a nasal spray. (For those not familiar with Clomid, it's a very common fertility drug that's fairly gentle compared with the other more potent drugs and dosages used in conventional IVF). Instead of forcing your ovaries to produce 10-20 eggs, you just gently increase production to 3-5 eggs. No more painful, enlarged, tender ovaries! In fact, instead of the "twilight" anesthesia that puts you completely out that is necessary during a conventional IVF egg retrieval, they usually just give you a local anesthesia or just an oral pain med, since your ovaries aren't so large and tender, it's just not necessary.

This sounds like such a healthier option to me! Their success rates are actually the same as conventional IVF as well, because although you get less eggs, they're of higher quality, so you have less eggs with random chromosome problems and more that will grow into healthy pregnancies. Egg quality was what killed us on our previous PGD. Even though we had half without the genetic disorder, they either had a random other problem, or just didn't grow for no reason. And not to mention, there's usually no injections! They say some women require a few injections depending on your specific situation, but they are always much less than with conventional IVF. Sounds awesome to me! It's freaky having to give yourself shots.

The #1 clinic in the U.S. that does this is the New Hope Fertility Center in New York. For international readers, I believe Japan is currently the leader in this new method. Check out their website, they've got a lot of good information on there. The one negative I've found so far, is that they send out most of their PGDs. They only do PGDs in their center for gender selection. The rest are sent to another clinic for analysis. It makes me nervous thinking of our embryos being sent back and forth, that's why we travelled to RGI in Chicago before, to avoid our babies getting shipped. However, I think the safety and health benefits of their method is more important than avoiding shipping, so we'll just have to go with that. It is a very common thing, I know. Just makes me nervous.

I called them up today for the first time, and their setup is very easy. We don't have to do anything until we're ready to do the pretests and exams, which is certainly a nice change from the never ending paper pile we went through at RGI. RGI will still do our PGD portion of the procedure, since they are really one of the few that has experience with our genetic disorder and they already have our probe done. They don't accept our insurance, so I'm not sure if they will help us file an insurance claim or if we'll need to do that on our own, which will be a bit of a headache. However the cost of this is less as well - it looks like it will cost roughly about $10,000, according to the fees on their website, as opposed to the about $25,000 at RGI.

I'm going to take a long 6 months to recover this time. One for each month of pregnancy, plus one since I know now that a termination is harder on the body than a miscarriage, plus another one just for my husband, who is really worried about my poor body after all these procedures and is also just a bit stressed out and needs a break. It will work out well since we can do the pretests and exams before the holidays, then do the PGD cycle in January.

We lost another one.

Does this picture look familiar? It's becoming like a second home to me... Well, we got pregnant again naturally, again after only one month of trying. But alas, once again, we got an egg from the bad half of my stores. This just feels like a bad dream... I feel like I'm going to wake up one of these days and get the other phone call... the good one...

It was a girl this time. We had a day of indecision... I wavered. We decided in the beginning we would have to terminate girls as well. There is just too high of risk of neurological problems. But then, there's always the hope that maybe she might be okay... We talked to the doctor, talked to the genetic counselor, we wondered specifically about ultrasound options - if there was anything we could scan for in the ultrasound that would give us any indication of how severe, or absent, any neurological problems would be... But the answer is no. I knew this would be hard, and it really truly is the hardest thing. Forget miscarriages and terminations with the boys, we knew they wouldn't survive anyway. Forget giving myself injections and the rest of the PGD, that's nothing. Living through three first trimesters only to have the baby die, it's inconsequential. THIS is hard. But in the end, desperation aside, I know we cannot gamble with life. We made the decision to try naturally, we knew a positive girl was a possibility. Now that we're actually in that situation, we have to accept our decision and logic and not be guided by wishful thinking. Sure, she might be fine, but then again, the risk of neurological problems is just too great. We will never know, and that's just something we have to live with.

This was our third and final natural try. I don't feel that it's medically a good idea to continue to have miscarriages and terminations. Three is already too many. While the PGD has its own concerns, luckily, many of them may now be avoidable! I can't wait to tell you about a new option I just recently found out about - "Mini PGD"...