Our Story, So Far

I’m just a 32-year-old girl named Jen who very badly wants to be a mama with my lovely hubby, who just happens to have osteogenesis imperfecta – the rare genetic disorder better known as brittle bone disease affecting 20,000 to 50,000 people in the United States.

We’re not known to be infertile but because of his disease and the 50-50 odds of passing it on, we’re going the IVF with PGD route because he’s got a “mild” case – only 18 major fractures during his adolescence!

In August/September 2007, our first IVF cycle (and our first time ever trying to conceive – none of that DIY business) yielded 17 eggs and 13 good embryos, seven of which were affected with OI. Thus, two were transferred and three “fabu” embryos were frozen.

But my body didn’t like it one bit.

Okay, that’s a lie. My cervix didn’t like the catheder used during transfer. My uterus passed the pregnancy’s responsibility to my left tube.

But my body, it tried very hard to sustain the nonviable pregnancy.

So after a shot of methotrexate in each hip,  we’re still waiting to be parents.

And the wait continued after our first FET in January 2008. It was deemed a success by all accounts – including the ever-painful seaweed stick up my hoo-hah (better known as a lamineria).

That was, until the ultrasound at 6w5d revealed an empty gestational sac. Insert lots of tears, lots of questions and an RE just as befuddled about the horrible luck. Three days later, I started to miscarry, which left us hoping that the third time is the charm.

And crazily enough, it seems that three is our lucky number. In May, we started up our second fresh IVF cycle on a lower med protocol in an effort to keep me from hyper stimulating and, hopefully, adding a couple more eggs to the basket for our PGD efforts.

June 3, 2008 we got the great news, my beta was a fabu 282. It nearly doubled two days later and at our first ultrasound a little blob with a perfect flickering heartbeat was seen!

Now we’re crossing our fingers – February’s due date can’t come soon enough!