#ivf success

[alex21705]

This is just dumb

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/13/texas-supreme-court-frozen-embryos-ivf/

[hopelesslyhopefulforyou]

Haven't posted in a while. We're doing well! Baby boy is sleeping through the night more often than not. His teething has been really rough on him, but he's a champ. He cut a tooth yesterday, the 2nd will likely poke through this weekend.

He's so close to crawling!! So giggly and happy. We had a wonderful first Christmas as a family - we got him a ball pit and he loves it.

I go back to work on the 17th and my MIL will be watching him at my house while hubby works from home. I'm lucky, I know that. R will be 7 months on the 20th but I am still so emotional about my return to work.

I plan to pump now that I'm going back to work, and keep him on breast milk until he's a year old. I'm on summer break a few days before his 1st bday (planning has already begun! Outer space themed.)

We are not ready for another baby, but talking timelines now, which is new. We have 6 frozen embryos left and want to try naturally for a while since we had unexplained infertility (when we are ready. With breastfeeding i still don't have my cycle back but know my body and have taken a few opks when I've noticed ewcm and I've ovulated two times that i know of since having Ry.) But we will give ourselves a timestamp to do another transfer if we aren't pregnant by a certain point. I'm not ready. With my high risk pregnancy last time, the vasa previa, potentially losing him if our mfm hadn't caught it, and his nicu stay...I have a lot more healing even once my body is ready again. My doctor said 12 to 18 months we could try for another. I'm coming around to the idea but still too traumatized right now. So we are enjoying our boy for now! I want to give him the sole attention he deserves before we have another too. Looking forward to this spring and summer, warmer weather, playing in our backyard and just enjoying every second with him. We think maybe when he's closer to 2 we will try again but are OK with whatever happens as long as it's after the 12 month mark.

Thankful we made it to the other side of the infertility nightmare. It's everything I ever dreamed.

[jennylosesthejiggle]

I realize I never updated here. I spend all my free time sleeping these days. We got to see the little blueberry on ultrasound last week! Measuring right on time with a heart beat of 153.

🎉We’ve officially ‘graduated’ from our fertility clinic and I’ll move to my maternity Dr. (Literally the building next door but still!) I have a butt load of appts coming up and retesting my TSH because they upped the meds again. We should be getting our genetic screening done around 12 weeks and we’ll choose to find out the sex of the baby then too!

Obviously sticking with optimism for now, I know we’re by no means in the safe zone but this feels pretty darn good.

[theivfdiaries]

OUR POST-BIRTH & NICU EXPERIENCE

Things quickly went downhill from there. S wasn’t crying at first for a few seconds, but then he started to. They put him on my chest and for a few seconds everything seemed good, but when I looked at his face it was turning whitish-purple and his eyes started to roll back in his head. The nurse came over and started rubbing him. She told me it seemed like he wasn’t getting enough oxygen and they needed to get his blood flowing. Meanwhile, I delivered the placenta with a couple extra pushes, and I was able to cut the cord.

S was still crying but only a small amount, and his color still looked really off. My midwife and the nurses started to look concerned, and they turned to each other and just said “we need to get peds in here now.” I was in a daze as they took my son from my arms, just minutes after he was born, and brought him into the other room to examine him. I could still see him from the other room, and my husband was able to be with him, but of course I couldn’t get up to see what was going on. I kept yelling out to them “Is he ok? Is he going to be ok?” Everyone kept saying “yes,” but they were still unable to get his color to seem normal.

At this point, I looked down and saw a huge pool of blood that my midwife was collecting with gauze. I asked her if this was a normal amount of blood to lose, and she just took a deep breath and said “no.” I asked if I was going to need a transfusion and if I was going to be ok, and she just said calmly: “I’m working on it.” I was shaking and starting to feel extremely cold and feverish. They took my temperature and I had spiked a 100.2 degree fever. They brought S back to me and I got to hold him for a few more minutes. I was so relieved and happy for those few minutes, but then the nurse looked at him again and remarked that his color looked off again. Before I knew it, the doctors were back and they were taking him from me again and bringing him to the nursery for further examination.

As my midwife continued to work to stop my hemorrhaging, my husband (who had gone with S to the nursery) called me to tell me that they were running a chest X-ray on him, and that he had definitely inhaled a large amount of fluid and was struggling to breathe on his own. They were rushing him up to the NICU to get him on oxygen. None of this felt real, I couldn’t believe this was happening, that my son was in such danger and that I was unable to get up and be there for him or to do anything about it. I had never felt so helpless in my life.

Luckily, my midwife was able to stop the bleeding with some extra pitocin and other medication to help me continue contracting. My nurse came back and talked to me about what to expect with my son. She validated everything I was feeling but assured me that inhaling fluid was a very common and very resolvable problem, and that she was confident he would be ok, but that it was going to be scary. She told me to have my husband send me pictures and to video chat with me when he could, so that I could see S hooked up to all the tubes and machines. She told me it was going to be terrifying to see him like that, and I was going to need to break down and cry about it, but that I had to make sure to do that while I was away from him, so that by the time I got there to see him I could be the calming presence that he needed me to be.

After about an hour, my midwife and doula tried to help me up to get me into a wheelchair to bring me to my postpartum recovery room, but when I sat up I started to feel faint and my hearing started to go out. They laid me back down quickly and talked to me to try to keep me awake, but told me there was a chance I was going to pass out and promised that I would be ok if I did. Luckily I stayed conscious, but I still couldn’t even sit up without almost passing out, so they had to bring me to my recovery room on a stretcher. My fever had also gone up to 100.4 and I couldn’t stop shivering, so I took some Tylenol to level it out.

Hours passed that I lied there helplessly in that room. My doula stayed until 10am when visiting hours began, and then my mom came and traded places with her so I wouldn’t be alone. My mom brought me some food which helped me feel a little less faint, but I still couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom when the nurses came in to try to help me get there (I made it to the toilet with their help, but then my hearing started to go again and they said my lips turned blue, so they had to rush me back to bed).

My husband Facetimed me so that I was able to see S and predictably, I broke down crying when I saw him hooked up to all the tubes. I virtually met S’s NICU nurse, who told me that the second I came on the phone and S heard my voice, his vitals immediately and drastically improved. It was then that I realized just how important it was for me to get up to the NICU, not just because I wanted to see my son, but because I knew he needed me and I had to be there for him.

I continued trying to get out of bed, but I still couldn’t stand or walk without feeling faint. But after a few hours, I was able to at least sit on my own, and my husband was able to coordinate with the NICU and the maternity nurses to send someone with a wheelchair to bring me up to S!

Seeing my son lying there helplessly on the little warmer bed, hooked up to tubes and wires, was the most horrible thing. But I followed my nurse’s advice and stayed calm, because I knew he needed me to be. I sat there for hours, holding his little hand and talking to him so he’d know I was there. I was able to hold him that evening for about 2 hours, which had both me and S (based on his vitals) feeling much calmer and more relaxed. His NICU nurse said clearly my and my husband’s presence and touch was such a comfort to him and was speeding up his recovery, so she encouraged us to be there and to hold him as much as possible.

The next few days were the longest of my life. Being in the maternity wing alone while I heard other people’s babies crying through the wall, and saw other people bringing home their babies every time I went out into the hallway, was so beyond upsetting. All I wanted was for my son to be safe and healthy and to be able to have him with me. I spent every second I could up in the NICU, entirely neglecting my own care and annoying all of my nurses, but I didn’t even care. The only thing that mattered to me was S and his recovery.

The next day was a nightmare of having to hook him up to a feeding tube, and having the doctors tell us that his issue “could” be more than just fluid in his lungs (it could be meconium too, or any number of other things causing a difficulty breathing). They kept saying they were hoping to take him off the oxygen tube later, but when they tried, they found out he wasn’t ready.

The following morning, I woke up feeling depressed, discouraged, and terrified. My husband had been up in the NICU since 4am, and I woke up around 7am. He came downstairs to get me in the wheelchair. By the time we got back upstairs, S’s nurse was standing over him, telling us to stay quiet and to be very calm… because she had just disconnected his oxygen! She told us that the next 3 or 4 hours were critical. If he did well without it over that time, they’d be able to keep him off of it!

Miraculously, he did well! By the time the doctor came around for morning rounds, she said she didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t go home the following day! They did another X-ray as well, and saw that the fluid in his lungs was mostly gone. That day I was also able to bottle-feed him for the first time (though I had always wanted to exclusively breastfeed, my milk hadn’t come in yet and he needed the protein to recover quicker, so we had to give him formula) and do skin to skin.

That night, I was discharged from the hospital and we had to go home without our baby. This was the moment we had been dreading for days. But just before we left, we met with the NICU doctor who told us she had already signed the papers to have him discharged in the morning! They transferred him from the warmer into a regular bassinet, and said they were going to take out his feeding tube and his IV in a few hours. We went home that night with a sense of relief, hoping to get one last good night of sleep without a baby in the house, but ended up sleeping horribly because we were so anxious that something was going to happen overnight that would result in us not being able to take him home, and also excited to pick him up in the morning. I woke up at about 5am to pump (I had been waking up every 3-4 hours to pump to try to get my milk to come in!) and called his night nurse to see how he was doing. She said he was absolutely perfect and content, mostly just sleeping, and that made me feel a little better.

We woke up bright and early at 7am to be back at the hospital at the start of visiting hours at 8am! Standing in the elevator, I could feel myself shaking with excitement and I couldn’t stop smiling. I turned to my husband and told him I had never been so happy in my entire life.

Administrative delays resulted in us not being discharged until a little after noon, but we spent the morning taking turns holding S and just being so grateful that he was coming home with us. When we got released, we brought him down to the car and honestly felt like we were doing something wrong by taking him with us!

On the way home, we stopped by to surprise my mom, brother, and grandma with S. They were all so excited to finally meet him and relieved that he was safe and home! I sat on the couch that afternoon with my son sleeping on my lap. It was totally surreal to finally have my baby home with me, and I was just full of such endless gratitude.

[hopelesslyhopefulforyou]

So! Things with me went very well! Had some clots after and they gave me a bunch of meds to try and stop it. Thankfully it's stable for now.

Our son at 35+2 is 6lbs, 2.9 ounces. Sadly, he's in the nicu because of his breathing. He had pneumothorax so they resolved it and intubated him and are giving him surfactant to strengthen his lungs. On the machine so far he's only needed it at 30% and when I got to visit him, they dropped him a little bit which we were told is a good thing. Just got an update that his oxygen level is almost down to room level now that he's intubated.

Still worried for him right now but he is stable.

I got to pump! They were impressed considering I had a c-section at 35 weeks but I got enough for 1 mil on my first try!

Thank you all for the love and support. Better pictures to follow (we pray)

[hopelesslyhopefulforyou]

No big updates to share - just had our routine OB checkup this week. A few takeaways:

I'm gaining weight consistently so my doctor is happy. She wants a few more pounds but she's good with where I'm at.

His heartbeat is still doing well at 150 on Wednesday.

I got the breakdown of placenta previa and it's given me a better idea of what to expect.

If all goes well, they plan to c-section me at 39 weeks but if I have big bleeds they will take him early. She doesn't seem worried, just told me to take it easy and call if I have any bleeds. Some people have none, some have a few. It just depends.

I have our fetal echo next Wednesday and I'm excited to see our little guy again!

We are not planning on announcing on our social media accounts yet because I'm too paranoid. Viability is April 2nd but I may wait until April 30th to share our news (I'll be 28 weeks then), the week before our shower invites go out.

I talked to my employer about my maternity leave and am sorting that all out, reached out to our wedding photographer to have him do our maternity shots...it's so exciting but this anxiety really gets me some days.

I'm feeling really good, he's very active which is a huge comfort. While I'm feeling well, we've been getting his newborn and 0-3 month clothes washed and organizing the nursery.

The crib comes today and we have my hospital bag packed, per my OB's suggestion just in case I have a stay due to a bleed at some point.

I'm 22 weeks tomorrow and praying we keep going in a positive direction! So grateful for this ivf rainbow 🌈

[theivfdiaries]

11w5d (cont)

We’re posting this on social media tomorrow and I just cannot wait! I’m so antsy to push that “share” button! I’ve dreamed about the day where we’d feel confident enough to share our news with the world for so long, and I can’t believe it’s tomorrow. This is all so surreal. I just want to shout it from the rooftops.

[ivfbangalore]

What Changes Between Your First and Second IVF Cycle?

Starting IVF for the first time often comes with a mix of hope, excitement, and uncertainty. If your first cycle doesn't lead to pregnancy, it's natural to wonder whether a second attempt will be any different. The encouraging news is that a second IVF cycle is rarely a simple repeat. Fertility specialists carefully study the results of your first cycle and make evidence-based adjustments to improve the chances of success.

If you're consulting the Best fertility doctor in Electronic City, you'll find that every IVF cycle is personalized based on your body's response rather than following a fixed protocol.

Your First IVF Cycle Becomes a Learning Experience

The first IVF cycle provides valuable information that helps doctors understand how your body responds to treatment. Instead of guessing, fertility experts use real clinical data to refine the next plan.

This includes:

Response to fertility medications

Number and quality of eggs retrieved

Fertilization rates

Embryo development

Uterine lining thickness

Hormone patterns throughout treatment

These insights allow your fertility specialist to create a more customized treatment strategy for the next cycle.

Medication Protocols May Be Adjusted

One of the biggest changes between IVF cycles is the medication plan.

Depending on your first cycle, your doctor may:

Increase or Reduce Hormone Dosages

If too few eggs developed or the ovaries over-responded, medication doses can be modified for better results.

Change the Type of Stimulation Protocol

Some women benefit from switching between antagonist, agonist, or mild stimulation protocols based on their ovarian reserve and previous response.

Improve Timing

The timing of trigger injections and egg retrieval can also be fine-tuned for optimal egg maturity.

These personalized adjustments are one reason many couples experience better outcomes during later IVF attempts.

Better Understanding of Embryo Quality

The embryos created during your first cycle provide important information.

Doctors evaluate:

Embryo grading

Cell division patterns

Blastocyst development

Implantation potential

If embryo quality was below expectations, additional laboratory techniques or lifestyle recommendations may be suggested before the second cycle.

Sometimes advanced procedures such as embryo freezing, assisted hatching, or genetic testing may also be recommended when appropriate.

Additional Fertility Tests May Be Recommended

After reviewing your first cycle, your fertility team may investigate factors that were not obvious earlier.

These could include:

Detailed hormonal evaluation

Uterine cavity assessment

Endometrial receptivity evaluation

Thyroid or vitamin deficiencies

Male fertility reassessment

Genetic screening when clinically indicated

Identifying hidden factors helps build a stronger treatment plan.

Lifestyle Improvements Can Make a Difference

Many couples use the time between IVF cycles to improve their overall health.

Simple changes may include:

Maintaining a healthy weight

Eating a balanced fertility-friendly diet

Improving sleep quality

Managing stress

Reducing alcohol intake

Avoiding smoking

Taking prescribed supplements

Although lifestyle changes cannot solve every fertility problem, they may contribute to improved reproductive health and support IVF treatment.

Emotional Confidence Is Often Greater

The first IVF cycle involves learning every step—from injections to scans and embryo transfer.

During the second cycle, many patients feel:

More prepared

Less anxious

Better informed

More confident about appointments

Comfortable asking questions

This emotional readiness can make the treatment journey feel much smoother.

Communication with Your Fertility Specialist Improves

After the first cycle, conversations become more focused because both you and your doctor have practical experience to discuss.

The treatment plan becomes increasingly individualized based on:

Previous outcomes

Medical history

Future fertility goals

Age

Ovarian reserve

Overall reproductive health

This collaborative approach is one of the biggest advantages of continuing treatment with an experienced fertility team.

Choosing the Right Fertility Care Matters

Every IVF cycle offers new clinical information. Rather than viewing a second cycle as starting over, many fertility specialists see it as a smarter, more personalized continuation of your fertility journey.

At Dr Aravind's IVF Fertility & Pregnancy Centre in Electronic City, Bangalore, experienced specialists carefully evaluate each previous cycle to optimize future treatment plans with patient-centered care. Consulting the Best fertility doctor in Electronic City ensures that every decision is guided by medical evidence, individualized planning, and compassionate support. If your first IVF cycle did not bring the expected outcome, your second cycle can be built on valuable insights that move you closer to achieving your dream of parenthood.