Life Abundant Blog

On Monday, February 17, we had our “what the heck just happened?!” follow-up appointment with our fertility clinic after our first transfer via embryo adoption failed. Our clinic offers this appointment for free after a failed transfer, which is incredibly generous and obviously very helpful in a time like this. The whole drive down, I was a ball of nerves. Gone are the days of having peace about anything. We went with many questions and bruised hearts.

Oh, and we only have one embryo left, so we went feeling super defeated upfront. I know it only takes one embryo to have a baby, but our track record really stinks so it’s not very encouraging.

But can I be truthful for a second? I am incredibly thankful that we didn’t transfer both at the same time, because knowing our new plan, we could have lost both of them at the same time and that would have been even more devastating.

Also, before someone says “why are you still trying to grow your family this way when it failed the first time and you’ve already been through so much loss?” Listen to me. It’s up to us and God how we grow our family… thank goodness it’s not up to someone else. We adopted TWO embryos and both deserve a chance at life. We love them both. And statistically, your chance of success goes up with more transfers. That’s not super encouraging when you first start this journey, but it is encouraging when you’ve already had one failed transfer. Truthfully, statistics are in favor of your third transfer. It’s most likely to take, and I don’t know why other than changes in protocol, but that’s the science.

So back to our follow-up appointment…

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I AM OFFICIALLY PUPO (Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise) after an FET!

I can’t even begin to explain the emotions I am feeling after our transfer. Knowing that there is an embryo in my womb looking for his/her place to call home for the next 9 months is just so exciting. I never want to forget the magic of FET day so I want to take a moment to document the event and what is to come.

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Part of preparing for a successful frozen embryo cycle means being on a lot of medications, supplements, and hormones. When people get pregnant naturally, everything aligns perfectly in their bodies for that pregnancy to happen. For those of us who struggle with diseases that cause infertility and miscarriage, we have to medically force our bodies into submission.

One thing I have learned about infertility treatment is that everyone has a different protocol and a different journey. So please know that what I’ve been prescribed for my FET protocol may look very different from what you’ll be prescribed. This journey comes with a lot of trial and error and adjustments along the way. I want to share what my FET protocol looks like because I’ve found it super helpful to see what others’ journeys look like! It helped me understand possible scenarios to expect so I want to do the same.

This is my FET protocol medication list from the clinic:

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For years, I’ve written about preparing my body for various fertility treatments, for natural cycles, and natural ways to control my PCOS. Never in a million years would I have guessed that I’d get to write about preparing for a frozen embryo transfer via embryo adoption. But here I am!

Today I’m going to share some of the natural ways that I’m preparing my body to be more receptive to this frozen embryo transfer. In 2015, I shared natural ways that I was encouraging my body to (hopefully) receive an embryo following an IUI, and while I have picked up those same principles, a lot more is involved this time! I’m going to break it down by phase.

And believe me, I know that doing these things aren’t guaranteed to make the embryo stick or survive. We can’t 100% control whether this frozen embryo transfer is successful. There are so many factors outside of my control. All I can do is be a good steward of the body God gave me and that’s my plan.

Before Transfer

Anti-Inflammatory Diet. Oh, this one is so hard. Going gluten-free wasn’t that hard, but going dairy-free is. I love cheese, ya’ll. Like, LOVE IT. It’s a very common snack for me when I work from home so cutting it out is difficult, but it’s worth it to lower inflammation in my body. I’m basically on a low-carb (similar to Keto), no gluten/dairy/sugar diet right now. Healthy fats, good meats, veggies, berries, etc.

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I finally have our schedule for our FET (Frozen Embryo Transfer)! I feel like this was taking forever to happen considering we first started this process in June and had our first consultation in September, but here we are. I want to document as much of this process as possible, knowing this FET schedule is loose and will adjust as ultrasound results and blood work comes back. For now, here is the schedule from the clinic!

• Birth Control Pills: December 27 – January 4
• Baseline Ultrasound: January 7 or 8
• Labs: Week of January 13
• Uterine Lining Check & Labs: Week of January 20 (this can change everything about the actual the transfer date)
• Transfer: Week of January 27

As far as a pregnancy test, I don’t know yet. I haven’t decided if I will test at home at all, or just wait for the official blood test. It’s going to take a lot of will power to wait but part of me wants to cherish being “PUPO” (Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise) as long as possible.

I also don’t want to go through the stress of comparing lines and whether they are getting darker like I did with my last miscarriage. We’ll see. My husband’s 36th birthday is February 8 so I feel like it would be such an amazing way to celebrate, but at the same time, I don’t know if we want to risk bad timing and potentially ruining a special day. It depends on how I feel. We’ve had negative pregnancy tests for both of our birthdays in the past due to failed infertility treatments. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to test before then, but we’ll see how the dates line up.

So that’s the tentative FET schedule! As it moves along, I’ll share details on Instagram primarily, but some Facebook, too. Follow over there for more frequent updates!