We had a little bit of a scare last week. Nothing major, but part of why I am writing this blog is to chronicle our IVF treatment and pregnancy for Jonathan and I to look back on, so I figured I should write a post about this.
Last Wednesday night we took the marching band kids bowling. As we sat at the bowling alley, I started to have some intermittent sharp pains in my lower left abdominal area. It was coming and going, and I was so exhausted and a little stressed, so I really didn't worry too much about it. I went home from bowling and went straight to bed.
When I woke up on Thursday, it wasn't really bothering me, but as the day wore on, it started to hurt worse and worse. By around 2 in the afternoon I was pretty uncomfortable and the pain was present more than it was not. At 3:30 I texted Jonathan from rehearsal and asked him to call the doctor to get see what we should do. I knew that my ovaries were still enlarged from the stimulation, and that I have a few corpus luteum cysts on my ovaries - I was concerned that I was having some type of complication from that.
Jonathan got the answering service. While I LOVE our clinic, their answering service is TERRIBLE. They have failed us more than they have delivered our messages correctly. So Jonathan called right around 3:30 and waited... and waited... at about 4:30 he came over to rehearsal (he had been working from home - and we live 2 blocks from school) to see the kids and also to keep an eye on me. We made it home after rehearsal by about 5:30 and I promptly put my jammies on and got comfy on the couch... or as comfy as I could. At that point, the pain was pretty much constant. Jonathan called the service back again and they read his message back to him (so they obviously had it) and said that we would get a call within 20 minutes.
We did get our call and the doctor on call was not a doctor I had ever met, but she was so nice! She advised me to take some extra strength tylenol. She basically told me that as long as I could still walk around, it wasn't anything emergent. I took my tylenol and ate dinner on the couch and she called back about 2 hours later to see how I was doing. There was really no change at all. She suggested I try to go to sleep. She said that if it was keeping me from sleeping or I got to the point where I couldn't walk to call the service back and she would instruct me as to which ER to go to.
I went to sleep just fine but woke up in the middle of the night and the pain was worse. I took more tylenol and eventually went back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, the pain was much better, but still a bit present. The doc on call called us again at about 10 after 7 and told us that she was going to find out where my primary RE was that day and wanted me to go see him. She called back and let us know that he was expecting us at 8:30. I really feel like she went above and beyond for a patient she had never even spoken to before.
So I went to school and got band started and then slipped out to go see my RE. He did a (very long) ultrasound and confirmed that the baby was okay - he let us see the heartbeat again! Baby was measuring right at 7w1d, so that made me happy. He said it looked like everything was okay on the ultrasound but wanted me to go get another u/s with doppler so he could confirm that I had full blood flow to the ovary (ovarian torsion is a risk of overstimulated ovaries) and that there was no ectopic pregnancy (since we DID transfer 2 blasts, but are only seeing one baby).
So I went back to school for a few hours and slipped out again during lunch/sectional time so I could get this ultrasound. The tech fortunately told us right away that it looked like blood flow was fine. I went back to work and waited for our RE to call me and let me know what the report said. He let me know that everything looked fine and that I needed to take it easy this weekend, drink lots of water, and take tylenol as needed. I have an appointment to see him tomorrow (Tuesday) anyway, so he said to call again if the pain got more severe than it had been.
He had told us in the morning that his best guess was that my slightly enlarged ovary, corpus luteum cysts, and growing uterus just weren't sharing their space well. Jonathan and I told him that we hoped that that wasn't an indication of how our child will behave. My internal lady pieces need to learn to share!!! (Seriously, who writes a sentence like that?)
Fortunately, the pain has definitely let up this weekend. When it does come around, it's not that severe at all. That certainly makes me very happy! Tomorrow morning we go with hopes of hearing the heartbeat... and being told I can start weaning myself off of the progesterone injections. We'll keep you posted!
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