Answering Your IVF Questions! _ IVF Egg Retrieval for Male Factor Infertility

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel in today's video we are doing a follow-up to yesterday's video which was my IVF egg retrieval Vlog today we're going to be answering some questions related to IVF and kind of our experience with it also going to hopefully do a little bit of Education here cuz I was realizing as I was filming that Vlog that I left out explanation for some of the stuff that was happening I know that y'all are going to inevitably have questions so I thought I would preemptively ask uh do you all have any IVF related questions on Instagram you'll had a ton so I tried to organize these as best as I can to answer them hopefully at the end of this you'll know and understand like what IVF is or the EG retrieval process and also just like our personal experience with it and I have Hayden here because he's going to provide the male perspective even though he's not the one that like for the like probably three questions that they are aimed at me no I think you'll have some in playay for more than that but we'll we'll see the first question we're going to answer and we'll keep this one I'll keep it as brief as I can I wrote a lot of notes for this one what is IVF I think that is a question that I get often and or like what the steps of the process involve so FF stands for invitro fertilization it's basically the process of taking an egg and a sperm putting them together in a Petri dish and Hope hopefully making an embryo that will turn into a human child it is a lot more complicated than that obviously there's like multiple steps involved but it can be broken down i' would say into two major steps which is the egg retrieval process and the embryo transfer process in a given month each woman has a bunch of different follicles competing to release an egg and whichever follicle is the most mature is the one that releases an egg so in any given month most women release just one egg and I'm sorry if I'm using gendered language here obviously there are people who ovulate that are not women but in an IVF cycle you want to retrieve as many eggs as possible and so you are put on a course of stimulation medication which makes all of your follicles grow at once and mature together and in some IVF protocols you're also given a medicine that prevents you from ovulating prematurely at the end of the stimulation process which is usually between 8 and 14 days you are given a drug that then makes you ovulate within a 36- hour time period at the end of that 36 hours is when the actual retrieval takes place with an ultrasound guided needle through the vagina the eggs are aspirated from the follicles and at the end that means sucked out like a V you're put under anesthesia typically for this process you are left with a certain amount of eggs which are then fertilized and hopefully will turn into embryos over a 5 to 7 day period if this sounds complicated it's cuz it is also during that uh stimulation round I should say like during the stimulation period that is again between 8 to 14 days you go in for blood draws to check your estrogen levels and also to check your follicle development and the follicle development checks are with a fashional ultrasound to see how each of your follicles is growing hopefully they're growing at similar rates so that you have a ton of mature eggs Whenever there is a retrieval and not all of the eggs are mature not everyone has a large volume of eggs it just really depends on your particular statistics um so that is kind of the egg retrieval process in a nutshell just kind of like rattled off a bunch of backs the second part is the embryo transfer which we have not personally been through yet we don't know all of the details involved but it involves basically putting an embryo back in you so that hopefully you can sustain a pregnancy first question for us is why did y all decide to do IVF and how long were you trying before you decided to do it we tried for I think a little over a year and I say tried yeah I think try is sort of a generalization and I think it's interesting to consider what try means to you for us we tracked ovulation for or at least I tracked ovulation for 3 to four months to make sure I was ovulating I was having like long and regular Cycles after coming off of hormonal birth control which is like a whole another story you can listen to more of that in some of my weekly Vlogs but I knew I was ovulating and within I would say four to 5 months I kind of knew something was up but I personally wasn't really ready to take the next steps of like getting tested and all of those things so I think we just kind of carried on for a little over a year and and also we were at a point in our lives where we weren't really sure what the next year or so of our lives were necessarily going to look like and so we weren't 100% we're definitely trying to have a baby or get pregnant but if it happens that's also fine like it would be fine it would be great started to figure out like what our life was going to look like over the next couple of years that we were going to be staying here rather than moving into a different city which is important and something to consider we decided that we would uh start to get tested I do think it's important to note too that we had some like context for maybe what was going on aen had Childhood Cancer when he was about 10 months old underwent a leukemia chemotherapy protocol that had never been tested before on other people we kind of had an inkling that that could be a problem with I didn't think like oh there were problems because in all other aspects of my life I haven't developed any lasting issues so I knew that it was a possibility but I wasn't like oh something's definitely wrong with me it's also easier for me to get tested than it is for a woman to get tested we thought might as well just start with me and if they said that I was fully okay then she would get tested afterwards yeah that's it's less invasive and I always recommend if you are in sort of like a head sort of situation get the man tested first it's much easier less invasive it's also probably less expensive too yeah and maybe I think maybe we had different perspectives but I think for me again after trying for four to five months red flags were going off and I was thinking it probably is a sperm quality issue and I think honestly that was like part of what helped me cope with it quicker I guess I kind of knew before we even got tested what I was trying to say is that it's not like this is something that I had been expecting to happen for years prior to this you know what I'm saying I never thought that there was any lasting effects from my chemotherapy treatment is what I was trying to say but like I didn't I didn't expect for it to be maybe just because of Intuition or like my negative thinking I feel like I've just always had this thought in the back of my head that we would have to pursue fertility treatment I just watched a ton of videos online in years previous because I have always been interested in caring a child well maybe not always interested but I've always been interested in pregnancy I have seen infertility videos and I was like I wonder if I'll have to do that it has crossed our mind over the past 13 years we've been together that there could be an issue not that there definitely was but we thought about it like once or twice before so how did we decide to actually go through with IVF though that was definitely a conversation that we had to have and it's interesting I think from like my perspective our fertility I should say and like our testing the results were that Hayden has male Factor infertility and that I have PCOS my PCOS is fairly mild and I am ovulatory so we believe that I probably could get pregnant spontaneously but we're not entirely sure so it's primarily male factor I have like a really really low count in comparison to most people and so that also precluded us from being able to do IUI yeah other other like forms of fertility treatment and we definitely had conversations we have talked openly about adoption in the past we have learned more about adoption I think as the years have gone on which has made us more hesitant to kind of go that route cuz there's a lot of trauma involved and there that's a whole another thing we'll answer that question later but for me I think i' always told myself even though I like kind of had this inkling that we would have to do something like this I always told myself I don't want to do IVF like I'm scared of medication I'm scared of medical procedures I've never had surgery before I've never been under anesthesia I was really scared of going that route but I think what I realize as I get older is that like things just happen and you just get to decide how you're going to respond to them in the moment like you can say all you want oh I'll never do this or I'll never do that but until you get there it's hard to say and for me it was like if Hayden's male factor is like the only thing that's keeping us from having a child and we can you know still have a kid why wouldn't I give that a try at least one try and I I did set boundaries for myself too I will say that I think is something that's important but I definitely said to myself I think I only want to do one round of EG retrieval I mean obviously we'll get to that when we do but I was like I think I just want to do one round and I think that will be my boundary and if like that doesn't work out then we yeah that's that's kind of how we decided on it and we have had long discussions I mean there's like we can't go into all of the details on like what how we decided to do that but yeah we just decided we would give it a try the next question is what are the odds of success on the first try so this is an interesting question cuz it's really dependent on your statistics and there's a really cool calculator online that's provided by sart which is is something about assisted reproductive technology maybe like a an Institute they collect data on people who have been through these treatments and their particular fertility issues and kind of spit out numbers and statistics based on that so for our factors PCOS my age My amh Level and haen fertility the way that they spit out the numbers is on one egg retrieval with all of your potential embryo transfers from that particular egg retrieval are likelihood of success for first round egg retrieval is 71% and that goes up with the second retrieval which I think is more like 85% and what exactly does that because I didn't know about this like calculator or statistic what does that mean like probability of success on first time egg retriev believe it is live births is the statistic I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that it is regardless you can check out the calculator online yourself I think that gave me a lot of comfort going into the process knowing that it would likely be successful obviously there's no accounting for biology and what your body decides to do that's a huge Factor here but for us the statistics were kind of on our side and anecdotally I had heard that people that had PCOS with male Factor to have fairly good results so I felt confident going into it but I did obviously go in hesitant I wasn't like oh it's going to be a success I just you know next question is do you have to have surgery again or was a onetime thing I think this person is referring to the egg retrieval process it again is so dependent on your particular circumstances some people have diminished ovarian reserve which means that you have a lower than average number of eggs for your age and that is going to really impact how many retrievals you have some people are only able to get one two three four eggs in a retrieval I will say I was very very fortunate to have retrieved 29 eggs 28 of which were mature so I don't personally believe that I will have to undergo another egg retrieval we got 13 embryos out of that that are being genetically tested as we speak we don't expect all 13 to make it through to be genetically normal but it is very likely given those statistics that we will probably have at least a few to transfer and again with their statistics it's likely that things will be successful I don't like to treat it as it's as if it's a foregone conclusion but hopeful and I try to remain positive especially that we've had good luck so far but yeah I I don't think I will have to do a surgery again and if I do if we have a ton of fail transfers we'll have that conversation once we we get there but right now we're hopeful that that will be our only agrial the next question is a question that I think kind of goes hand inand with that has IVF changed what you were hoping for with your family number of children age gaps Etc sure it has a little bit because I think that regardless of whatever your ideas of what you want I think that that always changes a little bit when someone puts boundaries on it you know for me specifically I don't think it changed it that much though cuz I didn't necessarily want like a ton of children anyways if anything I think that it just kind of naturally limits a little bit how many kids that you either can or would want to have it makes you think about it a little bit more to say I think for me it's like a yes and situation so yes it did kind of make me consider things more I think to me it really made me more realistic about who I am as a person I think this whole process it's taught me a lot about who I am and I've always had this vision of like being a stay-at-home mom and having like four to five children like running around and you know just like making that my life and I think if I'm really realistic with myself I like to work I love working on my channel I love being creatively fulfilled and I don't know that I'd be able to do that with that many children and in speaking with people who have a lot of children just kind of their opinions on it I think honestly like I would be happy with one child I mean we'll see we'll really see we really don't know for sure I think you don't know even when you don't have to face these sorts of odds you still have to think after you have your first kid like do I want I was going to say you really don't know until you have child right like you can have some kind of ideas but at the end of the day they're kind of just ideas I will say though yes it does technically change things a bit yeah I mean if you are someone with diminished AR Varian Reserve you only get one embryo from a particular cycle and you want to increase your odds they say that if you have three embryos that are genetically normal that it is likely you'll have a live birth from that so if you want to increase your odds it would make sense to do multiple rounds so you do have to kind of consider that I think when you're going into this but I personally was just very happy with the idea of having one child yeah I really came to terms with that we'll see down the road who knows we don't know how many genetically normal embryos we have going through this process I think kind of makes you appreciate even just being able to have one child this is a related question has the number of embryos influenced how many kids you want so now that we know how many we have has that influenced you at all no so it hasn't influenced me at all a lot of the process of IVF I have left decisions up to chanler because at the end of the day it is not my body I don't have to go through the pregnancy I don't have to do all of the other stuff associated with trying to get pregnant and so let's say even if I really wanted to have like four kids I am not the kind of person like there's no way that I would ask that of you and I think that that would be the case for me even if we didn't have to go through IVF and it was just natural pregnancy even just pregnancy in and of itself I don't have to carry a baby for 9 months I will never ask you to do that it's a decision for us both to make but I think that for me it's like a you first decision and then I can either to have very similar opinions on things we're we're in constant communication it's not like I've really surprised you I think I'll answer it from my perspective I think it does obviously it's very dependent on how many are genetically normal but we got many more embryos from Hayden than we expected if I'm able to have more than one child and I want to that's awesome and I think it's opened my mind a little bit more to having more than one kid but we shall see let's move on to the next question cuz that one took a while since IVF allows for you to choose single tin or twin pregnancies do you have a preference so this is one of the biggest misconceptions with IVF that I think that I see often I think people lump all of assisted reproductive technology into one bucket and don't seem to understand that it is multiple different things there's IVF which is what we did There's IUI and then there's also timed intercourse now IUI and I think timed intercourse that is like medicated to help you ovulate I believe those ones have higher rates of multiples simply because you're taking drugs to essentially make you more fertile with IVF you get to decide how many embryos go inside you but it is highly recommended for people under the age of 35 to only transfer one embryo if they want to have a successful life birth I don't think a lot of people understand that multiples are inherently high-risk pregnancies I don't know all of the statistics and all of the things that kind of go into that but I had no interest in having a potentially risky pregnancy that is not to shame anyone who has done that who has transferred multiple everybody's situation is so totally different stuff to you and your doctor I think that's a huge misconception I got that question so many times and I get it but no that is just not the case and it's becoming much less common practice even with people over the age of 35 the recommendations from the American reproduction Ive Association I don't know what the acronym is they have some very like please don't do this sort of Vibes and I'm like yeah I'm going to listen to science and what my what my doctor says how soon after retrieval can you transfer an embryo so this is going to vary personto person there are two different kinds of embryo transfers there are fresh and frozen transfers fresh transfers happen typically 5 to 7 days after the agrial process after the embryos are nice and like developed cooked whatever uh they put them back cooked they put the embryo inside of whoever's going to carry the embryo those are becoming much less common because they tend to be less successful because of your high estrogen levels typically after an egg retrieval you're pumping yourself full of like follicle stimulating hormon so it makes sense that it would potentially be less successful and then there's Frozen transfers which typically take a little bit longer these are often done too because people choose to genetically test their embryos which takes a little bit of time so your embryos are just Frozen and waiting for you whenever you're ready the embryo transfer process looks super different depending on just your drug protocol but I would say a very typical one would be birth control pills for let's say 2 to 3 weeks just to kind of like hold your cycle until your Clinic's ready to go then you do I think two weeks of estrogen support so either patches pills or injections and then you get like kind of a lining check to make sure that your uterine lining is looking good and ready for a embryo and then 5 days before the transfer you start taking Progesterone and oil shots in your hey and then you get the embryo transfer it really depends like how long are you on birth control for if you're on birth control how long is it going to take for your lining to develop it really just depends I would say earliest probably a month after your egg retrieval and it's just nice to give your body time to heal cuz you're really bloated after that happens so about a month I would say and then someone asked how long does it take to heal from an egg retrieval this is something that so widely varies and I want to emphasize that because on Reddit I saw so many different accounts of kind of what can happen there is a syndrome called ohss which is ovarian hypers stimulation syndrome that can occur afterwards where your follicles fill up with fluid more than is normal and you just feel like crap for a little while can lead to breathing difficulties and um in rare cases death which is you know scary of course I will say for me it took me about 3 days to feel like myself again I would say it takes until your next period to feel kind of like 100% normal but within 3 days I was able to walk around normally and I felt much better I was really lucky and that I had just a super easy recovery I did not have OHS which is something that is more common in people who have higher ovarian reserves and have more follicles I think because of the particular ovulatory trigger that I took I did not have that problem so it just really depends on you next question is how long does it take from start to finish assuming the embryo transfer works that's a great question I would say if you're doing it as quickly as possible maybe about 2 months but I think that it always takes longer than you think it's going to take your body is going to do weird things that you can't control for and I think that going in with little to no expectation is really smart and also that two months is assuming that you've already done your done your testing done your consultations you know exactly what's going down and you're kind of constantly communicating with your clinic and doctors to figure out what the next step is we have this all planned out and we're just going to go through the steps as quickly as possible two months but obviously a lot longer than that a lot longer than that yeah the next question is what kind of injections are you given and what meds were you on specifically so everybody's drug protocol looks different there I think are two different protocols that are most common there's the antagonist protocol and there's the long protocol I was on the antagonist protocol which is kind of I think the drug regimen they give to the most amount of people just cuz it's easy so you are given two different drugs or sometimes one just kind of depending to stimulate your follicle growth I was on menure and godal F there are different names for those I cannot remember the other names for them but those are ones that you do inject subcutaneously which means into your fat rather than your muscle really short needles not super painful and then the antagonist comes in depending on how large your follicles are getting it's the drug that you take to prevent ovulation so it kind of like is the antagonist and I took crati I think I started taking cetra tide on the morning of day four I was a very good responder to the medication I did stimulation medication for 9 days I took the trigger on day 10 and had my retrieval on day 12 so I had a shorter length of time but I would say the antagonist protocol typically takes between 8 to 14 days and some of the other protocols can take longer I was surprised at my response but also not like I knew I would respond well but those were the injections that I was giving myself so I took my gonal f and my menure at night and I took my straide in the morning your doctor will kind of let you know what you need to do the dosages I was on for half of the cycle I was on 150 IUS of gonal 75 IUS of menop and then like cetti is just one dose and then kind of Midway through they switched me to 75 of gunal F and staying on 75 of met pure those are incredibly low doses but again because of my age and my fertility statistics that was what I needed and I was really happy with how I stimulated and my doctor was too was it physically painful is a next question no not necessarily here's the thing I hate needles I am a baby when it comes to Needles I don't want a shot I don't want to get my blood drawn but these were some of the least painful things I've ever done I would say near the end of the stimulation as your follicles start to grow you start to feel more bloated and you can feel your ovaries moving around inside of you your skin gets a little taut and it's harder to puncture the skin so that was a little painful like the last day or two but leading up to that I was surprised at how little it hurt the menure did burn a little bit upon injection but it was over so quickly it really wasn't a major deal to me and I would say after the first 2 to 3 days I was very experienced giving myself injections and I wasn't it wasn't a big deal how did you cope with injections blood draws Etc when you hat it I think for me the biggest thing that I did was I was given access to a portal or whatever called freedom teach it teaches you how to inject all of these medications I watched those videos religiously before I even was shipped the medication I'd also watched a ton of videos on other people and their experiences and their Pro tips I was on Reddit a ton and I think that that sort of desensitized me to the idea of it to where when I got the medication in front of me I was like I know exactly what I have to do I can do this I feel confident and yeah the first time is a little scary and there were a couple of times I'm sure you saw in the Vlog if you watched it that I kind of like psyched myself out the first day but I got through it the injections were okay the blood draws how did I get through that I just tried to not think about it frankly those sucked and are by far in my opinion the worst part of the process everybody's going to be different I have really sensitive inner arms just generally speaking I bruise really easily so I got bruised very quickly cuz you're alternating arms you're getting blood draws every two days for that that period it's just not it's not a fun time this is something that I think I would mention too we wake up at 8:00 a.m. every day we work from home we were all back to work I was having to wake up at 6:45 to inject myself with my satra tide and then immediately leave to go get my blood drawn before 8:30 so it could be a stat call which means that the information would be at my doctor you know by two or something like that and that made me feel like I won't lie it messes up your digestion which is not something you want to happen when you were going through IVF injections so that actually was I think more physically painful than anything was like getting up early and going and get your blood drawn and I know we probably sound like babies cuz like most people wake up before 8 but just being thrown off your routine is just not fun especially when it's for not fun things and I know this might sound weird but the fact that it was only every other morning that we actually had to go get the blood drawn meant that every other day you would get back in bed to sleep so it meant that every day your schedule was a little bit different it was not great I will say everybody's experience mentally is going to be so different for me Strangely I did not think of like oh there's a baby at the end of this you're doing this for your future child I know a lot of people probably get through it that way I didn't think about that I literally just thought of what am I having to do in the next hour like what is the next thing that I have to do I tried not to think for long periods of time Easter s done obviously about like oh my God it's noon and I have to inject myself at 6:00 I just like didn't think about that I just kept going in my life at least I tried to question did you have to inject yourself no this is definitely something that's up to your discretion you can have your partner do it you can have a friend do it I did not want someone else to inject me and I'm not looking forward to the second part of this process where he will likely have to inject me cuz it's just in an awkward location I wanted to do it myself I like to be in control of my own pain and I 100% stand by that decision I'm so glad that I did it myself and it also makes you feel really strong and in touch with your body almost and the process that you're going through I know that some people like having their partner involved and that makes them feel like oh you know we're doing this together and Hayden was there for some of the injections which which helped um and he helped me clean up afterwards but I wanted to do it myself I had a tough time because I know that me being around kind of stressed her out a little bit but at least for the first couple of times we didn't know if I was going to pass out exactly so I wanted to be around because I didn't want to be off in another room and not hear her fall and hit her head on the counter or something are you keeping a tally of doctor's visits and needles so I put this question here because I think it kind of feedbacks off the last one I didn't do that I people do that some people do that and I know some people keep all of their syringes and needles and like to kind of make a little set around their child and take pictures with like them like we prayed for you oh yeah I mean I kind of get it but also that's kind of scary I don't know this process has been so interesting emotionally like it's much different than I expected it's not that I don't think about children I think once we got to the actual embryo creation stage is when I was thinking of kids but before that I just wasn't thinking about that so for me no I'm not taking a tally of doctor's visits and needles and absolutely no judgment I want to put this out there no judgment I just don't feel like I need to show my kids oh you were so wished for so prayed for I'm hoping that in my actions as a parent they'll see that and that I won't have to to them like oh you know 15 needles and 18 doctor's visits to get you here I just to me that feels vindictive and I know that that is not the intention for people and people are well- meaning but that's just how I conceptualize that and so no that's just like not at all how I think about things so yeah no I did not keep it tally and I will not be keeping it tally so at the end of all of this I think I've mentioned we have 13 embryos someone says when you say you have 13 embryos where are they funny you asked they're right here that's a great question the embryos are are frozen they can be thought at any time I think actually I was reading recently that the oldest frozen embryo has been transferred or whatever like I think it's was like a 30-year-old embryo they are at our embryology lab and they are frozen and ready for us whenever the genetic testing comes back I wonder how long it takes to thaw them I don't know and I don't want to think about it like you know it's not like chicken like you have to thaw it overnight how much does IVF cost and did your insurance cover any of it I hate saying this for every question but it's so dependent on your clinic your state your country and also your insurance so most insurance plans do not cover fertility or infertility at all it's like kind of considered elective yeah it's considered an elective thing and that has insens me at times I will say we were lucky enough to have very good fertility coverage through my employer so we had the vast majority of things covered but I will say IVF really depends I would say the ballpark I typically see thrown out is $10 to $30,000 I think the low-end estimate is without medication and medication is expensive so that's something you have to factor in but there are definitely work and ways to pay for it you can Finance IVF can work for an employer who does cover it and that information actually is pretty publicly available I know that that's like a very timeconsuming and strenuous thing to do to try to find a job somewhere that will have that coverage I just happen to look out but that is definitely a thing Facebook Google those kinds of companies cover it I think Starbucks does too and there's also other options as well like you can do an egg retrieval where you give half of your eggs as a donation and that will cut down the cost I know some clinics do that some clinics will also have a deal where you can preemptively sign up for three rounds like if you know you have diminished a Varian Reserve you're going to have to do multiple rounds if you pay up front for the three rounds then it's a lot cheaper they'll cut you a three for yeah so there are definitely a lot of different ways to do it I will say I know that the transfer is usually between $2 to $5,000 so the transfer itself is much less expensive but obviously the egg retrieval there's anesthesia involved the medications involved in that process are much more expensive too so yeah to answer your question it is expensive there are options I kind of hate living in the US where it's not covered by most insurance plans but luckily it was covered for us the majority of it was the next question is did you wind up using donor sperm on all of your eggs this is a question that arose because we have talked pretty openly on some of the Vlogs or at least I've talked openly and Hayden has told me I can talk openly about it that we decided to use donor sperm for half of our eggs because of Hayden situation we had no idea what the quality of sperm would be that is something that you run into with fertility unfortunately there's statistics and a lot of stuff's tied to your age Etc but when it comes to the actual genetic normaly I suppose you could say of your eggs versus your sperm there aren't really any good tests for those like they can't like biopsy an egg andt tell oh this is great or sperm and do the same and there are some tests that exist for DNA fragmentation on sperm but the information that we get from that is like pretty mixed and that wasn't an option for us anyway so we just didn't want to retrieve eggs and have the potential of none of them fertilizing none of them becoming embryos I mean obviously I want to haveen child te yeah but if they if they weren't going to work period Then they weren't going to work period And so might as well hedge the BET basically yeah we are very I would say level-headed logical people and I'm not saying that you're not logical if you decide that you don't want to use donor us it was just let's make the best of a potentially shitty situation if we get great results but like not enough embryos from haen we could also do another round like there's so many options this was kind of a diagnostic and they often tell you hey your first round of egg retrieval is diagnostic it doesn't work the first time for a lot of people and for me I would have felt extra bad if not only did my stuff not work and not fertilize any eggs but we used it on all of the eggs and then we would have to do it again anyways you know I would feel I would feel bad about that thankfully we got embryos from both and a lot from both so we do know that Hayden's material works at least to the embryo stage like we haven't gotten the genetic the genetic testing I think since we're here it'll probably be okay regardless it's unlikely that we will end up using the donor material so that is kind of not something that we think about or we're not thinking about that right now but we have considered that very deeply I will say there's more questions about that so did deciding to use donor material affect your relationship I would say no I don't know how much this question is posed at me versus you but the way that I think about it is either my stuff works or it doesn't right and if it works then cool if it doesn't work then my options are to either adopt a child or have a child with donor material but your egg where at least it is your child it would feel almost like spiteful to be like oh well if it can't be my kid then it can't be yours either it didn't really make that much sense to me and so no it for me it didn't affect how I felt about the relationship or the process or anything like that because especially because it's due to something that I can't control you know like I had cancer when I was a baby you know he can control for I will say we actually had slightly different perspectives at different points during the sort of like are we going to use donor material are we going to let's look at donor material together online cuz you get to look at like baby pictures and profiles which is very it's like strange I will say it's a weird process honestly for me I was having the most I don't know about this sort of feelings but I think I tried to detach my emotions and just go for what made sense logically and I felt like you know once we have the embryos I think I will have more clarity around it didn't think I was going to regret and I definitely don't regret it now even though I know your stuff works I don't regret doing that yeah cuz I mean it it just makes sense you know Mak sense for us it might not make sense it might not make sense for you yeah you might feel differently about it you might feel like oh well if it can't be both of our child then let's just adopt so you know we we'll be like equal in the scenario or something like that but and every yeah everybody's going to come to a different conclusion I also will mention too I also thought of it from the perspective of like queer couples if it's a lesbian couple for instance they're going to have to use donor material whether it's a known donor or an anonymous donor and they don't have I would assume the Frau sort of like oh it's not going to be biologically mind sort of thing and frankly like that's just not us anyway like we are just not that tied to the idea of biology like yes I would love to carry my own child but it's not the biology that excites me I want to be pregnant which we'll get to you later all that to say it didn't really affect our relationship the next question is are you doing pgs or pgta testing and are you genetic testing for gender or just at random okay so pgs and pgta testing are considered the same thing pgta I believe is like the newer term and it is basically the base level of genetic testing that you can do on there's a few different kinds that you can do but pgta testing looks at the cells on the outside of the embryo and tests the chromosomes specifically it doesn't get into Gene specific things there is testing for that it's a little more invasive and potentially riskier but pgta testing is very standard and it's something that a lot of people tend to opt into because it can very much reduce the risk of miscarriage so pgta testing was something that was covered by our insurance as kind of a part of the package deal basically there are a couple of things that were covered which was just general free freeze all cycle IVF with with ixie included which is when you put the sperm directly into the egg rather than just like putting them in a dish and saying what what fertilizes then also pgta testing was covered basically just test the chromosomes on the outside and those chromosomes are like the cells on the outside tend to turn into the placenta so it's not damaging the embryo cell when they're testing these things and we did not decide to do this for gender or for sex but that is one of the things that you do typically find out depending on your state some states actually don't allow you to see the sex of your child really I didn't know that yeah but Texas does allow you to find out the sex and honestly I like to look at it as a little treat you know like I had to go through this and I can choose I guess basically embryo develop between 5 to 7 days and the five and six day embryos tend to be better quality than day seven embryos so they kind of grade based on days and then also grade based on is the embryo euploid which is chromosomally normal or anupol which is Crum only abnormal they also tell you the sex so for us obviously if the top three embryos that we have are all not our preferred sex obviously I want a healthy baby like that is my priority is like having a healthy baby carrying my baby to term yeah like if we only have one like s TI your embryo yeah like we're going to we that one you but if it's you know all All Odds are the same or everything else equal I would choose the sex of my child and the next question was will you opt to know the sex or do you want it to be a mystery I personally want to know I think it will help me feel more connected to this process and again it's just kind of a perk I know some people want that to feel more like a traditional pregnancy where you find out at like I don't know what is it 12 to 20 weeks or something like that but honestly I don't care about that there are other things that I'm going to do to make my pregnancy feel more normal for us that we made the decision that we will know the sex and if we have the we will choose the sex of our child the next question is how is Hayden feeling about the results of the egg retrieval good I mean I didn't know if my stuff worked at all okay so we we had kind of a little like roller coaster so initially you know obviously we didn't know how my stuff worked at all after the egg transfer or sorry after after the egg retrieval they immediately fertilized the eggs yes so when we got the results back from the fertilization I was feeling really good because obviously and I found out that I fertilized a decent number of eggs you know like more eggs than the donor actually and so I was was feeling really good about that because I was like at least it works well enough to fertilize yeah and then they give you results for your embryos progress yeah so kind of the way it works in terms of like actual embryo development is that once they hit a certain look I guess is when they freeze them right and that could happen on day five six or seven so you get like a day five report of like on day five this is how many we could freeze yeah and so on day five when we got the results I think I only had one embryo on day five and I think the donor had I can't remember how many the donor had but it was definitely like more like it was kind of a more normal number to expect for day yeah for day five we were bummed yeah but I I wasn't like crushed because I knew that we still had day six and day seven left as possibilities but definitely took a bit of a dip there but that's the only time that I've really been feeling negative about it and then day six we got the results back and I again had more embryos than the donor so yeah I'm feeling good about it overall I'm also just very happy that we got good results on our first egg retrieval because because one of the things that I personally have struggled with and I know it sounds kind of like stupid or selfish but I hate that chanders had to go through this you know and obviously I feel a little bit of guilt about it even though it's not something that I did necessarily it is because of me that she's got to like stick herself with needles and have her blood drawn and stuff like that and have your ovaries swell up to the size of a grapefruit and so yeah that's true obviously I don't feel great about that and so the least number of times that I can quote unquote put you through that even though I didn't ask you you know I didn't like force you to to go through this like I know that it is your choice too yeah I do feel a little bit bad about it and so I am really happy that one my stuff works and two we only had to do the egg retrieval hopefully one time but it's looking like one time oh an interesting thing that I I will point out that I don't know if we've mentioned elsewhere is the day seven report was the most interesting though because they told us that two more embryos had been frozen for biopsy they did not tell us whose embryos those were doesn't really matter but like we were just I I want to know what the final numbers were yeah and I'm sure we'll find out like once we get the actual report back but like I just thought that was interesting so the next question is what's the best way to support your partner through this process we're getting into the emotional category I mean I think that that's really difficult to answer because I think it really depends on your situation you know like everyone has a very specific infertility journey I think the best thing you can do is to stay in communication about your needs and I don't mean that you need to communicate all the time about everything you're feeling cuz sometimes those feelings are not best shared with your partner and I'll get into that in like another question that I'm going to answer but I think like communicating what you need is super super important like hey honestly I just need some time to like think about this or like I really need to like vent or whatever um communicating that I think is important because you don't want to leave your partner in the dark especially if your partner is the one who is the main factor you don't want that person to be like sitting there sad and you not support them it's just complicated I think emotionally we were in sort of a weird spot because when you are dealing with male Factor unfortunately it just is the case that it is your Factor but I'm the one that has to under I can't do basically anything about it it does it does have complicating the emotions are big like you definitely you're going to have big emotions and I think communicating your needs is important not always your emotions but your needs is important the next question is did you find the process to be emotionally isolating and did you feel like you could talk about it with friends and family I'll answer first so I think this question is definitely going a very person to person for me I don't really allow those sorts of thoughts to go into my head I'm going be honest for me if you are my friend and I talk to you daily you're going to get my stream of Consciousness thoughts and I'm going to tell you how I'm feeling I did not hesitate I had my two best friends my sister and my mom and I was constantly telling them I just got the results back from my embryo report I'm stressed you know I'm just I'm feeling really sad or like I feel like I can't talk to Hayden about this not because he wouldn't be there to support me but because it was about him and I didn't want to like make him sad so I actually didn't feel isolated I think at times like you do feel sad seeing people around you get pregnant and have no idea how hard it can be to conceive but I didn't think about that a ton and I think that was because I had friends and family who were willing to listen and I think you unfortunately in almost all situations if you need something you kind of have to communicate it whether you have a loss in your family that you're sad about unfortunately when it comes to hard topics people are just not really great at asking questions or being there unless you bring it to them and so I always brought it to them rather than having them come to me and ask like oh Harry are you okay it's not fun for someone to ask that all the time not that it should be a responsibility always to bring your infertility up but yeah I just I really took it upon myself to like seek what I needed and I think that really really helped me easier said than done but I do think having a support system especially outside of your partner is pretty important for me I have a tendency to not share my emotions as much as I should just generally but the thing for me was I did obviously have some feelings about the fact that I wasn't that fertile those feelings were hugely outweighed by the feeling of I guess like guilt or sadness that I had to then put you through something in order for us to have a child I definitely communicated that to you I would say more than I did other people but it wasn't because I don't have people that would listen to that didn't feel that productive to share with other people that I was feeling bad for you but that being said you might not have shared your emotions but you talked to your mom very often about fertility all of your friends knew we were doing Iva I didn't like keep it from them I just meant specifically this question was about emotionally how much were you sharing your feelings with the people around you or did you feel like you could and I definitely felt like I could I have great friends and family all around me I just I would say a lot of the times I have a tendency to not share as much as I could that being said how are you feeling emotionally I'm feeling good now is I mean I've already said it before many times the main feeling that I have is guilt and I think I'm going to continue feeling that until you're no longer having to put needles in you you don't think you're going to feel that way when I'm pregnant well yeah cuz you're still going to be putting needles in you but then after that you wanted this so you I can't I can't feel that bad for you while you're pregnant I don't want to have a baby inside me but if you do then that's on you yeah so I emotionally am feeling really good we've set a transfer date I will not be telling you when that is cuz I don't know if it'll be successful and also that's my business and not yours but I'm feeling really good I think once we set the transfer date I felt this feeling of oh like I could be pregnant soon like it's getting real so I emotionally am like excited nervous I'm just so grateful I can't express to you how lucky I feel especially given all of the stuff I've read on Reddit all of these people who are suffering because their outcomes are not the same as mine I feel blessed every day I feel so incredibly grateful and fortunate so I'm feeling really good like emotionally I'm feeling awesome not looking forward to getting shots in my ass but other than that I'm feeling great what's the best and worst part of this journey best part hopefully we'll have a kid at the end yeah I think the answer is like having a kid at the end of this but technically if things worked like they should then this wouldn't be a journey in the first place and there would still be the same outcome so I don't know if I would say that that's a best outcome but it is the outcome you know so I'm going to take a different TX but yes for it so I would say best part is I think it has given us a lot of time to consider what it means to be a parent what we want from our lifestyle once we have a child and I'm not saying that people don't do this if they get pregnant spontaneously but I think for us we have really had to think about like what we want out of life and how our kids going to fit into that and I think it has brought us closer together for sure oh yeah we've had you know really tough times the worst part obviously is having to do it in the first place no one is excited to inject themselves with needles or undergo surgeries just to have a kid you know some people just get to and have a kid and we just don't that's sus logistically in actuality yeah the the worst part is blood draws and part of that being the frequency and the other part of that being the fact that it's early as hell in the morning when you it's always early in the morning sus so that's the worst part but yeah I feel really lucky in that we had one of the easiest times that you could possibly have basically went textbook perfect and I really can't complain I told Hayden too after I did the egg retrieval even like the day of in the day after when you're supposed to be in the most pain I was like I could do this again I don't want to I really don't want to if you had yeah the other like positives that I would think about is like not only did we really have to consider having a child we get to choose when we're ready and and if we want to we can choose the gender and if you are someone who is medically nervous there's something really cool knowing that your embryos are chromosomally normal and your instance of miscarriage is much lower and I think that's really cool the next question is what advice would you give someone starting out and what do you wish you knew ahead of time I took notes on this cuz I wanted to give it some thought the first one that I put is it's always going to take longer than you think even if your body is cooperative and that's a big F your body is going to do weird things and if you're going to pursue infertility treatment it's likely that your body is the one that's going to do weird things I have PCOS really the only complicating Factor there is that my Cycles are longer and that basically put us back a couple of weeks for our egg retrieval and that sucks so it took longer than I wanted it to we had to move a vacation around it's just always going to take longer so I think going in with little expectation in terms of oh I'm going to be pregnant by this month just get that out of your head that's not a possibility just take everything day by day the next one I have is to not stop planning fun things for yourself I think it's really easy to get caught up in this process but it's a couple of months at the very short end we've been doing this stuff since July and we are moving at a rapid clip I just think it's important to prioritize your life and not forget that you have one I think for me it's been hard to focus on like everyday tasks and stuff but like plan fun stuff when you can I was on birth control for 3 weeks before we started the egg retrieval to get all of my follicles to like cooperate at a baseline we went to Disney we' already planned on going on that trip but specifically I was like you know what let's do this while we can and like have some fun and instead of sitting around for a week being sad and or just excited for the stems to start happening I got to have fun with my husband and like connect with him and I just think plan things to get out of your house I'm not saying you need to go on an expensive vacation please get out of your house also that you're going to need a support system outside of just your partner I think again we are in a unique situation where I won't lie and he knows this cuz I I did communicate this to him I was pretty resentful at the beginning because I have medical fear I was scared I didn't want to put my body through this by all accounts I probably could get spontaneously pregnant so it's like hard not to be a little bit upset that he doesn't have to do anything you you just feel these feelings but like that's not always the most productive thing to aim at your partner who's already dealing with the emotions associated with that so I think having a therapist a trusted friend family member that you can express these feelings to sometimes is important and that's why I said earlier on communicating is important with your partner but it's more so about communicating your needs rather than your actual emotions I guess to add on to that point if you don't have friends or family or someone immediately that you can talk to there are definitely support groups and other communities online that you can find to like talk to or vent to or communicate with iidf Reddit is phenomenal we are fortunate enough to live in a day and age where the internet makes it easy to find those people like it doesn't have to be someone who lives next door to you that you can speak to face to face so I will say part of the reason that we are making this video in general is I will say sometimes it can feel like you're the only person going through a particular thing I think I have not seen very many videos where it's male Factor discussed I've not seen a lot of videos with a heterosexual couple where there is donor material involved like I've seen samesex couples like use donor material I just wanted to like normalize it and also I want people to know that the things that you're experiencing and feeling are normal this sucks but like it is normal I just didn't see a lot of this when it came to Quality things right I remember Googling trying to figure out what's my likelihood of success if like my partners had cancer I couldn't find anything I found a couple of people whose partner had testicular cancer but if I can if sharing this can help someone going through something similar that is so important to me so find a support system seek out information on YouTube Reddit whatever cuz it can really help you feel seen if you don't have someone who's like directly going through it and then the last two things I'll say number one always ask questions and advocate for yourself Hayden touched on it earlier but a big part of this that you don't think about is that this is kind of one of the only medical things that you might experience in your lifetime where you are doing this voluntarily and you are in charge of that process I didn't realize how much I would have to call at my clinic and be like hey what are the next steps for this you know they don't always reach out to you they're relying on you to reach out to them and that's for so many reasons right it's expensive they don't want to push you or whatever but like you going to have to advocate for yourself and I know for me having insurance coverage so grateful for it but I was on the phone multiple times a week with my insurance because they kept screwing up my claims and all kinds of things so you really have to be on top of it and just prepare yourself for having to advocate for yourself unfortunately it's not one siiz fits all and you know your body better than anybody else so feel free to speak up and ask questions if you have questions too to that extent also educated about it you know like educate yourself big time so that you can properly advocate for yourself and ask questions yeah and then the last thing I would say maybe contradictory is like go in with zero expectations but also remain hopeful I think the thing that I struggled with was that I was seeing so many accounts online of negative stories about IVF because most people who are seeking support on places like Reddit are going to tell you their horror stories right and that makes sense and I'm glad that those exist for people who need that support and I'm glad that I went in I think with low expectations but I also think that that left me in a place where I wasn't able to be as hopeful as I could especially because my doctor never gave any indication that we would have trouble and she can't predict things but it wasn't like people were telling me to temper my expectations and I was too hopeful it was like people are telling me this is probably going to be successful and I was like I don't think so and I wish that I would have just allowed myself to enjoy parts of it I know that probably sounds weird but at the end of the day this is hopefully getting us one step closer to having a kid together so I wish that I could have been more helpful throughout the process but now that I am kind of at the tail end of it I feel like I can offer that advice at least kind of related I guess to the next question which is if I'm going to do IVF in the future I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have to do it is there anything that I can do to prepare and I really think you've got it covered at this point if you know you're going to have to do IVF you have an incredible leg up and I think that's where a lot of people tend to struggle and I think maybe again that contributes to why I felt the way I did emotionally but I knew before I got tested not to be rude but like what the issue was yeah for you know I already knew before we had our initial consultation we will be doing IVF we don't have an for IUI it's male Factor this is what we're doing even if I had complicating factors this is what we're doing I think just knowing that helps you prepare emotionally you can get all your crying and sadness out before you even have that consultation so that you can go into IVF being like you know what I'm doing this let's get this done and I think I mostly had that attitude yeah there's some sadness yeah sometimes you'll cry and I'm not saying that I didn't allow myself to feel those negative emotions but I didn't have as many of those as I thought that I would so I think if you know you're going to do it you already have AA but I don't think there's anything you can really do to prepare yourself except for watching videos about it and kind of understand understanding each part of the process I think that helps you against you can advocate for yourself but there's nothing that you need to do really in advance to prepare yourself besides educate yourself the more you can learn about all of the different possibilities and the different drug treatments and all of that sort of thing to help you better advocate for yourself just one instance of this there is a trigger that you inject yourself with to trigger ovulation there's a couple of different kinds and I knew that there was one kind that would potentially cause me to have OHS I was scared of that I knew that that was a thing and so if my doctor hadn't changed my trigger I would have asked her to I would have talked to her about it I would have asked questions thankfully she already had it covered but had I not known anything about the drugs I wouldn't have known to advocate for myself and I think that's how you can sometimes get yourself in trouble let's speed through these last three questions shall we something you wish was universally known or common knowledge about IVF that isn't for me the biggest thing really is what we covered earlier this misconception are you going to have eight babies at once that's just not a thing with IVF it's becoming less of a thing now I honestly think there's not a lot that I think isn't common knowledge but what I would really love truly if you know someone that's going through IVF or or you've just been curious about it even if you don't want kids I would really urge you to do some cursory research on what it is like if this hasn't covered it for you do some cursory research because being a listening ear to someone going through this I think is really important and I think the reason that so many people don't know how to be supportive when it comes to grief when it comes to just any hard topic that comes up is because you've never been through it yourself and you can never put yourself in someone else's shoes if that's never happened to you but by doing research I think it takes the fear out of it and it makes you feel less dumb almost I don't know I just feel like in the past people have come to me with hard things and I'm like it's not that I don't want to listen but like I don't know what the hell is going on and just I think the love and care and affection you can give to someone by doing your own research I think is really helpful that being said don't provide your advice no one wants your advice no one wants your IVF advice if you're not going through it there were times where you know sadly no one I know is going through I I had to educate my mom and my sister on what different things mean you know I was telling my mom day five embryo numbers and she was like I'll be honest like I don't really know what that means you know having to explain that it's not the end of the world but it's just really nice when someone you care about has done the research in advance so I I would say if you can do that I think that you have a leg up I generally like doing that too I think it makes you a more empathetic person yeah so I guess like a broader way to answer something that you wish was universally known or common knowledge about IVF that isn't it would be basically everything about IVF cuz I would say for the most part IVF what it is and what it involves isn't common knowledge you don't need to know the different drug regimens but just generally the process and what it entails I think gives you an incredible amount of empathy and can make you a really supportive and awesome friend or partner for me IVF taught me so much about the female body that I either didn't know or that I thought I knew but misunderstood when he says female body he means people who have ovies and uteruses and menstrual cycles and ovulation and follicles and all of that stuff I just had no idea really how all of that stuff I knew a lot of it but there were just very specific things that are involved in the IVF process that I just didn't know about like how your hormones interplay with the different things how follicle stimulating hormone works luteinizing hormone population there's so there's so many you know it's fascinating and it's cool to learn more about your own body even if you're not going through IVF last two questions why IVF and not adoption and I want to answer this question because it is a horrible question to ask anyone going through infertility treatment and adoption is not the answer to infertility anyone in the adoption Community I would bet would tell you the same thing we definitely discuss fostering and adopting throughout our entire relationship as a potential means to start a family but the more that you learn about that you realize what adoption entails and exactly what it means for the adopted person and the rise of Tik Tok there has been so much talk about what it means to be Don or conceived what it means to be adopted and just the associated trauma and I don't think that all adoption is bad there are plenty of people who have been adopted who see it as a positive experience but when it comes to adoption a lot of adoption is done as infant adoption which can cause trauma on the part of the mother and the child there's also fostering and fostering the goal of that is reunification it is not to place a child in your care forever it's complicated and I think that more people again should do research on what adoption is and what it is not it can be a really incredible thing but it does not a cure for infertility and I think that when people pose it as an alternative to IVF it just does a disservice to everyone and I think that it shows a real for lack of better word ignorance so I I would really hope that people would do more research on adoption and what that means and what IVF is and what that means again I'm not trying to dog on anyone who's made different decisions than us but I do think that to call them interchangeable is just a complete disservice to adoption and you know I've considered Foster in the past too now that I know more about it I think Foster is really awesome like to be a safe space for a child even if they won't be your Forever child I think that's a really cool thing I get see us fostering in the future but we understand what that means and it's not a solution for infertility and then the last question is are you excited to be pregnant what about you Hayden are you excited I answer I'm not going to be pregnant no I'm not excited for you to be pregnant I'm excited to have a kid but I know that you were just going to be a handful when you're pregnant I was a hand you're already a hand handful regularly you're a handful I'm going to be two handfuls obviously you were a handful when you were going through the egg retrieval stuff but I I could be wrong but I think that was worse than what pregnancy is going to be like you know you were that's a big F no you were completely immobile for a large portion of it to be honest that was the worst part is like not being able to do my everyday activities cuz my ovaries were so big but yeah at least with pregnancy and again I could be wrong I've never been pregnant you've never been pregnant the change will be slowly over 9 months instead of over the course of 5 days you will swell up dude it was like a Bellis Swan pregnancy now that I'm thinking about it that is literally the best way to describe the egg retrieval process but I am very excited to be pregnant I have not always felt that way I've always wanted kids I didn't always think that I wanted to be pregnant again I correctly assumed that adoption was the way to have a kid so I thought maybe I'd do that or that i' go to surrogate or like all these different things but with age and experience and with understanding that I'm really strong and I am capable of handling pain I think pregnancy is really cool and I'm really excited to be pregnant so it's going to be kind of wild I just think it's really neat never thought that I'd feel that way but I like am genuinely excited to be pregnant I think it's going to be really neat I'm actually not scared of birth either I know some people are down to be pregnant and scared of birth and I'm you know what bring it on hope I don't die but like it seems pretty tight it's usually like a one maybe two day experience some healing like obviously you're not even pregnant yet but just the whole thing makes me just think about how crazy the human body is in general you know much appreciation for my body that is one of the unintended consequences of this is that I am so much stronger than I thought that I was I can handle pain like a pro I can do pregnancy I think I can do it just watch me like complain the entire night months I mean I'm sure I will oh yeah definitely you will I know but uh I think I can do it I'm looking forward to it so hopefully that happens sooner rather than later like I said we have transfer dates set which is it's going to it's going to be like 3 weeks after you find out that you are pregnant that you're going to be like oh I can't take this anymore hasn't even started growing inside you yet I can't do it I mean to be fair that's when morning tickness kicks in big time for people so I might not be able to do that I do not handle nausea well yeah it'll be an adventure for sure and I'll keep all posted on that I will say that I will be doing a video on the embryo transfer process but I would personally like to have a successful transfer before I share that information and also there's not much that I get to have that is uniquely mine and frankly I have always wanted to completely keep my pregnancy a secret from the internet I won't really be able to do that nor do I want want to at this point anyway I do want to keep my early pregnancy to myself getting that first trimester or the first like 20 weeks and just like have it be between me and my family I think that would be really special I will make another one of these videos when the transfer is successful fingers crossed but I don't want to get ahead of myself it'll be in the vault for a while keep your little paws off yeah I am looking forward to these next steps and I'm excited to share it with you all I hope that this successfully answered all of your questions you have any additional questions leave them in the comments down below and I'll try to answer them as best as I can in that comment section again sorry if we misspoke at any point during this I know that with talk of this it's you know there's a lot of gendered language which we are not always com but we we acknowledge that not everyone who carries a child is a woman we also acknowledge that gender and sex are not the same thing so if we use this interchangeably my apologies but yeah I hope this was semi informative and love you all so much thanks so much for watching and thank you so much for your support over these past few months your advice and your support has been invaluable so see you in the next one shhello welcome back to my channel in today's video we are doing a follow-up to yesterday's video which was my IVF egg retrieval Vlog today we're going to be answering some questions related to IVF and kind of our experience with it also going to hopefully do a little bit of Education here cuz I was realizing as I was filming that Vlog that I left out explanation for some of the stuff that was happening I know that y'all are going to inevitably have questions so I thought I would preemptively ask uh do you all have any IVF related questions on Instagram you'll had a ton so I tried to organize these as best as I can to answer them hopefully at the end of this you'll know and understand like what IVF is or the EG retrieval process and also just like our personal experience with it and I have Hayden here because he's going to provide the male perspective even though he's not the one that like for the like probably three questions that they are aimed at me no I think you'll have some in playay for more than that but we'll we'll see the first question we're going to answer and we'll keep this one I'll keep it as brief as I can I wrote a lot of notes for this one what is IVF I think that is a question that I get often and or like what the steps of the process involve so FF stands for invitro fertilization it's basically the process of taking an egg and a sperm putting them together in a Petri dish and Hope hopefully making an embryo that will turn into a human child it is a lot more complicated than that obviously there's like multiple steps involved but it can be broken down i' would say into two major steps which is the egg retrieval process and the embryo transfer process in a given month each woman has a bunch of different follicles competing to release an egg and whichever follicle is the most mature is the one that releases an egg so in any given month most women release just one egg and I'm sorry if I'm using gendered language here obviously there are people who ovulate that are not women but in an IVF cycle you want to retrieve as many eggs as possible and so you are put on a course of stimulation medication which makes all of your follicles grow at once and mature together and in some IVF protocols you're also given a medicine that prevents you from ovulating prematurely at the end of the stimulation process which is usually between 8 and 14 days you are given a drug that then makes you ovulate within a 36- hour time period at the end of that 36 hours is when the actual retrieval takes place with an ultrasound guided needle through the vagina the eggs are aspirated from the follicles and at the end that means sucked out like a V you're put under anesthesia typically for this process you are left with a certain amount of eggs which are then fertilized and hopefully will turn into embryos over a 5 to 7 day period if this sounds complicated it's cuz it is also during that uh stimulation round I should say like during the stimulation period that is again between 8 to 14 days you go in for blood draws to check your estrogen levels and also to check your follicle development and the follicle development checks are with a fashional ultrasound to see how each of your follicles is growing hopefully they're growing at similar rates so that you have a ton of mature eggs Whenever there is a retrieval and not all of the eggs are mature not everyone has a large volume of eggs it just really depends on your particular statistics um so that is kind of the egg retrieval process in a nutshell just kind of like rattled off a bunch of backs the second part is the embryo transfer which we have not personally been through yet we don't know all of the details involved but it involves basically putting an embryo back in you so that hopefully you can sustain a pregnancy first question for us is why did y all decide to do IVF and how long were you trying before you decided to do it we tried for I think a little over a year and I say tried yeah I think try is sort of a generalization and I think it's interesting to consider what try means to you for us we tracked ovulation for or at least I tracked ovulation for 3 to four months to make sure I was ovulating I was having like long and regular Cycles after coming off of hormonal birth control which is like a whole another story you can listen to more of that in some of my weekly Vlogs but I knew I was ovulating and within I would say four to 5 months I kind of knew something was up but I personally wasn't really ready to take the next steps of like getting tested and all of those things so I think we just kind of carried on for a little over a year and and also we were at a point in our lives where we weren't really sure what the next year or so of our lives were necessarily going to look like and so we weren't 100% we're definitely trying to have a baby or get pregnant but if it happens that's also fine like it would be fine it would be great started to figure out like what our life was going to look like over the next couple of years that we were going to be staying here rather than moving into a different city which is important and something to consider we decided that we would uh start to get tested I do think it's important to note too that we had some like context for maybe what was going on aen had Childhood Cancer when he was about 10 months old underwent a leukemia chemotherapy protocol that had never been tested before on other people we kind of had an inkling that that could be a problem with I didn't think like oh there were problems because in all other aspects of my life I haven't developed any lasting issues so I knew that it was a possibility but I wasn't like oh something's definitely wrong with me it's also easier for me to get tested than it is for a woman to get tested we thought might as well just start with me and if they said that I was fully okay then she would get tested afterwards yeah that's it's less invasive and I always recommend if you are in sort of like a head sort of situation get the man tested first it's much easier less invasive it's also probably less expensive too yeah and maybe I think maybe we had different perspectives but I think for me again after trying for four to five months red flags were going off and I was thinking it probably is a sperm quality issue and I think honestly that was like part of what helped me cope with it quicker I guess I kind of knew before we even got tested what I was trying to say is that it's not like this is something that I had been expecting to happen for years prior to this you know what I'm saying I never thought that there was any lasting effects from my chemotherapy treatment is what I was trying to say but like I didn't I didn't expect for it to be maybe just because of Intuition or like my negative thinking I feel like I've just always had this thought in the back of my head that we would have to pursue fertility treatment I just watched a ton of videos online in years previous because I have always been interested in caring a child well maybe not always interested but I've always been interested in pregnancy I have seen infertility videos and I was like I wonder if I'll have to do that it has crossed our mind over the past 13 years we've been together that there could be an issue not that there definitely was but we thought about it like once or twice before so how did we decide to actually go through with IVF though that was definitely a conversation that we had to have and it's interesting I think from like my perspective our fertility I should say and like our testing the results were that Hayden has male Factor infertility and that I have PCOS my PCOS is fairly mild and I am ovulatory so we believe that I probably could get pregnant spontaneously but we're not entirely sure so it's primarily male factor I have like a really really low count in comparison to most people and so that also precluded us from being able to do IUI yeah other other like forms of fertility treatment and we definitely had conversations we have talked openly about adoption in the past we have learned more about adoption I think as the years have gone on which has made us more hesitant to kind of go that route cuz there's a lot of trauma involved and there that's a whole another thing we'll answer that question later but for me I think i' always told myself even though I like kind of had this inkling that we would have to do something like this I always told myself I don't want to do IVF like I'm scared of medication I'm scared of medical procedures I've never had surgery before I've never been under anesthesia I was really scared of going that route but I think what I realize as I get older is that like things just happen and you just get to decide how you're going to respond to them in the moment like you can say all you want oh I'll never do this or I'll never do that but until you get there it's hard to say and for me it was like if Hayden's male factor is like the only thing that's keeping us from having a child and we can you know still have a kid why wouldn't I give that a try at least one try and I I did set boundaries for myself too I will say that I think is something that's important but I definitely said to myself I think I only want to do one round of EG retrieval I mean obviously we'll get to that when we do but I was like I think I just want to do one round and I think that will be my boundary and if like that doesn't work out then we yeah that's that's kind of how we decided on it and we have had long discussions I mean there's like we can't go into all of the details on like what how we decided to do that but yeah we just decided we would give it a try the next question is what are the odds of success on the first try so this is an interesting question cuz it's really dependent on your statistics and there's a really cool calculator online that's provided by sart which is is something about assisted reproductive technology maybe like a an Institute they collect data on people who have been through these treatments and their particular fertility issues and kind of spit out numbers and statistics based on that so for our factors PCOS my age My amh Level and haen fertility the way that they spit out the numbers is on one egg retrieval with all of your potential embryo transfers from that particular egg retrieval are likelihood of success for first round egg retrieval is 71% and that goes up with the second retrieval which I think is more like 85% and what exactly does that because I didn't know about this like calculator or statistic what does that mean like probability of success on first time egg retriev believe it is live births is the statistic I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that it is regardless you can check out the calculator online yourself I think that gave me a lot of comfort going into the process knowing that it would likely be successful obviously there's no accounting for biology and what your body decides to do that's a huge Factor here but for us the statistics were kind of on our side and anecdotally I had heard that people that had PCOS with male Factor to have fairly good results so I felt confident going into it but I did obviously go in hesitant I wasn't like oh it's going to be a success I just you know next question is do you have to have surgery again or was a onetime thing I think this person is referring to the egg retrieval process it again is so dependent on your particular circumstances some people have diminished ovarian reserve which means that you have a lower than average number of eggs for your age and that is going to really impact how many retrievals you have some people are only able to get one two three four eggs in a retrieval I will say I was very very fortunate to have retrieved 29 eggs 28 of which were mature so I don't personally believe that I will have to undergo another egg retrieval we got 13 embryos out of that that are being genetically tested as we speak we don't expect all 13 to make it through to be genetically normal but it is very likely given those statistics that we will probably have at least a few to transfer and again with their statistics it's likely that things will be successful I don't like to treat it as it's as if it's a foregone conclusion but hopeful and I try to remain positive especially that we've had good luck so far but yeah I I don't think I will have to do a surgery again and if I do if we have a ton of fail transfers we'll have that conversation once we we get there but right now we're hopeful that that will be our only agrial the next question is a question that I think kind of goes hand inand with that has IVF changed what you were hoping for with your family number of children age gaps Etc sure it has a little bit because I think that regardless of whatever your ideas of what you want I think that that always changes a little bit when someone puts boundaries on it you know for me specifically I don't think it changed it that much though cuz I didn't necessarily want like a ton of children anyways if anything I think that it just kind of naturally limits a little bit how many kids that you either can or would want to have it makes you think about it a little bit more to say I think for me it's like a yes and situation so yes it did kind of make me consider things more I think to me it really made me more realistic about who I am as a person I think this whole process it's taught me a lot about who I am and I've always had this vision of like being a stay-at-home mom and having like four to five children like running around and you know just like making that my life and I think if I'm really realistic with myself I like to work I love working on my channel I love being creatively fulfilled and I don't know that I'd be able to do that with that many children and in speaking with people who have a lot of children just kind of their opinions on it I think honestly like I would be happy with one child I mean we'll see we'll really see we really don't know for sure I think you don't know even when you don't have to face these sorts of odds you still have to think after you have your first kid like do I want I was going to say you really don't know until you have child right like you can have some kind of ideas but at the end of the day they're kind of just ideas I will say though yes it does technically change things a bit yeah I mean if you are someone with diminished AR Varian Reserve you only get one embryo from a particular cycle and you want to increase your odds they say that if you have three embryos that are genetically normal that it is likely you'll have a live birth from that so if you want to increase your odds it would make sense to do multiple rounds so you do have to kind of consider that I think when you're going into this but I personally was just very happy with the idea of having one child yeah I really came to terms with that we'll see down the road who knows we don't know how many genetically normal embryos we have going through this process I think kind of makes you appreciate even just being able to have one child this is a related question has the number of embryos influenced how many kids you want so now that we know how many we have has that influenced you at all no so it hasn't influenced me at all a lot of the process of IVF I have left decisions up to chanler because at the end of the day it is not my body I don't have to go through the pregnancy I don't have to do all of the other stuff associated with trying to get pregnant and so let's say even if I really wanted to have like four kids I am not the kind of person like there's no way that I would ask that of you and I think that that would be the case for me even if we didn't have to go through IVF and it was just natural pregnancy even just pregnancy in and of itself I don't have to carry a baby for 9 months I will never ask you to do that it's a decision for us both to make but I think that for me it's like a you first decision and then I can either to have very similar opinions on things we're we're in constant communication it's not like I've really surprised you I think I'll answer it from my perspective I think it does obviously it's very dependent on how many are genetically normal but we got many more embryos from Hayden than we expected if I'm able to have more than one child and I want to that's awesome and I think it's opened my mind a little bit more to having more than one kid but we shall see let's move on to the next question cuz that one took a while since IVF allows for you to choose single tin or twin pregnancies do you have a preference so this is one of the biggest misconceptions with IVF that I think that I see often I think people lump all of assisted reproductive technology into one bucket and don't seem to understand that it is multiple different things there's IVF which is what we did There's IUI and then there's also timed intercourse now IUI and I think timed intercourse that is like medicated to help you ovulate I believe those ones have higher rates of multiples simply because you're taking drugs to essentially make you more fertile with IVF you get to decide how many embryos go inside you but it is highly recommended for people under the age of 35 to only transfer one embryo if they want to have a successful life birth I don't think a lot of people understand that multiples are inherently high-risk pregnancies I don't know all of the statistics and all of the things that kind of go into that but I had no interest in having a potentially risky pregnancy that is not to shame anyone who has done that who has transferred multiple everybody's situation is so totally different stuff to you and your doctor I think that's a huge misconception I got that question so many times and I get it but no that is just not the case and it's becoming much less common practice even with people over the age of 35 the recommendations from the American reproduction Ive Association I don't know what the acronym is they have some very like please don't do this sort of Vibes and I'm like yeah I'm going to listen to science and what my what my doctor says how soon after retrieval can you transfer an embryo so this is going to vary personto person there are two different kinds of embryo transfers there are fresh and frozen transfers fresh transfers happen typically 5 to 7 days after the agrial process after the embryos are nice and like developed cooked whatever uh they put them back cooked they put the embryo inside of whoever's going to carry the embryo those are becoming much less common because they tend to be less successful because of your high estrogen levels typically after an egg retrieval you're pumping yourself full of like follicle stimulating hormon so it makes sense that it would potentially be less successful and then there's Frozen transfers which typically take a little bit longer these are often done too because people choose to genetically test their embryos which takes a little bit of time so your embryos are just Frozen and waiting for you whenever you're ready the embryo transfer process looks super different depending on just your drug protocol but I would say a very typical one would be birth control pills for let's say 2 to 3 weeks just to kind of like hold your cycle until your Clinic's ready to go then you do I think two weeks of estrogen support so either patches pills or injections and then you get like kind of a lining check to make sure that your uterine lining is looking good and ready for a embryo and then 5 days before the transfer you start taking Progesterone and oil shots in your hey and then you get the embryo transfer it really depends like how long are you on birth control for if you're on birth control how long is it going to take for your lining to develop it really just depends I would say earliest probably a month after your egg retrieval and it's just nice to give your body time to heal cuz you're really bloated after that happens so about a month I would say and then someone asked how long does it take to heal from an egg retrieval this is something that so widely varies and I want to emphasize that because on Reddit I saw so many different accounts of kind of what can happen there is a syndrome called ohss which is ovarian hypers stimulation syndrome that can occur afterwards where your follicles fill up with fluid more than is normal and you just feel like crap for a little while can lead to breathing difficulties and um in rare cases death which is you know scary of course I will say for me it took me about 3 days to feel like myself again I would say it takes until your next period to feel kind of like 100% normal but within 3 days I was able to walk around normally and I felt much better I was really lucky and that I had just a super easy recovery I did not have OHS which is something that is more common in people who have higher ovarian reserves and have more follicles I think because of the particular ovulatory trigger that I took I did not have that problem so it just really depends on you next question is how long does it take from start to finish assuming the embryo transfer works that's a great question I would say if you're doing it as quickly as possible maybe about 2 months but I think that it always takes longer than you think it's going to take your body is going to do weird things that you can't control for and I think that going in with little to no expectation is really smart and also that two months is assuming that you've already done your done your testing done your consultations you know exactly what's going down and you're kind of constantly communicating with your clinic and doctors to figure out what the next step is we have this all planned out and we're just going to go through the steps as quickly as possible two months but obviously a lot longer than that a lot longer than that yeah the next question is what kind of injections are you given and what meds were you on specifically so everybody's drug protocol looks different there I think are two different protocols that are most common there's the antagonist protocol and there's the long protocol I was on the antagonist protocol which is kind of I think the drug regimen they give to the most amount of people just cuz it's easy so you are given two different drugs or sometimes one just kind of depending to stimulate your follicle growth I was on menure and godal F there are different names for those I cannot remember the other names for them but those are ones that you do inject subcutaneously which means into your fat rather than your muscle really short needles not super painful and then the antagonist comes in depending on how large your follicles are getting it's the drug that you take to prevent ovulation so it kind of like is the antagonist and I took crati I think I started taking cetra tide on the morning of day four I was a very good responder to the medication I did stimulation medication for 9 days I took the trigger on day 10 and had my retrieval on day 12 so I had a shorter length of time but I would say the antagonist protocol typically takes between 8 to 14 days and some of the other protocols can take longer I was surprised at my response but also not like I knew I would respond well but those were the injections that I was giving myself so I took my gonal f and my menure at night and I took my straide in the morning your doctor will kind of let you know what you need to do the dosages I was on for half of the cycle I was on 150 IUS of gonal 75 IUS of menop and then like cetti is just one dose and then kind of Midway through they switched me to 75 of gunal F and staying on 75 of met pure those are incredibly low doses but again because of my age and my fertility statistics that was what I needed and I was really happy with how I stimulated and my doctor was too was it physically painful is a next question no not necessarily here's the thing I hate needles I am a baby when it comes to Needles I don't want a shot I don't want to get my blood drawn but these were some of the least painful things I've ever done I would say near the end of the stimulation as your follicles start to grow you start to feel more bloated and you can feel your ovaries moving around inside of you your skin gets a little taut and it's harder to puncture the skin so that was a little painful like the last day or two but leading up to that I was surprised at how little it hurt the menure did burn a little bit upon injection but it was over so quickly it really wasn't a major deal to me and I would say after the first 2 to 3 days I was very experienced giving myself injections and I wasn't it wasn't a big deal how did you cope with injections blood draws Etc when you hat it I think for me the biggest thing that I did was I was given access to a portal or whatever called freedom teach it teaches you how to inject all of these medications I watched those videos religiously before I even was shipped the medication I'd also watched a ton of videos on other people and their experiences and their Pro tips I was on Reddit a ton and I think that that sort of desensitized me to the idea of it to where when I got the medication in front of me I was like I know exactly what I have to do I can do this I feel confident and yeah the first time is a little scary and there were a couple of times I'm sure you saw in the Vlog if you watched it that I kind of like psyched myself out the first day but I got through it the injections were okay the blood draws how did I get through that I just tried to not think about it frankly those sucked and are by far in my opinion the worst part of the process everybody's going to be different I have really sensitive inner arms just generally speaking I bruise really easily so I got bruised very quickly cuz you're alternating arms you're getting blood draws every two days for that that period it's just not it's not a fun time this is something that I think I would mention too we wake up at 8:00 a.m. every day we work from home we were all back to work I was having to wake up at 6:45 to inject myself with my satra tide and then immediately leave to go get my blood drawn before 8:30 so it could be a stat call which means that the information would be at my doctor you know by two or something like that and that made me feel like I won't lie it messes up your digestion which is not something you want to happen when you were going through IVF injections so that actually was I think more physically painful than anything was like getting up early and going and get your blood drawn and I know we probably sound like babies cuz like most people wake up before 8 but just being thrown off your routine is just not fun especially when it's for not fun things and I know this might sound weird but the fact that it was only every other morning that we actually had to go get the blood drawn meant that every other day you would get back in bed to sleep so it meant that every day your schedule was a little bit different it was not great I will say everybody's experience mentally is going to be so different for me Strangely I did not think of like oh there's a baby at the end of this you're doing this for your future child I know a lot of people probably get through it that way I didn't think about that I literally just thought of what am I having to do in the next hour like what is the next thing that I have to do I tried not to think for long periods of time Easter s done obviously about like oh my God it's noon and I have to inject myself at 6:00 I just like didn't think about that I just kept going in my life at least I tried to question did you have to inject yourself no this is definitely something that's up to your discretion you can have your partner do it you can have a friend do it I did not want someone else to inject me and I'm not looking forward to the second part of this process where he will likely have to inject me cuz it's just in an awkward location I wanted to do it myself I like to be in control of my own pain and I 100% stand by that decision I'm so glad that I did it myself and it also makes you feel really strong and in touch with your body almost and the process that you're going through I know that some people like having their partner involved and that makes them feel like oh you know we're doing this together and Hayden was there for some of the injections which which helped um and he helped me clean up afterwards but I wanted to do it myself I had a tough time because I know that me being around kind of stressed her out a little bit but at least for the first couple of times we didn't know if I was going to pass out exactly so I wanted to be around because I didn't want to be off in another room and not hear her fall and hit her head on the counter or something are you keeping a tally of doctor's visits and needles so I put this question here because I think it kind of feedbacks off the last one I didn't do that I people do that some people do that and I know some people keep all of their syringes and needles and like to kind of make a little set around their child and take pictures with like them like we prayed for you oh yeah I mean I kind of get it but also that's kind of scary I don't know this process has been so interesting emotionally like it's much different than I expected it's not that I don't think about children I think once we got to the actual embryo creation stage is when I was thinking of kids but before that I just wasn't thinking about that so for me no I'm not taking a tally of doctor's visits and needles and absolutely no judgment I want to put this out there no judgment I just don't feel like I need to show my kids oh you were so wished for so prayed for I'm hoping that in my actions as a parent they'll see that and that I won't have to to them like oh you know 15 needles and 18 doctor's visits to get you here I just to me that feels vindictive and I know that that is not the intention for people and people are well- meaning but that's just how I conceptualize that and so no that's just like not at all how I think about things so yeah no I did not keep it tally and I will not be keeping it tally so at the end of all of this I think I've mentioned we have 13 embryos someone says when you say you have 13 embryos where are they funny you asked they're right here that's a great question the embryos are are frozen they can be thought at any time I think actually I was reading recently that the oldest frozen embryo has been transferred or whatever like I think it's was like a 30-year-old embryo they are at our embryology lab and they are frozen and ready for us whenever the genetic testing comes back I wonder how long it takes to thaw them I don't know and I don't want to think about it like you know it's not like chicken like you have to thaw it overnight how much does IVF cost and did your insurance cover any of it I hate saying this for every question but it's so dependent on your clinic your state your country and also your insurance so most insurance plans do not cover fertility or infertility at all it's like kind of considered elective yeah it's considered an elective thing and that has insens me at times I will say we were lucky enough to have very good fertility coverage through my employer so we had the vast majority of things covered but I will say IVF really depends I would say the ballpark I typically see thrown out is $10 to $30,000 I think the low-end estimate is without medication and medication is expensive so that's something you have to factor in but there are definitely work and ways to pay for it you can Finance IVF can work for an employer who does cover it and that information actually is pretty publicly available I know that that's like a very timeconsuming and strenuous thing to do to try to find a job somewhere that will have that coverage I just happen to look out but that is definitely a thing Facebook Google those kinds of companies cover it I think Starbucks does too and there's also other options as well like you can do an egg retrieval where you give half of your eggs as a donation and that will cut down the cost I know some clinics do that some clinics will also have a deal where you can preemptively sign up for three rounds like if you know you have diminished a Varian Reserve you're going to have to do multiple rounds if you pay up front for the three rounds then it's a lot cheaper they'll cut you a three for yeah so there are definitely a lot of different ways to do it I will say I know that the transfer is usually between $2 to $5,000 so the transfer itself is much less expensive but obviously the egg retrieval there's anesthesia involved the medications involved in that process are much more expensive too so yeah to answer your question it is expensive there are options I kind of hate living in the US where it's not covered by most insurance plans but luckily it was covered for us the majority of it was the next question is did you wind up using donor sperm on all of your eggs this is a question that arose because we have talked pretty openly on some of the Vlogs or at least I've talked openly and Hayden has told me I can talk openly about it that we decided to use donor sperm for half of our eggs because of Hayden situation we had no idea what the quality of sperm would be that is something that you run into with fertility unfortunately there's statistics and a lot of stuff's tied to your age Etc but when it comes to the actual genetic normaly I suppose you could say of your eggs versus your sperm there aren't really any good tests for those like they can't like biopsy an egg andt tell oh this is great or sperm and do the same and there are some tests that exist for DNA fragmentation on sperm but the information that we get from that is like pretty mixed and that wasn't an option for us anyway so we just didn't want to retrieve eggs and have the potential of none of them fertilizing none of them becoming embryos I mean obviously I want to haveen child te yeah but if they if they weren't going to work period Then they weren't going to work period And so might as well hedge the BET basically yeah we are very I would say level-headed logical people and I'm not saying that you're not logical if you decide that you don't want to use donor us it was just let's make the best of a potentially shitty situation if we get great results but like not enough embryos from haen we could also do another round like there's so many options this was kind of a diagnostic and they often tell you hey your first round of egg retrieval is diagnostic it doesn't work the first time for a lot of people and for me I would have felt extra bad if not only did my stuff not work and not fertilize any eggs but we used it on all of the eggs and then we would have to do it again anyways you know I would feel I would feel bad about that thankfully we got embryos from both and a lot from both so we do know that Hayden's material works at least to the embryo stage like we haven't gotten the genetic the genetic testing I think since we're here it'll probably be okay regardless it's unlikely that we will end up using the donor material so that is kind of not something that we think about or we're not thinking about that right now but we have considered that very deeply I will say there's more questions about that so did deciding to use donor material affect your relationship I would say no I don't know how much this question is posed at me versus you but the way that I think about it is either my stuff works or it doesn't right and if it works then cool if it doesn't work then my options are to either adopt a child or have a child with donor material but your egg where at least it is your child it would feel almost like spiteful to be like oh well if it can't be my kid then it can't be yours either it didn't really make that much sense to me and so no it for me it didn't affect how I felt about the relationship or the process or anything like that because especially because it's due to something that I can't control you know like I had cancer when I was a baby you know he can control for I will say we actually had slightly different perspectives at different points during the sort of like are we going to use donor material are we going to let's look at donor material together online cuz you get to look at like baby pictures and profiles which is very it's like strange I will say it's a weird process honestly for me I was having the most I don't know about this sort of feelings but I think I tried to detach my emotions and just go for what made sense logically and I felt like you know once we have the embryos I think I will have more clarity around it didn't think I was going to regret and I definitely don't regret it now even though I know your stuff works I don't regret doing that yeah cuz I mean it it just makes sense you know Mak sense for us it might not make sense it might not make sense for you yeah you might feel differently about it you might feel like oh well if it can't be both of our child then let's just adopt so you know we we'll be like equal in the scenario or something like that but and every yeah everybody's going to come to a different conclusion I also will mention too I also thought of it from the perspective of like queer couples if it's a lesbian couple for instance they're going to have to use donor material whether it's a known donor or an anonymous donor and they don't have I would assume the Frau sort of like oh it's not going to be biologically mind sort of thing and frankly like that's just not us anyway like we are just not that tied to the idea of biology like yes I would love to carry my own child but it's not the biology that excites me I want to be pregnant which we'll get to you later all that to say it didn't really affect our relationship the next question is are you doing pgs or pgta testing and are you genetic testing for gender or just at random okay so pgs and pgta testing are considered the same thing pgta I believe is like the newer term and it is basically the base level of genetic testing that you can do on there's a few different kinds that you can do but pgta testing looks at the cells on the outside of the embryo and tests the chromosomes specifically it doesn't get into Gene specific things there is testing for that it's a little more invasive and potentially riskier but pgta testing is very standard and it's something that a lot of people tend to opt into because it can very much reduce the risk of miscarriage so pgta testing was something that was covered by our insurance as kind of a part of the package deal basically there are a couple of things that were covered which was just general free freeze all cycle IVF with with ixie included which is when you put the sperm directly into the egg rather than just like putting them in a dish and saying what what fertilizes then also pgta testing was covered basically just test the chromosomes on the outside and those chromosomes are like the cells on the outside tend to turn into the placenta so it's not damaging the embryo cell when they're testing these things and we did not decide to do this for gender or for sex but that is one of the things that you do typically find out depending on your state some states actually don't allow you to see the sex of your child really I didn't know that yeah but Texas does allow you to find out the sex and honestly I like to look at it as a little treat you know like I had to go through this and I can choose I guess basically embryo develop between 5 to 7 days and the five and six day embryos tend to be better quality than day seven embryos so they kind of grade based on days and then also grade based on is the embryo euploid which is chromosomally normal or anupol which is Crum only abnormal they also tell you the sex so for us obviously if the top three embryos that we have are all not our preferred sex obviously I want a healthy baby like that is my priority is like having a healthy baby carrying my baby to term yeah like if we only have one like s TI your embryo yeah like we're going to we that one you but if it's you know all All Odds are the same or everything else equal I would choose the sex of my child and the next question was will you opt to know the sex or do you want it to be a mystery I personally want to know I think it will help me feel more connected to this process and again it's just kind of a perk I know some people want that to feel more like a traditional pregnancy where you find out at like I don't know what is it 12 to 20 weeks or something like that but honestly I don't care about that there are other things that I'm going to do to make my pregnancy feel more normal for us that we made the decision that we will know the sex and if we have the we will choose the sex of our child the next question is how is Hayden feeling about the results of the egg retrieval good I mean I didn't know if my stuff worked at all okay so we we had kind of a little like roller coaster so initially you know obviously we didn't know how my stuff worked at all after the egg transfer or sorry after after the egg retrieval they immediately fertilized the eggs yes so when we got the results back from the fertilization I was feeling really good because obviously and I found out that I fertilized a decent number of eggs you know like more eggs than the donor actually and so I was was feeling really good about that because I was like at least it works well enough to fertilize yeah and then they give you results for your embryos progress yeah so kind of the way it works in terms of like actual embryo development is that once they hit a certain look I guess is when they freeze them right and that could happen on day five six or seven so you get like a day five report of like on day five this is how many we could freeze yeah and so on day five when we got the results I think I only had one embryo on day five and I think the donor had I can't remember how many the donor had but it was definitely like more like it was kind of a more normal number to expect for day yeah for day five we were bummed yeah but I I wasn't like crushed because I knew that we still had day six and day seven left as possibilities but definitely took a bit of a dip there but that's the only time that I've really been feeling negative about it and then day six we got the results back and I again had more embryos than the donor so yeah I'm feeling good about it overall I'm also just very happy that we got good results on our first egg retrieval because because one of the things that I personally have struggled with and I know it sounds kind of like stupid or selfish but I hate that chanders had to go through this you know and obviously I feel a little bit of guilt about it even though it's not something that I did necessarily it is because of me that she's got to like stick herself with needles and have her blood drawn and stuff like that and have your ovaries swell up to the size of a grapefruit and so yeah that's true obviously I don't feel great about that and so the least number of times that I can quote unquote put you through that even though I didn't ask you you know I didn't like force you to to go through this like I know that it is your choice too yeah I do feel a little bit bad about it and so I am really happy that one my stuff works and two we only had to do the egg retrieval hopefully one time but it's looking like one time oh an interesting thing that I I will point out that I don't know if we've mentioned elsewhere is the day seven report was the most interesting though because they told us that two more embryos had been frozen for biopsy they did not tell us whose embryos those were doesn't really matter but like we were just I I want to know what the final numbers were yeah and I'm sure we'll find out like once we get the actual report back but like I just thought that was interesting so the next question is what's the best way to support your partner through this process we're getting into the emotional category I mean I think that that's really difficult to answer because I think it really depends on your situation you know like everyone has a very specific infertility journey I think the best thing you can do is to stay in communication about your needs and I don't mean that you need to communicate all the time about everything you're feeling cuz sometimes those feelings are not best shared with your partner and I'll get into that in like another question that I'm going to answer but I think like communicating what you need is super super important like hey honestly I just need some time to like think about this or like I really need to like vent or whatever um communicating that I think is important because you don't want to leave your partner in the dark especially if your partner is the one who is the main factor you don't want that person to be like sitting there sad and you not support them it's just complicated I think emotionally we were in sort of a weird spot because when you are dealing with male Factor unfortunately it just is the case that it is your Factor but I'm the one that has to under I can't do basically anything about it it does it does have complicating the emotions are big like you definitely you're going to have big emotions and I think communicating your needs is important not always your emotions but your needs is important the next question is did you find the process to be emotionally isolating and did you feel like you could talk about it with friends and family I'll answer first so I think this question is definitely going a very person to person for me I don't really allow those sorts of thoughts to go into my head I'm going be honest for me if you are my friend and I talk to you daily you're going to get my stream of Consciousness thoughts and I'm going to tell you how I'm feeling I did not hesitate I had my two best friends my sister and my mom and I was constantly telling them I just got the results back from my embryo report I'm stressed you know I'm just I'm feeling really sad or like I feel like I can't talk to Hayden about this not because he wouldn't be there to support me but because it was about him and I didn't want to like make him sad so I actually didn't feel isolated I think at times like you do feel sad seeing people around you get pregnant and have no idea how hard it can be to conceive but I didn't think about that a ton and I think that was because I had friends and family who were willing to listen and I think you unfortunately in almost all situations if you need something you kind of have to communicate it whether you have a loss in your family that you're sad about unfortunately when it comes to hard topics people are just not really great at asking questions or being there unless you bring it to them and so I always brought it to them rather than having them come to me and ask like oh Harry are you okay it's not fun for someone to ask that all the time not that it should be a responsibility always to bring your infertility up but yeah I just I really took it upon myself to like seek what I needed and I think that really really helped me easier said than done but I do think having a support system especially outside of your partner is pretty important for me I have a tendency to not share my emotions as much as I should just generally but the thing for me was I did obviously have some feelings about the fact that I wasn't that fertile those feelings were hugely outweighed by the feeling of I guess like guilt or sadness that I had to then put you through something in order for us to have a child I definitely communicated that to you I would say more than I did other people but it wasn't because I don't have people that would listen to that didn't feel that productive to share with other people that I was feeling bad for you but that being said you might not have shared your emotions but you talked to your mom very often about fertility all of your friends knew we were doing Iva I didn't like keep it from them I just meant specifically this question was about emotionally how much were you sharing your feelings with the people around you or did you feel like you could and I definitely felt like I could I have great friends and family all around me I just I would say a lot of the times I have a tendency to not share as much as I could that being said how are you feeling emotionally I'm feeling good now is I mean I've already said it before many times the main feeling that I have is guilt and I think I'm going to continue feeling that until you're no longer having to put needles in you you don't think you're going to feel that way when I'm pregnant well yeah cuz you're still going to be putting needles in you but then after that you wanted this so you I can't I can't feel that bad for you while you're pregnant I don't want to have a baby inside me but if you do then that's on you yeah so I emotionally am feeling really good we've set a transfer date I will not be telling you when that is cuz I don't know if it'll be successful and also that's my business and not yours but I'm feeling really good I think once we set the transfer date I felt this feeling of oh like I could be pregnant soon like it's getting real so I emotionally am like excited nervous I'm just so grateful I can't express to you how lucky I feel especially given all of the stuff I've read on Reddit all of these people who are suffering because their outcomes are not the same as mine I feel blessed every day I feel so incredibly grateful and fortunate so I'm feeling really good like emotionally I'm feeling awesome not looking forward to getting shots in my ass but other than that I'm feeling great what's the best and worst part of this journey best part hopefully we'll have a kid at the end yeah I think the answer is like having a kid at the end of this but technically if things worked like they should then this wouldn't be a journey in the first place and there would still be the same outcome so I don't know if I would say that that's a best outcome but it is the outcome you know so I'm going to take a different TX but yes for it so I would say best part is I think it has given us a lot of time to consider what it means to be a parent what we want from our lifestyle once we have a child and I'm not saying that people don't do this if they get pregnant spontaneously but I think for us we have really had to think about like what we want out of life and how our kids going to fit into that and I think it has brought us closer together for sure oh yeah we've had you know really tough times the worst part obviously is having to do it in the first place no one is excited to inject themselves with needles or undergo surgeries just to have a kid you know some people just get to and have a kid and we just don't that's sus logistically in actuality yeah the the worst part is blood draws and part of that being the frequency and the other part of that being the fact that it's early as hell in the morning when you it's always early in the morning sus so that's the worst part but yeah I feel really lucky in that we had one of the easiest times that you could possibly have basically went textbook perfect and I really can't complain I told Hayden too after I did the egg retrieval even like the day of in the day after when you're supposed to be in the most pain I was like I could do this again I don't want to I really don't want to if you had yeah the other like positives that I would think about is like not only did we really have to consider having a child we get to choose when we're ready and and if we want to we can choose the gender and if you are someone who is medically nervous there's something really cool knowing that your embryos are chromosomally normal and your instance of miscarriage is much lower and I think that's really cool the next question is what advice would you give someone starting out and what do you wish you knew ahead of time I took notes on this cuz I wanted to give it some thought the first one that I put is it's always going to take longer than you think even if your body is cooperative and that's a big F your body is going to do weird things and if you're going to pursue infertility treatment it's likely that your body is the one that's going to do weird things I have PCOS really the only complicating Factor there is that my Cycles are longer and that basically put us back a couple of weeks for our egg retrieval and that sucks so it took longer than I wanted it to we had to move a vacation around it's just always going to take longer so I think going in with little expectation in terms of oh I'm going to be pregnant by this month just get that out of your head that's not a possibility just take everything day by day the next one I have is to not stop planning fun things for yourself I think it's really easy to get caught up in this process but it's a couple of months at the very short end we've been doing this stuff since July and we are moving at a rapid clip I just think it's important to prioritize your life and not forget that you have one I think for me it's been hard to focus on like everyday tasks and stuff but like plan fun stuff when you can I was on birth control for 3 weeks before we started the egg retrieval to get all of my follicles to like cooperate at a baseline we went to Disney we' already planned on going on that trip but specifically I was like you know what let's do this while we can and like have some fun and instead of sitting around for a week being sad and or just excited for the stems to start happening I got to have fun with my husband and like connect with him and I just think plan things to get out of your house I'm not saying you need to go on an expensive vacation please get out of your house also that you're going to need a support system outside of just your partner I think again we are in a unique situation where I won't lie and he knows this cuz I I did communicate this to him I was pretty resentful at the beginning because I have medical fear I was scared I didn't want to put my body through this by all accounts I probably could get spontaneously pregnant so it's like hard not to be a little bit upset that he doesn't have to do anything you you just feel these feelings but like that's not always the most productive thing to aim at your partner who's already dealing with the emotions associated with that so I think having a therapist a trusted friend family member that you can express these feelings to sometimes is important and that's why I said earlier on communicating is important with your partner but it's more so about communicating your needs rather than your actual emotions I guess to add on to that point if you don't have friends or family or someone immediately that you can talk to there are definitely support groups and other communities online that you can find to like talk to or vent to or communicate with iidf Reddit is phenomenal we are fortunate enough to live in a day and age where the internet makes it easy to find those people like it doesn't have to be someone who lives next door to you that you can speak to face to face so I will say part of the reason that we are making this video in general is I will say sometimes it can feel like you're the only person going through a particular thing I think I have not seen very many videos where it's male Factor discussed I've not seen a lot of videos with a heterosexual couple where there is donor material involved like I've seen samesex couples like use donor material I just wanted to like normalize it and also I want people to know that the things that you're experiencing and feeling are normal this sucks but like it is normal I just didn't see a lot of this when it came to Quality things right I remember Googling trying to figure out what's my likelihood of success if like my partners had cancer I couldn't find anything I found a couple of people whose partner had testicular cancer but if I can if sharing this can help someone going through something similar that is so important to me so find a support system seek out information on YouTube Reddit whatever cuz it can really help you feel seen if you don't have someone who's like directly going through it and then the last two things I'll say number one always ask questions and advocate for yourself Hayden touched on it earlier but a big part of this that you don't think about is that this is kind of one of the only medical things that you might experience in your lifetime where you are doing this voluntarily and you are in charge of that process I didn't realize how much I would have to call at my clinic and be like hey what are the next steps for this you know they don't always reach out to you they're relying on you to reach out to them and that's for so many reasons right it's expensive they don't want to push you or whatever but like you going to have to advocate for yourself and I know for me having insurance coverage so grateful for it but I was on the phone multiple times a week with my insurance because they kept screwing up my claims and all kinds of things so you really have to be on top of it and just prepare yourself for having to advocate for yourself unfortunately it's not one siiz fits all and you know your body better than anybody else so feel free to speak up and ask questions if you have questions too to that extent also educated about it you know like educate yourself big time so that you can properly advocate for yourself and ask questions yeah and then the last thing I would say maybe contradictory is like go in with zero expectations but also remain hopeful I think the thing that I struggled with was that I was seeing so many accounts online of negative stories about IVF because most people who are seeking support on places like Reddit are going to tell you their horror stories right and that makes sense and I'm glad that those exist for people who need that support and I'm glad that I went in I think with low expectations but I also think that that left me in a place where I wasn't able to be as hopeful as I could especially because my doctor never gave any indication that we would have trouble and she can't predict things but it wasn't like people were telling me to temper my expectations and I was too hopeful it was like people are telling me this is probably going to be successful and I was like I don't think so and I wish that I would have just allowed myself to enjoy parts of it I know that probably sounds weird but at the end of the day this is hopefully getting us one step closer to having a kid together so I wish that I could have been more helpful throughout the process but now that I am kind of at the tail end of it I feel like I can offer that advice at least kind of related I guess to the next question which is if I'm going to do IVF in the future I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have to do it is there anything that I can do to prepare and I really think you've got it covered at this point if you know you're going to have to do IVF you have an incredible leg up and I think that's where a lot of people tend to struggle and I think maybe again that contributes to why I felt the way I did emotionally but I knew before I got tested not to be rude but like what the issue was yeah for you know I already knew before we had our initial consultation we will be doing IVF we don't have an for IUI it's male Factor this is what we're doing even if I had complicating factors this is what we're doing I think just knowing that helps you prepare emotionally you can get all your crying and sadness out before you even have that consultation so that you can go into IVF being like you know what I'm doing this let's get this done and I think I mostly had that attitude yeah there's some sadness yeah sometimes you'll cry and I'm not saying that I didn't allow myself to feel those negative emotions but I didn't have as many of those as I thought that I would so I think if you know you're going to do it you already have AA but I don't think there's anything you can really do to prepare yourself except for watching videos about it and kind of understand understanding each part of the process I think that helps you against you can advocate for yourself but there's nothing that you need to do really in advance to prepare yourself besides educate yourself the more you can learn about all of the different possibilities and the different drug treatments and all of that sort of thing to help you better advocate for yourself just one instance of this there is a trigger that you inject yourself with to trigger ovulation there's a couple of different kinds and I knew that there was one kind that would potentially cause me to have OHS I was scared of that I knew that that was a thing and so if my doctor hadn't changed my trigger I would have asked her to I would have talked to her about it I would have asked questions thankfully she already had it covered but had I not known anything about the drugs I wouldn't have known to advocate for myself and I think that's how you can sometimes get yourself in trouble let's speed through these last three questions shall we something you wish was universally known or common knowledge about IVF that isn't for me the biggest thing really is what we covered earlier this misconception are you going to have eight babies at once that's just not a thing with IVF it's becoming less of a thing now I honestly think there's not a lot that I think isn't common knowledge but what I would really love truly if you know someone that's going through IVF or or you've just been curious about it even if you don't want kids I would really urge you to do some cursory research on what it is like if this hasn't covered it for you do some cursory research because being a listening ear to someone going through this I think is really important and I think the reason that so many people don't know how to be supportive when it comes to grief when it comes to just any hard topic that comes up is because you've never been through it yourself and you can never put yourself in someone else's shoes if that's never happened to you but by doing research I think it takes the fear out of it and it makes you feel less dumb almost I don't know I just feel like in the past people have come to me with hard things and I'm like it's not that I don't want to listen but like I don't know what the hell is going on and just I think the love and care and affection you can give to someone by doing your own research I think is really helpful that being said don't provide your advice no one wants your advice no one wants your IVF advice if you're not going through it there were times where you know sadly no one I know is going through I I had to educate my mom and my sister on what different things mean you know I was telling my mom day five embryo numbers and she was like I'll be honest like I don't really know what that means you know having to explain that it's not the end of the world but it's just really nice when someone you care about has done the research in advance so I I would say if you can do that I think that you have a leg up I generally like doing that too I think it makes you a more empathetic person yeah so I guess like a broader way to answer something that you wish was universally known or common knowledge about IVF that isn't it would be basically everything about IVF cuz I would say for the most part IVF what it is and what it involves isn't common knowledge you don't need to know the different drug regimens but just generally the process and what it entails I think gives you an incredible amount of empathy and can make you a really supportive and awesome friend or partner for me IVF taught me so much about the female body that I either didn't know or that I thought I knew but misunderstood when he says female body he means people who have ovies and uteruses and menstrual cycles and ovulation and follicles and all of that stuff I just had no idea really how all of that stuff I knew a lot of it but there were just very specific things that are involved in the IVF process that I just didn't know about like how your hormones interplay with the different things how follicle stimulating hormone works luteinizing hormone population there's so there's so many you know it's fascinating and it's cool to learn more about your own body even if you're not going through IVF last two questions why IVF and not adoption and I want to answer this question because it is a horrible question to ask anyone going through infertility treatment and adoption is not the answer to infertility anyone in the adoption Community I would bet would tell you the same thing we definitely discuss fostering and adopting throughout our entire relationship as a potential means to start a family but the more that you learn about that you realize what adoption entails and exactly what it means for the adopted person and the rise of Tik Tok there has been so much talk about what it means to be Don or conceived what it means to be adopted and just the associated trauma and I don't think that all adoption is bad there are plenty of people who have been adopted who see it as a positive experience but when it comes to adoption a lot of adoption is done as infant adoption which can cause trauma on the part of the mother and the child there's also fostering and fostering the goal of that is reunification it is not to place a child in your care forever it's complicated and I think that more people again should do research on what adoption is and what it is not it can be a really incredible thing but it does not a cure for infertility and I think that when people pose it as an alternative to IVF it just does a disservice to everyone and I think that it shows a real for lack of better word ignorance so I I would really hope that people would do more research on adoption and what that means and what IVF is and what that means again I'm not trying to dog on anyone who's made different decisions than us but I do think that to call them interchangeable is just a complete disservice to adoption and you know I've considered Foster in the past too now that I know more about it I think Foster is really awesome like to be a safe space for a child even if they won't be your Forever child I think that's a really cool thing I get see us fostering in the future but we understand what that means and it's not a solution for infertility and then the last question is are you excited to be pregnant what about you Hayden are you excited I answer I'm not going to be pregnant no I'm not excited for you to be pregnant I'm excited to have a kid but I know that you were just going to be a handful when you're pregnant I was a hand you're already a hand handful regularly you're a handful I'm going to be two handfuls obviously you were a handful when you were going through the egg retrieval stuff but I I could be wrong but I think that was worse than what pregnancy is going to be like you know you were that's a big F no you were completely immobile for a large portion of it to be honest that was the worst part is like not being able to do my everyday activities cuz my ovaries were so big but yeah at least with pregnancy and again I could be wrong I've never been pregnant you've never been pregnant the change will be slowly over 9 months instead of over the course of 5 days you will swell up dude it was like a Bellis Swan pregnancy now that I'm thinking about it that is literally the best way to describe the egg retrieval process but I am very excited to be pregnant I have not always felt that way I've always wanted kids I didn't always think that I wanted to be pregnant again I correctly assumed that adoption was the way to have a kid so I thought maybe I'd do that or that i' go to surrogate or like all these different things but with age and experience and with understanding that I'm really strong and I am capable of handling pain I think pregnancy is really cool and I'm really excited to be pregnant so it's going to be kind of wild I just think it's really neat never thought that I'd feel that way but I like am genuinely excited to be pregnant I think it's going to be really neat I'm actually not scared of birth either I know some people are down to be pregnant and scared of birth and I'm you know what bring it on hope I don't die but like it seems pretty tight it's usually like a one maybe two day experience some healing like obviously you're not even pregnant yet but just the whole thing makes me just think about how crazy the human body is in general you know much appreciation for my body that is one of the unintended consequences of this is that I am so much stronger than I thought that I was I can handle pain like a pro I can do pregnancy I think I can do it just watch me like complain the entire night months I mean I'm sure I will oh yeah definitely you will I know but uh I think I can do it I'm looking forward to it so hopefully that happens sooner rather than later like I said we have transfer dates set which is it's going to it's going to be like 3 weeks after you find out that you are pregnant that you're going to be like oh I can't take this anymore hasn't even started growing inside you yet I can't do it I mean to be fair that's when morning tickness kicks in big time for people so I might not be able to do that I do not handle nausea well yeah it'll be an adventure for sure and I'll keep all posted on that I will say that I will be doing a video on the embryo transfer process but I would personally like to have a successful transfer before I share that information and also there's not much that I get to have that is uniquely mine and frankly I have always wanted to completely keep my pregnancy a secret from the internet I won't really be able to do that nor do I want want to at this point anyway I do want to keep my early pregnancy to myself getting that first trimester or the first like 20 weeks and just like have it be between me and my family I think that would be really special I will make another one of these videos when the transfer is successful fingers crossed but I don't want to get ahead of myself it'll be in the vault for a while keep your little paws off yeah I am looking forward to these next steps and I'm excited to share it with you all I hope that this successfully answered all of your questions you have any additional questions leave them in the comments down below and I'll try to answer them as best as I can in that comment section again sorry if we misspoke at any point during this I know that with talk of this it's you know there's a lot of gendered language which we are not always com but we we acknowledge that not everyone who carries a child is a woman we also acknowledge that gender and sex are not the same thing so if we use this interchangeably my apologies but yeah I hope this was semi informative and love you all so much thanks so much for watching and thank you so much for your support over these past few months your advice and your support has been invaluable so see you in the next one sh\n"