
| You can reach Jeremy and LeAndra at chiefsgirl3@yahoo.com if you have any questions or want to talk to them about their IVF experience. |
| Jeremy and I knew that his cystic fibrosis would cause us not to be able to have children. Even though I had a daughter who was 6 when I met Jeremy, we wanted children of our own also. So I started looking on the internet for different types of information and ran into a site that specified about the absence of the vas deferens and that there were procedures to help couples where the male partner had Cystic Fibrosis. We first tried a physician in a larger town near us, but ended up not caring much for him at all, so a friend of mine, who incidentally was pregnant with triplets, gave us the name of her physician, Dr. Gentry, who worked out of Evansville and Indianapolis. We talked to the doctor's office on the phone, they actually got copies of all of our testing that had already been done so we did not have to. We knew that I did not carry the CF gene already due to that testing. They also scheduled Jeremy with a Urologist for the same day we had our initial consultation with Dr. Gentry so that we did not have to make 2 trips to Indianapolis, which is 4 hours from where we live. Turns out that Dr. Gentry is AWESOME!!! So was Dr. Thompson, the Urologist, we would recommend them to anybody at anytime!! They were EXTREMELY friendly, EXTREMELY intelligent, and you could tell they really wanted to help their patients. Dr. Gentry basically sat down and told us with Jeremy's condition, our choice was to be Invitro Fertilization. Explained how Jeremy would end up have the PESA procedure, where they would aspirate sperm from him, I would go through all of the drugs to stimulate egg growth, go through the IVF procedure to retrieve and fertilize the eggs, and then the ICSI to fertilize the eggs with Jeremy's sperm. Then the doctor would implant the eggs. He also explained that he does what is called assisted hatching, where he makes a small slit on one side of the egg after fertilization so that when they are inserted, it is easier for them to attach to the uterus. |
| We then went to Dr. Thompson's office (the Urologist) where he confirmed Jeremy was missing the Vas Deferens, and explained that almost all CF male patient's have active, viable sperm, but it has no way to come out. He explained that Jeremy would be numbed with a local anesthetic and given a liquid-type of anesthesia that would basically make him VERY drowsy and pretty much numb all over, they would make a small incision, use a needle and aspirate sperm from him. After this we were PSYCHED!! We now knew that we could have a child, and luckily we had insurance that paid for everything except for office visit co-pays. Our total out of pocket for this was around 300.00......that includes the traveling....we were blessed. They scheduled Jeremy's procedure for May of 2002. We went to Indianapolis to have this done. When Dr. Thompson was finished he came out to tell me Jeremy had come through with flying colors and after about 7 vials of dead sperm they extracted another 10 vials of good, viable sperm. We were set to go ahead with my drug routine in June, and the In-Vitro with ICSI in July. He would call Dr. Gentry and let him know the surgery went well. Poor Jeremy was sore for a few days, but luckily, the procedure was not extremely painful. For my drug procedures we went to the Evansville office, which was only 2 hours away. My counts always came back good and we didn't have to change anything through the course of the month. Again, poor Jeremy had to put up with myself and the mood swings for the month, but we did prevail! We went on July 13th of 2002 to Indianapolis for the Retrieval procedure and OH BOY did that hurt!! I really wasn't expecting pain considering they had me loaded up on pain killers, but like I said, OH BOY!! (It was well worth it in the end though)! They retrieved 10 eggs to be fertilized and Dr. Gentry told us that we were scheduled to come back 5 days later, July 18th, (Jeremy's birthday) for the transfer into me (implantation). We went back home, and the facility called us the next day, a Saturday, to tell us to come back in on Monday because the eggs were splitting so fast. So on Monday the 16th, we went back to Indianapolis for the transfer. Dr. Gentry had told us that 4 eggs had fertilized well enough to implant and that 2 were of very good quality and the other 2 were good, but not quite as good, so he would implant all 4 in hopes that the other two would push the 2 best to the uterus wall. We were a little nervous about this since multiples are common with infertility, but he assured us that most of the time if it is multiples, it is only twins and that most of the time it is a single attachment. The transfer went well, it is a very painless procedure....so painless in fact, that I thought something MUST be wrong and there was no way this would work. Dr. Gentry finished, had me stay for two hours in a lying position, and when we left he told us God willing we would see him again in a few weeks. So we went home for the 2 week wait for the pregnancy test. |
| This was the longest two weeks of our lives I think.....almost painful....but the Sunday before we were to go get blood tests I couldn't wait any longer. I broke down and went to Kroger for a pregnancy test.....and they were actually buy 1 get 1 free!! I had been a bit nauseous and HAD to know....so I snuck them in the house, snuck to the bathroom, peed on the stick and sat down to wait the 3 minutes.....within 1 minute we had a BIG FAT PLUS SIGN!!!!!!! So as a precaution I took the other one, (we all know how paranoid we can be) and it came out positive too! So I start SCREAMING Jeremy's name and he comes running in thinking something is wrong......when I showed him the positive tests he just wouldn't believe it until the blood test was done!! So we went on that Monday to have the blood test. We sat and waited and waited for the doctor's office to call us that afternoon, and when they finally did, they said that I was indeed pregnant, and that my Beta HCG levels were very high. When I asked her if that meant there was more than one, of course she wouldn't answer yes or no, but said that there's no studies showing that a high HCG means more than one fetus and then scheduled us for two weeks after that to look and see how many eggs had attached. So for those two weeks we were happy as could be. When we went to have the ultrasound to see how many eggs had attached there for a while only 2 sacs showed up....so we were thinking GREAT!! only two eggs attached...we can handle twins! Until the nurse, who was about ready to quit, said wait a minute there's another one! So, Jeremy turns ghost white, and literally falls into the chair behind him. I'm glad the chair was there!! All the two hours home all we could do about every 10 miles was say "Three babies!!", and the other one of us would say, "Yeah, three babies." It's comical to think about it today. We did go back once every 2 weeks until we were 12 weeks pregnant. On the 8th week we got to see 2 of the babies heartbeats, but the third one just never grew out.....so we never lost a child, the egg was basically not strong enough to begin with. On week 12 all my hormones had leveled out, and we were released to my local ob/gyn, who was also awesome, and at 35 weeks we delivered by c-section 2 healthy boys. One was 6 lb 3 oz and the other was 5 lb 6 oz. They are now almost 3...will be on the 25th of February, and look nothing alike. One is blond haired and blue eyed and one brown hair and eyes...but both are beautiful and healthy and very much loved. I just believe that miracles happen everyday and we have had two of them in our lives now for going on 3 years.....Good luck to anybody else going through this and if anybody would ever have any questions, please don't hesitate to email us. Jeremy and LeAndra |
| Jeremy and LeAndra's Baby Miracle |
