We're having a baby! Our journey with IVF.

kaitlynpdurbin
Dec 15, 2025
2 min read

Our fertility journey has been long and exhausting. If you have been through this yourself, you understand. Chris and I first met with our fertility doctor, Dr. Burns, in March of 2025. We opted out of exploring any other options and went straight into planning for IVF.

IVF stands for In Vitro Fertilization. This is a process where the woman's eggs are extracted and sperm is injected into the egg outside of the body.

My first course of action was to start prep for extraction. I took over 50 injections before surgery day. Multiple shots a day. Our doctor met with us before and showed us how to mix medications and inject. Chris was such a huge help because he prepared every single shot for me and I injected myself. Up until the intramuscular injection which he had to do for me.

Surgery went quick but I was in quite a bit of pain afterwards. Recovery was ok and it took me a couple of days to start feeling completely normal. The good news - NO MORE SHOTS!!

The embryologist called me every single day for a week to update us on the progress of our embryos. We ended up with a great amount and every single one was graded AA (the best they can be) except for 1 or 2 but those were close to perfect.

Right after the embryos were developed I did a fresh embryo transfer (two embryos). This transfer resulted in a positive test but unfortunately did not work out. This was so disappointing but we were not going to give up, and started planning for the next transfer.

The next transfer was going to be a frozen embryo transfer. I took an oral medication for a brief amount of time to prepare but other than that it was a very laid back process for me.

I showed up to the hospital, we completed the transfer (two embryos again), and the 10 day wait to do bloodwork started. Dr. Burns told me I could test early at home if I wanted. I was terrified but did so anyways. I got my first positive 5 days past transfer! We waited anxiously for blood work to confirm and both times the numbers were over what they were supposed to be.