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Hospital Video: https://www.facebook.com/timothywsavage/videos/2909618862686811

PIO Injection Video: https://youtu.be/eW4VgExQXaQ

Facebook live 5ish years ago naming Josephine: https://www.facebook.com/timothywsavage/videos/1867404610038125

Transcript:

Well, hello, my friends. How are you all doing to day? Sandi Savage here. I hope you’re having a fantastic, fantastic day and I am so, so grateful for you all just being here, like being involved in our lives, the people that are. Thank you so much. Love hearing from you all. So gosh, dm me.

Get me up in your DMs. I love getting to know you and a love my podcast community. So today I wanted to talk about our IVF journey. I know I’ve gotten a ton of questions, like I’m a first-time mom at 50, and so, you know, how did that even happen? Oh my gosh. What was that even all about?

And you will probably hear my sweet baby girl in the background because she is in here recording with me. She’s got her crinkle books and her Passi and she is very excitable. So first for those of you who don’t know some of my history, you know, looking back at this IVF journey, it really started at this part of the journey started back in 2011.

So Tim and I, my husband, who is amazing, we got married in 2010 and the year after that, we were like, okay, we’re ready. We’re we’ve been married for a year. Let’s start trying to have kids. And so that month downloaded an app on my phone that tracked my fertility and you know, one day it popped up and said,

Hey, you need to do a, you know, the little, the little pink ribbon popped up, do your breast exam. So I was like, oh, okay. So reached out, touched a spot on my breast and found immediately a lump. Like it was like my finger hit it. And I called my doctor that minute and said, Hey,

you know, I feel something really weird. I need to come in. And they were like, let’s get you in immediately. So I went in that week and we did a series of biopsies and there were a couple of cysts in there. And then there was one that was more solid. And so the woman who, the doctor who was doing the testing said,

you know, I was like, Hey, what does this look like? You know, what do I, what do I need to prepare for? Or anything? Is this just another cyst or what? And she said, no, this is cancer. Like before they got the path report back, she was like, this is, this is cancer.

This is a hundred percent cancer. So I was like, oh my gosh, you know, she looked at me and she said, tell your husband, you have cancer. Y’all need to start preparing. And so Tim and I had been married for one year and here I am, we were, Hey, let’s have a baby. And it went from that to,

I think I’ve got to like start chemo and all of that. So that started our conversation. Once all the path report got back and we did a bunch of testing, like we did the genetic testing to see if it was a genetic thing for my cancer or whether it was a hormonal thing. And it was neither of those. I had the type of cancer that’s called triple negative.

And that was something that they have to treat really aggressively because it is an aggressive cancer. And so we did, they immediately went in a few weeks after that and took the actual tumor out. So thankfully that tumor, you know, they took it out. They, the margins were clear, so it hadn’t spread anywhere. Like they checked my lymph nodes.

It hadn’t spread on any of that. And so that I was so grateful, like that meant that I didn’t have to do radiation. So we started looking at that’s when we had our first conversations with the doctors and he said, okay, you need to start looking at egg retrievals before you go into chemo and all that. So our conversation started, we knew that our fertility journey was going to look really different because of that.

And, you know, we just, we looked at each other in the office and just said, you know, we trust God with this. And we trust the timing of this and what the outcome of this going to look like. And we really are hearing that we’re supposed to be parents. So we started the whole process of IVF. And, you know,

if you don’t know the process of IVF, it is lots of meds, retrievals, lots of meds transfers. And I’ll go into that in a little bit. But so that started the conversation. And then there was a few months that we had to take care of a bunch of things within that. And then I would start chemo. So I did some rounds of chemo and they actually did.

We decided to do there’s three different types of chemo that they can give you for breast cancer. And so they said, Hey, we’re going to give you these two because the third one is really hard on your fertility. So let’s, we’re going to stick to these two because you had clear margins and all that. And we had decided to go on and do a double mastectomy and reconstruction.

So we did that cancer. We did those rounds, lost all my hair, all of that deal. You know, that’s a whole other podcast of going through all that cancer journey and then went into having a double mastectomy and reconstruction did that. And then that journey was, was done. And our fertility journey was still way ahead of us. And we were like,

okay. So let me explain what here’s, what a retrieval looks like. So a retrieval, you have like two weeks that you are pumping yourself up with all different kinds of medication. There was one day that no lie because I counted and it was night teen different shots that I had to give myself that was a hard day, but there, there were small needles,

you know, and the actual journey of a retrevial. Isn’t that, that, that challenging, you know, there’s some timing about it. That last shot before the eggs are released is very timed out. Like they tell you the exact minute you’re going into the doctors every other day to test your blood work, to test what your endometrial lining looks like.

So that all that testing, and then you go to your doctor and they do a retrieval once that time shot has happened. And so the eggs are then released. They take a very large needle. I was under for these procedures. They took a very large needle and they go into like right into next to your ovary. And they start pulling out the eggs that are mature and that can be transferred into a little Petri dish to be fertilized.

And so did the retrievals and then the actual, you know, process scientifically what happens after that is, you know, then it’s mixed with sperm in the dishes and then you’ve got the embryos and then they grow out those embryos to three days or five days and then froze them. So now those embryos were frozen. And then you could start looking at the transfer process.

So with the transfer process, that’s actually pretty, you know, comparatively easy of a, not easy within the meds, but easy as far as the actual procedure for the transfer, but the meds leading up to it. Oh my gosh. You, so before each transfer, you have to, again, does yourself up with a lot of meds to make sure that your hormones are correct,

and that you’re, you know, you go into the doctor and you have your lining testing. Do you have lots of trans vag ultrasounds and, you know, sorry for the guys out there for all this info, but you know, this is what it looks like. And to make sure that you have like the best, the best position, so that,

that embryo will say, Hey, I’m going to make my home here. So all those meds, there’s actually a video of me on YouTube giving my first PIO shot. That’s progesterone in oil, and you have to give it kind of in the back of your hip. And that is the shot that everybody is like, it hurts so bad.

It hurts so, so bad, but there are different, you know, in that video on YouTube, there are things that you can do, like applying a heating pad before you do the shot, you know, that kind of stuff to make that progesterone in oil, disperse through the muscle a little bit easier. So leading up to a transfer, you’re giving yourself shots of progesterone and it hurts.

And all during your two week window, after a transfer, you’re giving yourselves PIO shots. Oh my gosh. So you know, and you have to do it at the same time every day. You have to just make sure that your progesterone levels are correct and your body. And let me tell you how much blood is actually drawn in going through IVF.

Oh, a lot of blood draws a lot, a lot, a lot. And let me tell you it’s worth it. It’s so worth it. So for our journey. So there’s where we were. So we started doing a bunch of transfers. I had a fantastic fertility doctor that I went to in Syracuse, New York. He is he’s so fantastic he’s so great and loved our clinic.

And I had multiple transfers and multiple attempts that were not successful. She wants to be on the podcast too. Yeah. Do you want to say hi, do you want to say she’s this back there growl. I’m getting my attention. So I went through multiple transfers that that was not successful right after a transfer. So when you go into transfer, basically what they do is they take that embryo and they put it in a very thin tube and they,

with ultrasound, put that tube up into your cervix. And then it’s, it’s in a medium, a liquid medium. And then they just kind of shoot it up into the right spot. And then it, you know, hopefully implants itself there and you grow a baby for us. The transfers were never successful. So after a transfer, you have,

what’s called a two week window. It’s the two week wait where you’re technically, you know, pregnant, you have an embryo in you, but you have to wait those two weeks to see if implantation happens. And so that your pregnancy test