Monday, December 10, 2007

Drumroll, Please...

Ok, so I've recently found an online buddy group for women who have my same IVF cycle. I have to admit that I have somewhat neglected my blog in favor of posting there -- not that anyone there reads my blog, or vice-versa, but I hate having to post the same thing twice...

In any case, here's the update: I eventually reached the point where I was able to do the abdominal shots myself! I am so proud of myself -- and it made the shots easier as well (it gave me more control of the push). My retrieval went without incident this past Friday, although the post-retrieval pain was a lot more than I had anticipated. I ended up with 9 eggs from 10 follicles. Of those 9 eggs, 6 were mature enough to be fertilized.

On Saturday, we received a call from the embryologist, who told us that of the original 6, only 4 had actually fertilized. He basically said if we wanted to transfer all 4, we had to let him know right then and there, and the transfer needed to take place on Sunday instead of Monday! This was kind of a curve ball for my husband and I -- we had only anticipated transferring 2, the transfer was going to take place on Monday, and now we were basically being told there was this transfer 4 option, but we had to decide now and we had relatively no information upon which to make our decision! The embryologist spoke very broken English and was having a lot of trouble explaining things to us. I hung up the phone in tears.

After I calmed down a bit (and I realize that some of this was attributable to the hormones), we left a message for our RE. The nurse called us back and explained things to us a little more clearly. Then the RE and the embryologist called us back via conference call and answered the rest of our questions, which is great, but is probably what they should have done in the first place. What we ultimately decided to do was wait until Sunday -- if all four made it to Sunday, we would plan on having the transfer on Monday as planned. If we still had all four, we would transfer two and freeze two. If we had three or less, we would simply transfer what we had left. If all four did not make it until Sunday, we would plan on going in on Sunday afternoon to transfer what was left. It didn't make sense to us to just freeze one, so we might as well go for it...

Well, we were on pins and needles on Sunday morning when the phone rang. We were told by the RE that we had 3 good embryos -- a 4-cell, a 3-cell and a 2-cell. The fourth embryo had failed to divide. He basically said to have a light breakfast and head on over for the transfer of the remaining three that afternoon for a 2-day transfer! The rest of the morning was spent making phone calls, doing some quick pajama shopping, and making last minute preparations for a week of bedrest.

When we arrived at the clinic, we were surprised and pleased to learn that all of the embryos had divided again -- we now had an 8-cell and 2 4-cells! We also learned that they were all grade 1 and 2 (our RE grades them from 1-4 based on quality, with 1 being the best, 4 being the worst). We were originally disappointed that we only had 3 embryos left, but I guess it's quality, not quantity!

The transfer also went without incident, and right now I'm actually looking forward to a week of bedrest. It's so hard to remain cautiously optimistic (emphasis on "cautiously") when I have so much hope...!

4 comments:

Ms Heathen said...

Glad to hear that you are hanging on in there. I wish you all the very best of luck, and will keep my fingers crossed for a positive.

Paranoid said...

Good luck! I hope everything works out.

Kim aka Mommy said...

So glad to hear things are moving along and the transfer went well.

We'll be thinking and praying for you and for positive results!

Blessings

Bina said...

Hope all is well. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this is a positive!!

Update soon, k?