now we wait

For anyone that ever goes through IVF, allow me to give you this little tid bit of information...you go into it nervous about the shots and if they're going to hurt and how you're going to feel and all of that.  That part is NOTHING compared to the emotional and mental hoops that you have to jump through after egg retrieval.  The shots and the hormones, while they did make me cry, were nothing.  The actual egg retrieval procedure was a cake walk.  One minute I'm high on valium, the next minute I'm waking up next to Josh cracking up about the fact that I got a Brazilian before retrieval.  Then came the hard part.  We got 6 eggs.  six.  ONLY SIX F*$*@#$ING eggs after all that??  I was not happy.  I don't remember this but apparently when I was still in the procedure room (heavily drugged) I kept asking how many they got and they told me 6 and I started crying.  Again, I don't remember, but I'm sure I did.  We were hoping for more like, oh, I don't know, 15?!  Anyway, we got 6.  They said they were nice a mature, so that was good.  But still...6.  Then they told me they were going to give me daily updates on how they were doing.  Which they did and I appreciated that.  They thought they would have to do ICSI (inject the sperm directly into the egg) since there were so few, but Josh has super sperm and they didn't end up having to do it.  They called me the next day and let me know that 5 had fertilized.  Now, statistically 5 out of 6 is great.  So, at least we had that in our favor.  So, ok, 5 out of 6 fertilized naturally, now we wait to see how they grow.  I get a call the next day and let me know that 4 out of the 5 had made it through.  Our numbers are dwindling and I'm panicking.  She also hit me with this nugget: since we are dealing with such small numbers, they won't do the genetic testing on the embryos.  Holy hell.  That's a large part of why we decided to do IVF in the first place! The reasoning is that it can sometimes damage the embryo.  As we are looking at only having 4 or less (most likely less, because they won't all live from day 3 to day 5) then they won't do the testing.  I got as much information as I could from her and called Josh immediately.  After many conversations about it, we were on the same page.  Even though miscarrying would be a HORRID thing again (the reason we wanted to do the genetic testing was to eliminate that risk) it's not worth risking the health of potentially normal embryos. So we said we were comfortable doing a fresh transfer without the testing. The nurses agreed with our decision, and said that's what they would have recommended and then we started talking about the next step. The embryologist said that she was pretty confident that they little embryos would make it to day 5.  In IVF you can either do a 3 day transfer or a 5 day transfer.  At day 3 they have 8 cells (if they've divided normally...and we had 4 that had) and then by the time they make it to day 5 they will have over 100 cells.  That's a LOT for a teeny embryo to go through and that is why I was a nerve ball all weekend.  There was no way they would all survive the growth to day 5.  The nurse told me that they are EXTREMELY conservative on which embryos they let grow in the lab until day 5 because a lot of them won't make it, but ours looked really great they have confidence in them. Side note, day 5 transfers are less common because embryos don't always make it to day 5, but they are MUCH more successful and stronger.  We felt more confident having not done the genetic screening because it's thought to be that day 5 embryos are less likely to have genetic issues, as they wouldn't have survived so long...I digress.  She said they would call me on Sunday morning (this was on Friday afternoon) to let me know how they were doing and schedule our time for transfer.  Ooooookkkkk.  I mean, it's not uncommon for 50% of them to not make it to day 5.  I was really nervous.  Then Sunday morning I was even more nervous because they didn't call until 12:30.  I kept saying to Josh, "Omg, they all died and they don't have the heart to tell me."  He said that he really didn't think that was the case.  Well, he was right.  Got the call from the nurse and we had 3 that had made it to day 5!  Great news! Again, statistically 3 our of 4 is really good.  Clearly they're strong ;)  So we reiterated the fact that we didn't want to risk harm to the good ones and we were ready to do a fresh transfer.  She set my time up for 1:00 the next day (Monday). On Monday we had 1 beautiful, perfect blastocyst and 1 that was just a little behind, but could see the different parts of the embryo that you're supposed to see (I'm so smart), transferred into my uterus. The process was a breeze.  I had to have a VERY full bladder so the ultrasound waves could travel through easier and they could see my uterus and then they just stuck a catheter up there and shot them in.   It took about 5 minutes. Science is amazing.  We were excited because we had two great embryos transferred and were hoping we would have one on ice!

Now we wait.  I'm basically going crazy.  I know I've brought this on myself, because I am a talker and I tell everything to everybody (not really, just my close friends and family), but I just want to retreat and not speak to people until the 2 week wait is up.  I want to put a mass text out that says, "Hi everyone, crazy here.  I'm going away for a while.  If I talk to you and care to share good news with you, that's great.  If I don't...don't ask."  I just feel like (again, I recognize I brought this on myself) if this doesn't work I will have let so many people down.  Perhaps that's my own insecurity, but that's how it feels.  Like I'm a failure...again.

The other embryo they were watching didn't make it.  We literally put all our eggs in my basket.  This is our only shot.  I certainly hope it works. The nurses are very hopeful as the day 5 blasts they transferred were good quality.  Here's to hoping...