Dr. M was right. None of the 4 remaining embryos made it to freeze. 3 stalled out and 1 made it to a blastocyst so terribly fragmented and fucked that it was not worth freezing.
IVF #2 has revealed that my egg quality is for shit. IVF #1 suggested that as well but this time feels like a nail in the coffin. I also am completely fed up with my clinic's lab. There have been so many signs that it is simply subpar. I won't bother going into details. If this doesn't work, I'm moving on to a new and better clinic. Or not. Or buying donor eggs on the black market, adopting, quitting my job and getting 6 or 7 new dogs from the shelter. And I am not going to walk them.
This week has been shit. I've been feeling sick, my sesame oiled ass can barely walk, and my embryos refused to jump in the freezer. Thank God it's Friday. Not in a Boy-Meets-World kinda way, more in a I-need-to-hibernate kinda way. I don't really get to do that as it's the largest work event of the year tomorrow. 1200 guests, lots of drama and much anticipation. Bad timing.
Sorry for the rant. It's just one of those crap days. I'm very disappointed and in a pretty hopeless place. This too shall pass, I'm told.
Update: Trying to stay positive for lil' 8-cell.
Showing posts with label Embryos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Embryos. Show all posts
Friday, July 26, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
The Survivor - 4dp3dt
Today I feel like time is finally starting pass normally. Not as painfully slowly as before. The work week is ahead of me and as gruesome as that can be, it typically passes in a blur. Part of the beauty of having an unmanageable workload.
Downton Abbey is playing a large, nay enormous role in my time management. I'm a total junkie. If Maggie Smith and I aren't smirking then it is simply time wasted. Netflix is so crucial to a bearable "two-week-wait." TWW in TTC lingo. There is an hilarious amount of verbiage associated with the IF (infertility) online community. Your husband is your DH - darling husband - and your children are your DS and DD - darling son & darling daughter. There's more, loads more, but the required prefix of "darling" is the one I find the ickiest. A typical post on a TTC form look like this:
DH and I went to the RE yesterday while DS stayed with my MIL. After TTC for 2 years, a diagnosis of PCOS and 2 failed IUIs, we're on to IVF. I'm most nervous about the PIO shots and, gulp, of course the HCG beta!
I'm not translating. It's best that you have no idea what that means. I have never ever called my husband "darling." He is hairy and sometimes farts in bed. While he has many endearing qualities, I could never pin the term "darling" on him.
I did end up getting a call from the embryologist yesterday. Of the 3 embryos we were waiting on, 1 made it to blastocyst stage and was frozen for possible future use. The other two didn't make it past their day 3 development. 3 viable embryos out of 7 mature follicles and 11 total follicles is nothing to write home about. Should this cycle not work out, I have to have a discussion with my doctor about changing medication protocols to encourage better quality embryos. I may never have the best eggs in the hen house but there are medications that tend to work better for those of us with quality issues.
All of this said, I was actually very encouraged by my talk with the embryologist. I had the opportunity to ask about the two 6-cell embryos that were transferred. Both of them had zero fragmentation (parts of cells breaking off) which is excellent. One of them was a Grade 1 (all cells equally sized) and the other was a Grade 1-2 (slight variation in divided cell size) which she assured me was not problematic. If my lone survivor cell was able to keep growing into a blastocyst then why not the healthy (if a little slow - like me) embryos that were actually implanted? No reason. No reason at all. Focus on growing, implanting and hatching. Yup, even human eggs hatch.
Downton Abbey is playing a large, nay enormous role in my time management. I'm a total junkie. If Maggie Smith and I aren't smirking then it is simply time wasted. Netflix is so crucial to a bearable "two-week-wait." TWW in TTC lingo. There is an hilarious amount of verbiage associated with the IF (infertility) online community. Your husband is your DH - darling husband - and your children are your DS and DD - darling son & darling daughter. There's more, loads more, but the required prefix of "darling" is the one I find the ickiest. A typical post on a TTC form look like this:
DH and I went to the RE yesterday while DS stayed with my MIL. After TTC for 2 years, a diagnosis of PCOS and 2 failed IUIs, we're on to IVF. I'm most nervous about the PIO shots and, gulp, of course the HCG beta!
I'm not translating. It's best that you have no idea what that means. I have never ever called my husband "darling." He is hairy and sometimes farts in bed. While he has many endearing qualities, I could never pin the term "darling" on him.
I did end up getting a call from the embryologist yesterday. Of the 3 embryos we were waiting on, 1 made it to blastocyst stage and was frozen for possible future use. The other two didn't make it past their day 3 development. 3 viable embryos out of 7 mature follicles and 11 total follicles is nothing to write home about. Should this cycle not work out, I have to have a discussion with my doctor about changing medication protocols to encourage better quality embryos. I may never have the best eggs in the hen house but there are medications that tend to work better for those of us with quality issues.
All of this said, I was actually very encouraged by my talk with the embryologist. I had the opportunity to ask about the two 6-cell embryos that were transferred. Both of them had zero fragmentation (parts of cells breaking off) which is excellent. One of them was a Grade 1 (all cells equally sized) and the other was a Grade 1-2 (slight variation in divided cell size) which she assured me was not problematic. If my lone survivor cell was able to keep growing into a blastocyst then why not the healthy (if a little slow - like me) embryos that were actually implanted? No reason. No reason at all. Focus on growing, implanting and hatching. Yup, even human eggs hatch.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Waiting - 3dp3dt
3dp3dt - fertility lingo for "3 days past 3-day transfer." Good lord time is passing slowly. They should send you on a mandatory vacation during this wait. I am trying to visualize my embryos growing, cells continuing to divide and latching on to my uterine wall. Hard things to imagine.
I have come along way in 3 days from my sorry state on Wednesday, transfer day. When the doctor told me that my so-so embryos could be the reason for my not getting pregnant, it made me feel like a complete failure. All along, trying so hard, restricting everything in my diet and my eggs could have been bum the whole time. I'm sure my body is glad to not have guzzled Starbucks and labored over digesting dairy for the past year to several months (depending on which phase of my diet shenanigans we focus on) but it's hard not to think that perhaps I could have had a coffee now and then and not made a bit of difference. That said, I haven't reintroduced any of my vices. Old sad eggs made me feel awful. Proving annoyingly that there is a Sex and the City episode for all of life's situations, I felt very much like Miranda when she is diagnosed with a lazy ovary. "Those ovaries went to Harvard!"
I started mourning much too early. At least that's what my loving and supportive friends, family and, shockingly, Google, taught me. My B - B+ eggs, the ones that were transfered were 6-cell embryos. Ideally, they would have been 8-cell. So they're a little on the slow side. So's their mama, as I was reminded. My dear friend S immediately recalled that my first grade teacher told my mom and dad at the first parent teacher conference that I would never learn to read. Ever. Didn't have the capacity. Not only that but I "just wasn't going to make it." In life? After knowing a first grader for 6 weeks, can you really sentence them to an illiterate adulthood spent jobless living in their parents' basement? Mrs. Farmer felt that was exactly the case. Surprisingly, I am not dictating this to my transcriber. I am typing this myself. Because I can read. Quite well, actually. By second grade I was a voracious reader. I just started out a little slow. My mother pointed out that I didn't learn to walk until I was 17 months old. And then became a pretty decent ballet dancer. I have a tendency in life to take my time and get things right instead of rushing in and falling down. This is the hope for my embryos. They are like their mama, starting out slow, taking their time and then getting it right.
Dr. Google is typically a very evil thing. I should know since I received my medical degree in part from Google University and in part through osmosis by hanging out near my doctor dad, nurse sister and psychologist mom. It is a wonder no hospital will hire me with my credentials. Google tends to get me all anxious as I sift through every perfect search term with various combinations of infertility, unexplained, embryo, endometriosis, psychosis. In this case, when I searched the term "6-cell embryo" I found encouragement both dependable sites written by fertility centers as well as crazy baby forums willed with posts by unstable, mentally-frail women. Fertility centers look for embryos to be between 6 and 10 cells on day 3 with 8-cell being ideal. I don't need ideal. I just need a fighting chance. And it looks like I have one. I have to stay positive and know that they embryos that were implanted were in the range that fertility doctors hope for.
As for the others, 2 5-cell embryos and a 4-cell, they were to be cultured in the lab until Friday or Saturday (today) and then either frozen or discarded. I was supposed to get a call by today with the news but never got one. I'll stalk the embryology lab down on Monday.
I also shall continue to remember that Miranda and her lazy ovary made a baby. In additon, I'll try not to feel like too much of a typical white, 30-something urbanite quoting Sex and the City. Ewwww.
I have come along way in 3 days from my sorry state on Wednesday, transfer day. When the doctor told me that my so-so embryos could be the reason for my not getting pregnant, it made me feel like a complete failure. All along, trying so hard, restricting everything in my diet and my eggs could have been bum the whole time. I'm sure my body is glad to not have guzzled Starbucks and labored over digesting dairy for the past year to several months (depending on which phase of my diet shenanigans we focus on) but it's hard not to think that perhaps I could have had a coffee now and then and not made a bit of difference. That said, I haven't reintroduced any of my vices. Old sad eggs made me feel awful. Proving annoyingly that there is a Sex and the City episode for all of life's situations, I felt very much like Miranda when she is diagnosed with a lazy ovary. "Those ovaries went to Harvard!"
I started mourning much too early. At least that's what my loving and supportive friends, family and, shockingly, Google, taught me. My B - B+ eggs, the ones that were transfered were 6-cell embryos. Ideally, they would have been 8-cell. So they're a little on the slow side. So's their mama, as I was reminded. My dear friend S immediately recalled that my first grade teacher told my mom and dad at the first parent teacher conference that I would never learn to read. Ever. Didn't have the capacity. Not only that but I "just wasn't going to make it." In life? After knowing a first grader for 6 weeks, can you really sentence them to an illiterate adulthood spent jobless living in their parents' basement? Mrs. Farmer felt that was exactly the case. Surprisingly, I am not dictating this to my transcriber. I am typing this myself. Because I can read. Quite well, actually. By second grade I was a voracious reader. I just started out a little slow. My mother pointed out that I didn't learn to walk until I was 17 months old. And then became a pretty decent ballet dancer. I have a tendency in life to take my time and get things right instead of rushing in and falling down. This is the hope for my embryos. They are like their mama, starting out slow, taking their time and then getting it right.
Dr. Google is typically a very evil thing. I should know since I received my medical degree in part from Google University and in part through osmosis by hanging out near my doctor dad, nurse sister and psychologist mom. It is a wonder no hospital will hire me with my credentials. Google tends to get me all anxious as I sift through every perfect search term with various combinations of infertility, unexplained, embryo, endometriosis, psychosis. In this case, when I searched the term "6-cell embryo" I found encouragement both dependable sites written by fertility centers as well as crazy baby forums willed with posts by unstable, mentally-frail women. Fertility centers look for embryos to be between 6 and 10 cells on day 3 with 8-cell being ideal. I don't need ideal. I just need a fighting chance. And it looks like I have one. I have to stay positive and know that they embryos that were implanted were in the range that fertility doctors hope for.
As for the others, 2 5-cell embryos and a 4-cell, they were to be cultured in the lab until Friday or Saturday (today) and then either frozen or discarded. I was supposed to get a call by today with the news but never got one. I'll stalk the embryology lab down on Monday.
I also shall continue to remember that Miranda and her lazy ovary made a baby. In additon, I'll try not to feel like too much of a typical white, 30-something urbanite quoting Sex and the City. Ewwww.
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