And Now We Wait...

We arrived Saturday morning for our transfer. We had not heard from the office about our embryos since our day two report on Wednesday. They had said that no news is good news, so we were hoping for quiet.

They brought us back to the room, and I immediately noticed that there were no embryos in the incubator. ::enter panic:: The embryologist informed us that there were a few egg retrievals that morning. Since they are time sensitive, we were being pushed back a little.

Then he gave us our report. I was hoping for three to four to freeze. Both of my other cycles, we have had one to freeze. This time we had.... NINE to freeze! We were shocked. I did not know how to respond. Of the fifteen we had on day two, nine had made it to a good quality, freeze worthy embryo. That does not include what we transferred. Nine is amazing and completely surprising.

My doctor was very happy with how everything turned out. He came in with a giant grin on his face. This cycle required a lot of thinking on his part. My levels were difficult to control, and I was on the edge of overstimulating for the majority of it.

Our transfer went exceptionally well. We followed my doctor's recommendation for transferring two. He wanted to repeat our last cycle, so we did the exact same thing with similar grading of the embryos.

So now we wait. I'm on bed rest for the next few days, then back to normal and waiting.


Here are our nine waiting in the freezer.

Finding a Bubble

Yesterday morning, twenty little babies left for school that will never come home. Devastating. I wonder about that morning. Did one of them not want to wake up, and mommy made them? Was one child excited about a class event? Were they running late and rushing? Was the Elf on the Shelf a fixture in their homes like it is ours? Did they talk about Santa's upcoming visit? The small details that those parents will forever hold from their last morning. I pray that each one of those parents hugged and kissed their child before sending them to school yesterday.

I can't imagine how devastating it would be to arrive at a firehouse frantically looking for your child, and they aren't there. The drive back home.... Walking into your home.... Waiting for confirmation.

My first instinct is to never let Blake go. I want to shield him from this cruel world. I want to protect his innocence. I want to keep him in a bubble. Blake has no idea that bad people exist, and it is one of my favorite things about his sweet personality. He will flash that Blake smile and say "Hey" to almost everyone. He has no idea of evil. No concept. I want to protect that for as long as possible.

But, it isn't possible. Sure, I can home school him. I can keep him locked in our house forever. But what kind of life is that? A shooting can happen anywhere. Of course when it is in a school it is shocking and horrifying. It could easily happen at a park, the grocery store, or Blake's favorite frozen yogurt store (which he calls "Ike ceam"). We live close to a military base, and we could be injured in a military aircraft accident.... Or a terrorist attack. Or a car accident. The list is endless.

Living in fear is not living. Blake will attend school, and it will probably be public for the majority of his years. I pray that I am never in any of these parent's shoes, but I can not shelter my child. He deserves to experience all the perks of school and hopefully college. We can't live in fear of bad things or bad people.

That do not mean I won't worry, because I will. It doesn't mean I won't kiss him pray he is safe everyday, because I will. It just means that we don't have control.

Shocked

We received our fertilization report, and I was shocked. Of the twenty eggs that were retrieved, seventeen were mature. Of the seventeen, fifteen were growing on day two. That's amazing.

I feel so blessed to have so many this time around. Last cycle, we were working with five. We have ten more embryos this time. So now we wait for the transfer on Saturday. We will find out then how many will be frozen. Hopefully quite a few. We don't expect all of them to make it that far, but we are hopeful to have enough frozen to feel comfortable saying goodbye to IVF.

Dr. T finally figured my medicines out, and my body responded. I'm still shocked that it has turned out this way. Blessed.

20

I have been a very bad blogger. Things have been a little crazy, and I have been struggling to keep up. Joseph has had a busy week or two at work. His busy week just happened to coincide with the worst of my IVF cycle. Add a two year old into that mixture, and you have an exhausted, hormonal mommy that doesn't blog.

We started this cycle pretty normally. My last cycle started off with too little medicine, and it was an uphill battle the entire time. We ended up with six mature eggs. This time my doctor had the goal of more eggs. He started me out at a higher dose of medicines, expecting me to respond similarly to our last cycle.

My body decided to take that medicine seriously this time. My first blood work showed that my body was overly responding. My medicines were decreased, and we officially were dealing with too many eggs. My estrogen level was way too high. We went from threatening cancellation due to under stimulation to threatening cancellation due to overstimulation.

My monitoring office was guessing that I had thirty plus measurable eggs. That is a lot! I was obviously uncomfortable and the high estrogen levels made me feel horrible. We were not sure how many of those thirty plus would be mature. My doctor guessed fifteen, but I was a bit skeptical after my six from last time.

We pushed through and made it to the egg retrieval today....

They got 20 mature eggs! I was shocked when I woke up from the anesthesia. That doubles the amount that I got from my first cycle (9).

So now we wait. We have to see how our fertilization report goes. IVF is such a numbers game. You start out with a number, and slowly the number drops as time goes on. I'm just hoping for enough to transfer and freeze a few. Anything more than that is a bonus.