Hellobee

This is an anonymous post series following one of our blogger’s ivf journey in real time. You can read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 here.

After egg retrieval we knew that 10 eggs were retrieved and that 8 of them were mature, which meant only 8 had the ability to even fertilize. We had to wait until the next morning to hear how many eggs had fertilized and could mature into embryos. From what I’ve heard in IVF circles it’s common for everything to half. So, while 10 eggs seems like a lot, usually only about half of those fertilize, and then only about half of those survive to Day 5, and then what you have left usually has a 40-60% chance of implanting. Then there is still a chance of loss just like any pregnancy, even if one or two do implant, so that’s why they like to retrieve so many eggs from the get-go. The numbers go down pretty quickly!With my 8 mature eggs I was really hoping for at least 4 fertilized, so that there would end up being at least 1 or 2 embryos to transfer on Day 5.

When IVF first started decades ago, eggs and sperm were placed in the same petri dish and the sperm were allowed to fertilize the eggs on their own. However, it is now more common to use Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection, (ICSI for short), which means that the lab chooses the best looking sperm to inject right into the egg for fertilization. This is much more commonplace now as fertilization rates are higher, especially if male fertility is a factor. My eggs were fertilized using ICSI and Friday morning we got the call that 5 had fertilized! This was good news! However, I knew that statistically we would be lucky if 2-3 made it to day 5 for a transfer. I have been in the infertility world long enough to know that a lot can happen in those 5 days and sometimes people end up with no embryos to transfer at all, so I was still feeling pretty nervous.

At this point since there were only 5 embryos and knowing it was likely that only half of them would grow enough to be able to transfer, we decided not to do the genetic testing. This was a tough decision, but since our RE didn’t recommend it, $4,000 is a lot of money and we knew we wouldn’t have a lot of leftover embryos, we felt like it was the right decision for us. Although I will admit that if we end up with a miscarriage we may regret that decision, since genetic testing can identify the embryos that would lead to an early loss.

Our clinic checks the embryos on Day 2 of development because if they are not growing strong they will do a Day 3 transfer instead of a Day 5 transfer, with the hope that the embryo would do better growing inside a uterus than in a lab. But, we got the call Saturday morning that all 5 were still growing! We had 2 embryos that were graded as an A, 2 graded as a B, and one graded as a C. The embryologist was very pleased with their growth and said she felt really confident that waiting until Day 5 for a transfer would be the best choice. After that they don’t check the embryos until the day of transfer, so we wouldn’t hear anything else until Tuesday morning.

A friend of mine got me these Wonder Woman socks to help keep my legs warm for these big appointments. I thought the theme was appropriate! Here I am waiting for my acupunture to start in the recovery room.

Studies have shown that doing acupunture (on specific points) before and after transfer are helpful to implantation, and we are lucky that our clinic allows a local acupuncturist to come to the clinic in the recovery room for treatment. So, I brought a face mask and iphone with some fertility meditations and headphones to relax with some needles the 30 minutes before the procedure. At this point even though the nurse had brought me back to the recovery room for the acupuncture we still didn’t know the status of our embryos, but my job was to relax just the same. Even though the recovery room was bright with fluorescent lights and had other couples talking pretty loudly after their own procedures, it was still a really good way to relax before the transfer. I will admit that the Valium they have you take 30 minutes before the procedure definitely contributed to the ability to relax during the acupuncture!

Our cute 5 day blastocyst! Hoping we can eventually call this “baby’s first picture!”

When my acupuncture treatment was finished, the RE called me and my husband back to his office to talk about the status of our embryos and how many we would transfer. He said that one embryo looked really great and since it looked so good he recommended transferring just that one. We had one other good looking embryo and he said if we transferred both our success rate for this cycle would go from about 60% with one embryo to about 70%  with two, but that the likelihood of twins would go from 1%-40%. We agreed with him that transferring just one was the best route to go, and decided to freeze the other good looking one in case this cycle doesn’t work out. The other 3 embryos were still growing, but were just in the morula stage (so about a day behind). They would check on them again the next morning to see if they had matured to the blastocyst stage, and whichever ones did would be frozen with our other good one. We have yet to hear back on these, but I’m hoping at least one of them can be frozen with our other blast. We felt like this was a pretty good report and it was like I finally took a deep breath knowing this cycle would give us two chances at a pregnancy.

After that it was time to go into the operating room! It was the same room I had my egg retrieval in 5 days earlier. The embryo would go on the end of a catheter surrounded by liquid, and the RE uses an ultrasound machine to see where to leave the embryo. It’s amazing that this technology exists for something so small! This time I was not under any anesthesia, just pretty relaxed from the Valium so I knew what was going on. You have to go into your transfer with a full bladder since it helps flatten out the uterus, and they do a fair amount of pushing on the bladder with an ultrasound wand to help the doctor be sure he’s getting the embryo where it needs to go, so that part was a bit uncomfortable. The RE said it was a “straight shot” and after transferring the embryo the embryologist checked the catheter to ensure that the embryo was no longer on the catheter. So now we wait for our cute embryo to snuggle in!

One thing that is a sensitive point for me is that often in the news or online I hear people talk about doing IVF and “implanting” an embryo. But, the truth is that no one can implant an embryo. That part is all up to God and the embryo. We have done everything we can up until now, and there is no doctor or specialist that can make that embryo implant. It has been transferred, but now it needs to attach to my uterus to become a successful pregnancy and we hope and pray it does! At this point we wait until next week until I will go to a local clinic to get my blood tested to see if I am pregnant. If the test is positive I will go back every other day a few times to be sure the numbers are growing appropriately. If it does, I will go back to my clinic to do an early ultrasound.