IVF Update

Ok, so here goes. It’s been a very stressful time for me. On December 5th I had my egg retrieval surgery. I was excited to not feel bloated anymore, I was excited at the prospect of having viable eggs which would lead to babies, and terrified that there would be no viable eggs.

And I know, every woman who goes through this process has the same fears and concerns. I went in trying to be super positive and wishing for the best. I had 15 eggs retrieved (which is a good number and one that the fertility clinic hopes to get if not more) and that is a number that they tell you right after the surgery. The expectation is that 60-80% of the eggs retrieved will be mature and I was thrilled when I got the call the next day that I had 12 mature eggs. I was NOT thrilled when they told me that 9 of them rejected my husband’s sperm. So now, I had 3 possible embryos.

The anxiety only increased after that news and knowing that I wouldn’t hear anything back until today. So, why did those other 9 eggs not accept the sperm? I don’t know. I hope to find out more during my follow up with the doctor. We did IVF for a few reasons and the process they used was ICSI, where they inject the sperm directly into the embryo.

There’s a lot of thoughts on this, whether or not the quality of embryo will be good or bad because the sperm didn’t actually have to fight to reach the egg or get into the egg. Because of the situation, they did ICSI, but my preference would have been “natural” IVF where they just have the sperm and egg in the petri dish together allowing the sperm to swim and insert itself into the egg, but that was not a route we could take.

So, of course, I’m an emotional wreck and I feel completely psycho because since I got the news about my embryos all I can think is that the rate of survival is expected to be 50% of remaining eggs. Walking away with 1 egg…well, I wasn’t happy with that for a number of reasons:

1. What if I miscarry that one egg?
2. I think I want two babies…which means I’d want to do this IVF procedure again, ASAP before I turn 38 if I’m fortunate that 1 egg survives after 5-6 days.
3. What if I have to do this procedure 6-7 times? There are a number of women who have had to do this just to get ONE baby. 😦

Anyway, I was told that I’d have to wait 5-6 days because they would then judge to see if the embryo’s cells multiplied and then they would freeze them. So, I’m just sort of sitting around…and trying to keep my mind off things. I’m not a super emotional person and I really hate crying. I don’t do it often and I can count on one hand I cry in a year and it rarely exceeds 3. This whole waiting period had me in tears every day, with any stupid thing setting me off, seeing a baby being held or coddled by their mother, seeing a dad play with his kid. You know, crap like that.

Finally, I got the call this morning and the news is that 2 out of my 3 eggs survived. 😀 I was so happy I started crying -_- Seriously. Did I mention I hate crying? I was sobbing for like a good 2 minutes before I pulled myself together. Anyhow, they are frozen now and just waiting for implantation. I chose to not do a fresh implantation for a few reasons:

1. IVF and all those drugs are SO hard on the body. I’m not super into taking things that are unnecessary. I’ll wait out headaches, even severe migraines and let my body fight it. I’m legit not into taking things.
2. I wanted to have a normal cycle and let my body recover from the surgery and with the concern of OHSS looming in the back of my mind, the last thing I wanted was to have a foreign thing in my body sucking up my life. And I’m glad I did. It’s been a week since my surgery and I am back down to the weight I was prior to this whole procedure. That’s how long it took to get rid of all the bloat.
3. I won’t be so stressed, so basically, just overall mental and physical health would be better.

I was concerned that doing a frozen versus fresh would be detrimental, but I was assured it wouldn’t be and that many men and women who have to do donor embryo and sperm have to do frozen, so I was satisfied with that response.

Hopefully, later in January I’ll be pregnant 😀