We did the bulk of our IVF treatments over the summer, with the intention of also transferring the embryos at that time. I did weeks of daily injections, which weren't that bad at all. Just grab a little belly chunk and jab it in. The one that made me mass produce eggs kind of stung, but it was over quickly. Of course I imagined the worst case scenario the entire time and over-analyzed every little thing. I was convinced I was having all kinds of side effects and that my heart might explode (I had had some minor heart issues this year, completely different story). I was terrified I was going to get something called Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome and have to go into the hospital and everything would be ruined and I might possibly die. OHSS is something where your ovaries get too stimulated and swell up and basically try to kill you. So naturally it was going to happen to me. It didn't. And my heart never blew up. I was completely fine.
My body was slow to make good eggs (surprise, surprise) and we had to stimulate for slightly longer than we had planned. We already know from bloodwork that my egg quality sucks and that my egg reserve is low. Awesome. So I guess that, along with my natural slowness, is what took my ovaries the extra few days of stimulation. I had been taking DHEA for a couple of months to try and help with that issue, so I imagine without it things would have been even worse.
When I had one egg go over 20mm, our doctor had me trigger ovulation. The other eggs weren't quite ready, but she didn't want me to ovulate on my own and lose that lead egg along with all the others. So she had me administer the hCG injection that night to induce ovulation, and we scheduled my egg retrieval for 36 hours later. Game time.
We went in to the office at 11 a.m. two days later, the morning of the retrieval. I had done all the surgery "prep" as in nothing to eat or drink, come in sweats, blah blah blah. They got me suited up in my cute little hospital robe, footies, and hair net thing. Got my IV started and just waited. When it was time, they had Jake go in to a special private viewing room where he was able to watch the procedure on a TV screen. I had to walk myself to the OR, wheeling my little IV bags with me, which was kind of weird. I had to get myself on the table and everything. Laid down and put my butt where they told me to and waited for my drugs. That part is always fun. ;)
Next thing I knew I was waking up and the anesthesiologist was telling me they got 11 eggs! They thought they had 10 at first but then they found another little guy. I was pretty happy considering I didn't have too many that looked mature at my last ultrasound. Jake came back and showed me the video he took of the video of the procedure. It was pretty cool. They had this little tool and it just looked like it was sucking the eggs out one by one.
After a short recovery we were sent home and I relaxed for the rest of the day. We waited anxiously for a call from the nurse to let us know the status of the fertilization. That news, when it came, was kind of eh. But it also explained a lot. Of the 11 eggs, 10 survived to fertilization. I guess that last little one wasn't meant to be. Of the 10 we had left, they split them in to two groups: 6 in one and 4 in the other. For the 6, they just put them in a petri dish with the sperm and let them go at it. For the other 4, they did something called Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), where they manually inject one sperm into each egg. All 10 eggs fertilized. However, in the group of 6, none of them fertilized normally and would not survive. Of our 4 that had ICSI, 3 of them fertilized normally. That basically tells us that we have a big problem with fertilization, probably stemming from my sucky eggs. Apparently they are fertilizing on their own, but they're not fertilizing normally and never survive past a day or two. Who knows how many times that has happened without us knowing. So anyway, in a matter of a day, we had gone from 11 eggs to just 3 embryos. Yikes. Then we were told that only 2 of them seemed to be growing normally. So make that 2. Looks like this is our only shot, folks.
We were tentatively planning on doing a fresh transfer once the doctors had a chance to watch the embryos for a few days. Embryo quality diminishes quickly within the first few days and many of them do not survive. The goal is to make it to day 5. At day 5, the embryos are at the blastocyst stage, meaning that they have divided enough times and are now a ball of cells that have formed into 2 distinct ways. There is an inner cell mass, which will eventually become the developing fetus, and the outer cell mass, which will make up the cells of the placenta. So on day 5 we got the call: our 2 little embryos were dividing and developing and growing normally and made it to the blastocyst stage! However, since we had stimulated for a couple of extra days, our doctor was concerned that my uterine lining was beginning to pass its prime. She did not want to transfer the embryos into an environment that was not the very best it could be. So, we made the decision to freeze the 2 baby blastocysts and wait until next month so that we could do the transfer after we create the perfect uterine environment, so to speak. This was a little disheartening, mostly because we both HATE waiting, but we realized that this was for the best. No sense on putting them back in if my lining is not in its optimal state. And we've waited this long, what's another month..... although that's so much easier said than done.
After finding out we were moving to South Florida, we kind of put our embryo transfer "on hold" until we could get settled. After being here for a few weeks, we finally felt ready to start the process again. We knew it would be almost 2 months from this point until we would actually be going in for the transfer anyway, since it involves weeks of birth control and injected medications. So I called our doctor in Orlando at the end of September and told her we were ready to continue! She had me start the birth control on September 29th so that we could begin to regulate things. Then I had to do some Googling to find a doctor down here that I could go to for my monitoring appointments for my ultrasounds and bloodwork. As much as I would love to see our doctor for all of our appointments, going back and forth to Orlando once or twice a week would not be ideal, as it is about 2.5 hours each way. Our doctor, Dr. Patel, is AMAZING and we've loved her from our very first meeting almost 2 years ago. The nurses are all fantastic and super nice as well, and I love the lady who always draws my blood. She seems to hate being at work as much as I do, but she's so good at her job and I think she's hilarious. Her sarcasm and cynicism always makes my morning. I really miss getting to see her on a weekly basis. But anywayyyy, I found a small place in Boca Raton that seemed to be used to taking monitoring patients. It has worked out very well for us so far. Our embryos are frozen in Orlando, so we will get to go back there for the transfer. I think about them all the time! I hope they're doing ok and keeping each other company.
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