Moving on to Plan B

Well, we are out. All of our embryos arrested at some point after Day 3. It seems like they really didn't grow much at all past the cell counts from our Day 3 report. I have to say that gives me a nagging suspicion that there might be some sperm issues, but when I asked the doctor about that last time, he said it was in 90% probability an egg issue rather than a sperm one. Still. It makes it hard for me to give up on my own eggs, but that is precisely what I must do. I owe it to my husband to move on, as we planned to do. And I do agree that we have wasted enough time already. So donor egg it is.

I checked out the SART stats on my local clinic versus CCRM versus also Cornell. Interestingly, my local clinic (IRMS at St. Barnabas) has stats that are actually better than Cornell's, though not as many cycles performed. Cornell's success rate (live birth) for fresh transfer with donor eggs is 52.1%, IRMS's rate is 60.8%, and CCRM's is....78.8%. Ding, ding, ding...we have a winner. J. and I pretty much agree that we shouldn't mess around with that. It is worth the extra money. And we aren't buying a house anytime soon anyway, so why not go out with a bang.

My nurse already called me today to follow up, and we have a WTF appointment set up with Schoolie after we get back from Mexico. She will also have the donor egg nurse call me soon, so hopefully I can start making arrangements with her before talking to the doctor. We'd like to start shopping! I think we will most likely go ahead and use CCRM's donor pool.

So I got the call while I was at a colleague's house working on a course we are teaching together in the fall. She knows what is going on with us and was very sweet. And then I had to call J. I was so worried that he would lose it, but he did not. He was very calm and rational, saying that he felt ok about it and pointing out that we have a great Plan B. I am so happy that we have gotten past the problems we were having and that we are moving forward. I think this trip to Mexico is going to be just what we needed. We leave on Friday. I'll try to check in before then, but if you don't hear from me, you'll know why.

From no news is good news, to better late than never

Well they did call me today with my Day 3 report from yesterday. Indeed it is their policy to no longer call on Day 3, at least for those of us who are doing the CCS testing. Anyway, here's the news:

All 8 are still going (the 5 originals and the 3 Day 2 ICSIs), though some are probably out of the running. Of the Day 1 bunch, I have 2 8 cells that are both a grade 3 (around 25% fragmentation) and a 7 cell that is a grade 3+ (15-20% frag). Then a 3 cell and 5 cell that she didn't give grades for, but they are probably too slow.

And from the Day 2 ICSI group, these were the cell counts yesterday, which technically was only Day 2 for them: a 9 cell and a 7 cell (yikes! That is too fast, so that is not good) and a 2 cell (a little too slow). I guess they all should have been around 4 cells yesterday. What's with the mutant fast-growers??

Just to put it in perspective, last time my only 8 cell was the only one that made it to blast, and it had 20% fragmentation. It was ultimately graded a 4 BB, so I guess these ones would be not quite as good. I don't know if they can improve in quality as the become blasts. Last time I also had a 7 cell on Day 3 with 0% fragmentation, but it didn't make it to blast.

So now I wait until Tuesday to get the final report on how many make it to blast and will be biopsied and then vitrified. And then the long wait begins. The last two times we have received our testing results in about a month. Sometimes it can take up to 6 weeks, but I hope that won't be the case.

We are also thinking about starting the ball rolling for the donor egg process, because if this doesn't work we don't want to lose any time. I'm not sure how fast that process can be, but I'm sure R. could chime in here. Also, we are trying to decide whether to go to CCRM for donor egg, or go back to our local clinic to do it. We are also near Cornell, but I think it would take too long to get established as a patient there, so the choice is between either our local clinic (IRMS - St. Barnabas, for those of you familiar with this area) or CCRM. If we do a fresh transfer, I don't see much difference. But if we get a lot of extra embryos and want to freeze, I would definitely feel better about using CCRM. Thoughts? (I think I know where the bias in my readership lies!)

No news is good news?

Well, I didn't hear from the lab this morning so I called them this afternoon, and was told by the person who answered the phone that they are not making Day 3 calls anymore. That would be fine, except that they told me after retrieval and also when they called with the Day 2 ICSI results that they would call on Day 3. She said she could leave a message for them to call me anyway, so I waited the rest of the day for them to call. Nothing. I gripped my cell phone, on vibrate, all the way into Manhattan for a small wedding ceremony, only turning if off 5 minutes before the ceremony began. Then turned it back on right after and made J carry it in his pocket. Kept checking it compulsively all day - nothing. So unless they are going to take pity on me and call me tomorrow, I'll have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to hear from them. Monday is Day 5, which is the day where most embryos that are "on track" should become blasts, but sometimes they are a little slow and don't make it to blast until Day 6. And those that were Day 2 ICSIs would definitely take until at least Tuesday. So the waiting continues. Ugh.

3 more!

We got home today, but before we left the embryology lab called to let me know that they were able to mature 3 more eggs overnight. They ICSIed them and all three fertilized! That is good news, though I know that Day 2 ICSIs don't tend to do as well moving forward. But maybe we'll get something. So now we wait for the Day 3 report tomorrow...

It's a numbers game

We got our fertilization report this morning. The phone woke us up, so I was a little groggy at first. But I'm glad we didn't have to wait around all morning to get the news. Anyway, out of the 12 eggs retrieved, 6 were mature. They did the ICSI procedure on those 6 (that's where they actually inject one sperm right into the egg, for those of you who aren't already expert in this stuff...) and 5 of them fertilized. There were 3 more eggs that matured in the lab over night (one of the many tricks they have up their sleeves at the wonderful CCRM lab) so they will be ICSIed today I think. And then there are the remaining eggs that they will check on later today to see if they have also matured in the lab, but I'm not so hopeful for them since they weren't matured 24 hours after retrieval. So now we wait for the Day 3 report. I'm hoping that we will have a good number of them being in the 7 to 8 cell range, which is the optimal cell growth for Day 3. (Normally an embryo will be 4 cells on Day 2, then double to 8 cells on Day 3.) As I think I said before on our last cycle, we only had one that was at 8 cells on Day 3 (and a number of others that were slower), and that was the only one that made it to blast. And turned out to be normal. So I just need to get through the next few days to see what they have to say on Saturday.

We leave for home tomorrow, so we have one more day to relax in Denver. I'm feeling pretty much fine today - just a little sore. We just went out to breakfast at the Original Pancake House (thanks to R. at Oneeggplease) and had an awesome meal. We had never heard of that place, even though it is apparently a chain. Very yummy! Now we are back at the hotel lounging around and trying to decide what to do with the day. The weather isn't so sunny, so no lounging by the pool. We mostly just want to relax. I'm feeling nervous about our results, but also somewhat calm because I know that we have a plan for moving forward. Despite what I said about wanting to maybe do another cycle with my eggs, I am slowly realizing that if this one doesn't work, my eggs really have reached the end of the road. Hearing about R's recent success with donor eggs (congrats!!) has made me feel much better about heading in that direction if necessary. As J. said, it is time to move on with our lives...

Lucky number 12?

Two posts in one day! I just wanted to say that on a silly impulse, I asked J. to buy us 12 Powerball tickets - one for each egg retrieved. I saw on t.v. this morning that the prize is at 260 million, so I sort of joked that we should buy a ticket. Later, before retrieval, I suggested that he get one for every egg. He went out for some errands and I wasn't sure that he would do it, but sure enough, he came home with twelve numbers. I hope I'm not jinxing us, but I thought it would be fun. Of course I'd rather have our IVF be successful than win the lottery, but then again with all that money we could certainly afford to cycle again!

It's done

Just a quick post because I'm really tired. Just got back from retrieval and they got 12 eggs, which is better than I was hoping for. I know we had 8 follicles that looked mature, plus some smaller ones, so I'm hoping some of those smaller ones will be mature as well. We will get the fertilization report tomorrow. I had to ask specifically for them to do Day 2 ICSI on any eggs that they are able to mature overnight if they aren't ready yet. They won't do that automatically unless you have a really small number retrieved, but they will do it if you ask, and I'd like to have as many as possible to work with, especially since this is our last try.
That's all for now - I feel a nap coming on. I'll post the fertilization report tomorrow.