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.