Well, the past week has been a big rollercoaster, I see now why people just don't talk about all of this infertility stuff. I mean I really wanted to be open and honest, but when you are on the low end of emotions you really don't want to talk to anyone, at least I didn't...much less have to broadcast bad news, but here it goes.
So on Tuesday they were able to retrieve 14 eggs and they set them overnight to fertilize, we found out later that they actually put 50,000 sperm with each egg when in the human body the ratio is more like 1,000:1! But despite those more than "ideal" conditions we found out Wednesday morning that none of our eggs had fertilized...NONE! I never ever expected to hear that, we are not going through this process because we have any actual issue with fertility, just the physical act of the egg getting where it needs to be. As I've said many times, all three times I was pregnant it was on the first try - we shouldn't have an issue here and I never thought we would in a million years. But, we did. In fact they discarded 1 egg that was immature and the doctor later told us that when they went in to look Wednesday morning not a single sperm had attached to any of the 13 eggs. Not one! He said usually there are hundreds all over all of the eggs and we had zero.
The Doctor said the sperm looked great, were fantastic quality and the eggs were all really strong too. He had no idea why this happened and said it is very rare even for people with fertility problems that none attach at all.
Well that was pretty devastating, I had always been extremely positive and never had worries everything would go well on our first try. I was more worried about it going TOO well and ending up octomom or something (OK, maybe not that worried).
The nurse told us they were going to go ahead with a procedure called "Second Day ICSI" where they will pick out the best looking sperm and actually inject them right into the eggs to kind of 'force' fertilization. Usually when ICSI is done, the couple is expecting to have an issue and it is done right away, waiting until the second day to do it seems pretty rare from what I've seen online and unfortunately pretty unsuccessful as well. Of course the doctor says that it doesn't decrease the odds at all, but I have a hard time believing him.
So I just had a day of feeling sorry for myself and Jer did his best to put a positive spin on it, but I also was feeling increasingly bad from the Ovarian Hyperstimulation and I kind of just gave up. I was honestly expecting them to call the next day and say that it didn't work.
Well they did call the next day, but they had better news. Of the 10 eggs they did the procedure on, 3 of them had developed into embryos. Because there were only 3 they wanted to implant them right away instead of waiting to see how many make it to the blastocyst (5-day) stage. They set our implant up for the next morning.
As I'm sure you have noticed, the numbers were not on our side, we went from 14 eggs, to 13, to 10, to 3 and by the time we got to the surgical center Friday morning there were 2 good embryos left to put in. So we put them both in! I had to drink 32 oz of water on the way over, which was hard even for me (I love water) so they let me pee and then I had to lay on the hospital bed for 30 minutes before we could leave.
After we got home I was on bed rest for 2 days so my Mother-in-law was there for Friday to watch Anna and Jer was Mr. Mom all weekend while I rested and hopefully created a good environment for the little babies to snuggle in and start growing.
We are now playing the waiting game once again, we won't know anything for 4 weeks. I have a blood test in 2 weeks that should be a good indication of if things are still developing or not and then at 4 weeks they will know with more certainty if the pregnancy is successful.
I have to say that I am not getting my hopes up. I mean I am still treating myself as if I am pregnant right now, but I am preparing myself for bad news. Everything I have seen online does not look great when they have to do second day or "rescue" ICSI, so good news will be really good, and hopefully bad news won't be quite so devastating.
I am still doing 2 shots a day, one that Jer has to administer right into my butt that hurts so bad every time. That is the Progesterone in Oil and that will last for at least a few weeks. The other is Lovenox, which stings, but I do it in my stomach, and I took it twice a day everyday when I was pregnant with Anna so I am used to it.
I will probably check back in with news at the 2 week blood draw, but if we happen to get good news at the 4 week mark I will probably procrastinate a bit on posting ;) Sorry but I am just very superstitious. So no news is good news and keep those prayers coming.
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