Week of May 27

[VacayVaca]

I know I'm new, but I thought we needed to start the new weekly thread.

I had my egg retrieval yesterday and have been resting ever since.  I was not prepared for how tough the recovery would be from the retrieval.  I'm feeling much better today than yesterday, but I was in considerable pain for a few hours.  

We ended up with 11 eggs from the retrieval.  Based on my monitoring ultrasounds, that was the high end of what we were told to expect from the developing follicles, so I'm pleased with those results.  We're doing PGS testing, so we did ICSI for the fertilization.

We found out fertilization results today and I'm a little disappointed.  Ten were mature.  Of those 10, 2 did not fertilize and 4 fertilized normally.  The other four are kind of in a gray area where they can't tell whether they fertilized normally.  The embryologists gave me some more information on it, but basically they could not see whether the two pronuclei were present.  Has anyone ever been in this situation?  I thought it was a yes or no kind of deal, but apparently these last four could go either way so the embryologists will keep monitored them.  

Regardless, I have a history of miscarriages because of egg quality and I'm afraid these four limbo embryos are the result of bad eggs.  Everyone was right that this week is going to be the most stressful yet!!!

[lexisgrrl1980]

I’m sorry that you didn’t get the results you wanted Vacayvaca. We had two Egg retrieval’s that we’re not what we wanted too

Had, what is now our last FET, yesterday. Original embryo that we were going to use, tested normal, didn’t survive the thaw, so we had to use our last, untested, embryo. Fingers crossed that this one sticks, otherwise we have to reassess and decide our next steps are.

I took the rest of the week off and am sitting down the beach enjoying the ocean air.

[msmerymac]

VacayVaca , I have not had that happen personally, but I've had results where I got a ton of eggs and then very few fertilized - once I even failed to get any 5-day blastocysts at all. So even if you only have 4, that's a relatively high number out of 11! Plus, the nice thing about ICSI and PGS is that you can eliminate what won't work - it gives you a lot of information to work with and you can use the ones most likely to make it. Good luck!

[msmerymac]

I go in for beta on Friday. Eek! I don't think it worked, but I guess I'll find out then. I'm itching to test early, of course.

TMI, but the reason I don't think it worked is because I had spotting both times it worked before, and I didn't last time (negative) or this time. Of course, both those other times the spotting eventually turned... not good.

[megstoo]

msmerymac, Good Luck Friday!!!

We are still kinda sitting ducks right now. I had my laprascopy/hysterscopy the beginning of this month, normally I don't have cycles so I'm not going to test. Because of DH's horrible boss we had to push the transfer date to July. His boss decided to take off 2 entire weeks in June at the same time we were going to do transfer so it's impossible now. I'm a bit pissed since he told her when he was planning on taking vacation but he won't stick up for himself. I know it isn't that long however our clinic is 6 hours away so we have to spend the night and we planned on taking 4 days before transfer to go to Niagara Falls.

Question though: We have 2 embryos still frozen (got the ok to transfer both) however has anyone taken a day3 frozen, unthraw it and try and grow out to day 5 or 6 before refreezing? Our clinic automatically freezes everything on day 3 if you have under 4 embryo's (we had 3). I've heard of a few people doing this. I know the risk is we lose it completely but there are the advantages of it being a day 5/6 then. It's been on my mind recently.

[joenali]

Waiting for the go ahead to start another round of IVF at the end of June. I’m really nervous and scared. Last time none of our embryos made it to day 5 blastocysts. This will be our final attempt.

[VacayVaca]

May 29, 2019 15:39:37 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

I go in for beta on Friday. Eek! I don't think it worked, but I guess I'll find out then. I'm itching to test early, of course.

TMI, but the reason I don't think it worked is because I had spotting both times it worked before, and I didn't last time (negative) or this time. Of course, both those other times the spotting eventually turned... not good.

Thank you, I'm trying to hold on hope that at least one of those four embryos (or the four questionable ones) can make it to blastocyst stage.


Good luck on Friday!  I've had a pregnancy with implantation spotting and a pregnancy with no spotting, so it can vary even for an individual.  Fingers crossed it worked!


And lots of calming wishes for you joenali . Hopefully the iron infusion and lessons from how your body responded to the last round can influence some positive changes for this next round.

[joenali]

Thank you!

I just got my preliminary calendar and it’s a different protocol starting with luteal lupron which will decrease over a couple of days, 300 mg(?) of gonal f, and 150 of menopur. I don’t see cetrotide or my trigger on the calendar, I’ll have to check on this. I think my trigger will be HCG this time around rather than lupron like it was last time.

[VacayVaca]

May 30, 2019 17:52:18 GMT -5 joenali said:

Thank you!

I just got my preliminary calendar and it’s a different protocol starting with luteal lupron which will decrease over a couple of days, 300 mg(?) of gonal f, and 150 of menopur. I don’t see cetrotide or my trigger on the calendar, I’ll have to check on this. I think my trigger will be HCG this time around rather than lupron like it was last time.

They're just "International Units," or IU, for the units.  I think I saw on the box that 900 IU of gonal f is equal to 1.5 mg (or was it mL?).  My last dosage of gonal f was 300 IU and I read that's the upper limit of what doctors will prescribe.  It looks like your doctor is starting aggressive on your dosages.  


I heard our Day 3 update and all 8 embryos are still hanging in.  On day 1, they could only confirm 4 had fertilized normally, 1 looked abnormal and the last 3 could not be confirmed.  Today it looks like all 8 fertilized and are growing at different rates.  Five of them are right on track, and the other 3 are lagging slightly behind.  I'm so relieved we had 80% fertilization and all 8 are still moving forward--I was really upset at the prospect of only 40% fertilization.  Fingers crossed for Day 5!

[joenali]

May 31, 2019 12:17:25 GMT -5 VacayVaca said:

May 30, 2019 17:52:18 GMT -5 joenali said:

Thank you!

I just got my preliminary calendar and it’s a different protocol starting with luteal lupron which will decrease over a couple of days, 300 mg(?) of gonal f, and 150 of menopur. I don’t see cetrotide or my trigger on the calendar, I’ll have to check on this. I think my trigger will be HCG this time around rather than lupron like it was last time.

They're just "International Units," or IU, for the units.  I think I saw on the box that 900 IU of gonal f is equal to 1.5 mg (or was it mL?).  My last dosage of gonal f was 300 IU and I read that's the upper limit of what doctors will prescribe.  It looks like your doctor is starting aggressive on your dosages.  


I heard our Day 3 update and all 8 embryos are still hanging in.  On day 1, they could only confirm 4 had fertilized normally, 1 looked abnormal and the last 3 could not be confirmed.  Today it looks like all 8 fertilized and are growing at different rates.  Five of them are right on track, and the other 3 are lagging slightly behind.  I'm so relieved we had 80% fertilization and all 8 are still moving forward--I was really upset at the prospect of only 40% fertilization.  Fingers crossed for Day 5!

Grow little embryos grow! ❤️