Cycle Review

Hi all!

Yesterday I made my way back up to UNC Fertility to have a talk with our doctor about how the cycle went, current state, and what we will do next.

I had to go by myself, unfortunately, since Mykel had a work event that went longer than he expected :( but that is okay! I was able to have him on speaker phone the whole time so he could be involved as well.

lucky tacocat shirt!

I love going to the clinic- every one there is very friendly, and they know who I am! The receptionist commented that it had been a while since she had seen me- which is true, it has been awhile! Plus, their wifi is really good ;)

The doctor called me back after just a couple of minutes of waiting and we got down to it! So here were the deets of my IVF retrieval and fertilization:

My body responded very well to the medications. My estrogen levels grew as they should have, although they expected a small number of eggs. The highest number of follicles they counted was seven, although that was due to my anxiety and pain during the vaginal ultrasounds. Those things are no fun, yall! 

They extracted 14 eggs, and of those 14, eleven were mature! Which is a crazy high number! 

Then came fertilization, and eight of my eleven mature eggs fertilized. Again, crazy!

Of those eight, ALL eight matured to the blastocyst stage! 8 for 8 is incredible. The doc was very impressed! What can I say, we make good embryos. 

There's a grading system that embryologists and those folks use to grade the quality of the blastocysts. I don't understand a lot of it, it really has been a hot minute since I've been in a biology class! There's a lot of good information online about that if you want to know, I won't go super into it here, but basically, the grading system is number-letter-letter. The number is between 1-5 and is how much the blastocyst has developed. Then the letter grades, A, B, or C. The first letter deals with the quality of the embryo itself, and the second letter with the quality of what will become the placenta. I think. 

My beautiful, healthy, lovely embryos, I am happy to say, were all 3's or 4's with a smattering of A's and B's. Which is again incredible. Not an unsatisfactory one in the bunch! The nugget that was transferred was a 4AA- the best quality! (I have one other 4AA, designated "Blue")

All of this combined makes it even more surprising that the embryo didn't stick. My uterine lining was nice and ready, the embryo was perfect quality, I didn't do anything crazy to cause it to not stick, but for some baffling, unknown reason, it just- didn't work. 

Because my embryos are all good quality, and I have seven snowflakes still waiting, it is pretty easy to know what to do next- a FET, or frozen embryo transfer. We'll be doing an assisted cycle, which means that we'll be controlling when I ovulate through the use of birth control, estrogen pills, and progesterone shots. It should be around a four-week process. So we could be doing a transfer the end of February! Just have to get the funds together... ugh. 

God has been very good to us, I am so grateful to Him and to our incredible doctors! Will update when we start our next cycle!