Thursday, May 15, 2014

Eggsellent

My ovaries this morning
What they feel like now :)


Luckily, my ovaries are not scrambled, just a little shocked that they worked so hard only to have the fruits of their labor ripped away.  Our count? Drum roll please. . .. . 16 eggs, 10 of which are mature.  I need to look up how they know so quickly which ones are mature or not. I know 10 isn't a ton, but it is twice what we got last time and we had pretty successful fertilization.  I'll be on pins and needles until we hear from the lab in the am to find out what our actual count is.

My doctor is a fan of saying, "It only takes one!" Which makes me want to punch her in the nose, because we all know that the more follicles we get, the more fertilized eggs we get and the less likely that we need to do another fresh round of IVF.  Also, that didn't work last time. We had 4 very happy/healthy embryos, one biochemical pregnancy and three that stopped growing between day 3 and 5. Sigh.

I'm happy that we have at least 8! That means we get to do an ICSI split, half of them will be fertilized through ICSI and half of them will get to do it the old fashioned way (not to be confused with the old, old fashioned way).  In the end it's not important how my eggs are fertilized, but I'd like to just know if my eggs and my husband's sperm can do what they are meant to, without a lab tech forcing them on each other.

In other very exciting news, we are taking part in the Eeva clinical study. The qualifications are that we have 4 viable embryos and agree to a day 3 transfer.  It's looking good so far.  In this study 4 of our embryos will get a special dish with a camera enabled microscope and their cell division will be closely monitored with a still photo taken every 5 mins.  This does expose the embryos to an extra 21 seconds of red led light, but I'm all for science and there have been no complications from the light exposure.  This method is already approved in the UK as a way to determine which embryos are "most likely to succeed."  Here's the link, if you'd like to check it out: Auxogyn - Eeva clinical study.

Throw Back Thursday Time!!!  Here are some shots from our first IVF cycle.  I wish I had known to be thankful for only two injections per night and absolutely no bruising on my tummy. Ahhh the good old days.
nightly dose

all the used vials (not including the sodium chloride)


We keep it in a lock box. It's pretty handy.

2 comments:

  1. You're making me feel really lucky we didn't get all the way to IVF. I had no idea how much was involved. I love the part about seeing if your eggs and his sperm will do what they're meant to do without a lab tech forcing them on each other. Good luck!

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