If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again

At times I feel like this just gets harder and harder. Talking with the doctor was tough...maybe tougher than I have let on. Every time I think about the next try it opens up a wound. Losing the embryos last time was hard and I think time heals all wounds...but it's not healed yet. It still really hurts.

Derek and I went to the doctor together almost two weeks ago. Here is what we learned...

The donor having 13 follicles was on the lower end of the spectrum. We kind of knew that. The doctor said 13 follicles should have given us 10 good eggs and I only had eight. So I kind of lost on that step. Out of the eight that were fertilized usually 50% don't succeed so my seven out of eight was great. And then, out of those eight, having five that made it to the blastocyst stage was about normal. So I had some bad luck, some good luck, and some typical luck. The doctor also said that 2/3 of people who use egg donors have embryos to freeze so I am fortunate that I didn't fall into the 1/3 who don't have any extras.

On November 13th we will try to transfer two more embryos. I have three frozen embryos. There are two ways to thaw the embryos. The first way is to thaw all three embryos at the same time and pick the best two. But, if all three are viable, the doctors will pick the best two and then the third will have to be discarded. It cannot be frozen again. The second way is to thaw them one at a time and, if the first two are viable, then we can save the third one. The only negative with this second method is that the one that is frozen may be stronger than the two that are thawed. There is no way to compare all three and take the best two with this method. That's ok with me if I can keep the third one frozen and possibly have a third chance. The big question I had was how much of a success rate do doctors have thawing embryos. The doctor told me 90% of embryos can be transferred. I like those odds.

So November 13th is the day. Twelve days later, which is when we do the pregnancy test, is Thanksgiving day. I hope that I'll be very thankful for something this year. My guess is I'll have to wait until Friday or even the following Monday, though, to get the pregnancy results. That will be a hard weekend.

My mom told me she had a dream recently. She, like me, doesn't usually remember her dreams. This one, however, she did remember. She had an extremely vivid dream that I had a baby named Richard and he started walking at 5 1/2 months old. OK...that second part probably won't happen, but it was nice that she had a dream about me having a baby.