April 2016 - IVF #2, Day 3 Report

For the record, yesterday was my weekly, acupuncture appointment, and my new daily pill count is up to 27 (a new record!).  She added back in the herbal detox pills until we start the next cycle.  Yay pills!

Now it's Thursday morning and I'm waiting for Michelle to call.  The last couple of days, I have felt exhausted, but this morning, I'm very much awake and alert.  I had some meetings and phone calls to start of the morning, which were great to keep me busy and distracted, but now it's 10:30am, and I probably won't hear from her for another hour.

As we learned during round 1, typical healthy day 3 embryos are in the ~8 cell range.  On Day 3 of round 1, we had 5 embryos ranging from 4 cells to 10 cells.  Michelle told me then that the 4 cell was concerning, but that there have been cases of 4 cell embryos on Day 3 still making it to Day 5.  For us, only the 10 cell embryo made it all the way to day 5 as a blastocyst of >100 cells.

At after Day 5 of round 1, our RE explained that their lab excels at fostering embryos from Day 3-5...they have worked hard to perfect the conditions and culture to allow healthy embryos to succeed.  This means that the 4 growing embryos that didn't make it were likely genetically abnormal.  They wouldn't have made healthy babies, so at some point, nature intervenes, and they just stop developing.

Progression of embryos from Day 1-5.

I'm feeling nervous.  I know that this egg was either normal or abnormal from the very beginning...there is no way for the embryologist to tell if a normal-looking mature egg has all the right chromosomes.  They just fertilize it and we all wait.  Although the sample size was small, round 1 would indicate that only 1 of 7 of my eggs might be healthy.  My RE would tell me not to use this small sample in this way, but it's what I'm thinking about now, as I wait for Michelle to call.

Monday's report was relatively binary...2 eggs, either they fertilized or they didn't.  We got a yes for one and a no for the other.  Simple.  And I was so thankful that we didn't lose them both in the first 24 hours after the procedure, which would have been a very abrupt end to the nearly 6 weeks of preparation.

Today, there's potentially more information to be had.  The embryo could have died in the last 48 hours, in which case we are done and we shift all our focus to the next round.  If it's still growing, the cell count can give us an indication of how well it's growing, although not definitively.

This whole fertility process feels like living data point to data point, just hoping that the next breadcrumb of information is good...that it's not over yet, and you can hope just a little bit longer.  What else can we learn today?  What does that tell us?  How much can we trust this information to reflect reality?  When can we know the next thing?  What will we do differently from there...?  It's like we are feeling our way through this dark forest.  We are being led through it by a specialist who knows much more about the damn forest than we do, but can't see much further down the path to be able to say if there is an end in sight.

I know that we need to have faith that it will all work out, and that there will be a baby at the end of the path, no matter how long the path ends up being.  Easier said than done...  While Michael has been great at this, quite frankly, I sucked at it for most of February and March as well as various points along the line during the last 2 years.  I felt like sitting down in the middle of the forest in protest.  "This isn't fair!" I wanted to scream, "This works out so easily for so many...why not me?!"  Each time, Michael has helped me get back up, dusted me off, and held my hand tightly as we stumble forward down the path again and the next breadcrumb of data...

12:00pm  Ok, it's noon and she still hasn't called.  I'm guessing I won't hear from her until after lunch.  Sigh...

1:07pm  Our embryo is still growing!!!  Embarrassingly, I gave up and called her...at the same time she was calling me.  I hung up after leaving her a message, and the voicemail appeared.  Doh!  Her message said the embryo is still growing and she would call back on Saturday with the Day 5 results.  Whew!  So thrilled that there's still hope for this round!

I immediately called her back and left a message to apologize for being impatient and missing her call, but also to ask what the cell count of our little embryo is today.  That might give some indication on how strongly it's growing and how optimistic we can be for Saturday's results.

When I heard back from Michelle, it was unfortunately not very promising news.  The embryo was only at 3 cells this morning.  That's less than our smallest one last time.  It's not completely hopeless, but certainly not likely to succeed through Day 5.