April 2016 - IVF #2, Fertilization / Day 1 Report

This morning, I woke up and felt the discomfort had started to fade.  Not likely to need much of the pain medicine today, but I'm still feeling like my body is worn and exhausted.  Michael left early for work, though I could tell he was worried to leave me on my own.  I assured him I'm fine to be on my own.  A day of rest in pjs at home is just what I need.

Waiting for the "Day 1" call is a little tough.  What should I prepare for?  There are only a few options this time...given we are only starting with 2 eggs (vs. 7 last time).  If they both fertilize that would be AMAZING!  But what if neither of them do?  Then, within 24 hrs of the procedure, we would be back to where we were at the beginning of February.

Before getting too deep in this Day 1 business, here's a recap of how the process works after the retrieval:

• Eggs retrieved
• Sperm sample given
• Embryologist examines eggs and evaluates egg maturity
• Embryo lab washes sperm and picks the shiniest, healthiest one(s) to inject into the egg(s) using ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) process

ICSI Process involves injecting a single sperm into a mature egg.  This increases fertilization success rates vs. simply adding sperm to the petri dish and relying on natural fertilization to take place.

• Fertilized egg(s) are suspended in a culture fluid in a petri dish to grow
• Embryologist checks / reports on embryo(s) after 24 hours to see if they are still growing normally
• This is the call I'm waiting for on Tuesday morning to learn how many fertilized and made it through Day 1
• Subsequent checks / reports occur on Day 3 and Day 5
• On Day 5, if the embryo has formed a 100+ cell healthy blastocyst, the embryologist will take a ~2 cell sample from it, then cryogenically freeze the blastocyst.
• The sample is then frozen and sent off for genetic testing (PGS/PGD), where all 24 chromosome pairs are mapped to confirm that the embryo is normal, greatly reducing the risk of miscarriage or genetic disorder (like down syndrome).  This takes ~2 weeks.

The process is complex, and extends over several days.  At any point, we could end up with nothing, but we knew that when we went forward with the retrieval despite having only 2 little follicles.  I would LOVE for them both to work, but that's probably unrealistic, so that isn't the news I was expecting to hear.  Even if we end up with nothing from this round, I didn't want it to happen today.  I wanted to at least see some encouraging results that might give us some more to learn and hope for the next round.

The phone rang at 11:30am.  Michelle, the lady who communicates the lab reports, tells me we have 1 successfully fertilized and growing embryo!  She will call me back on Thursday with the next update.  When I hung up the phone, tears began rolling down my cheeks.  I was so happy to have some form of good news.  This hasn't been a waste, and there's still a chance.  One hurdle down!  I texted Michael the good news the minute I could pull myself together.  He's thrilled, too.  We know the odds are still slim, but at least we have something to celebrate today!

I'm feeling myself turning an emotional corner...the weariness and despair that have eaten at me during the last couple of months feels like it is starting to fade.  Ending this cycle with 0 would still be hard to handle, but it wouldn't feel like the end of the world.  And for now there's still some hope for our one little growing embryo as well as the one on ice from IVF #1!