Saturday, November 10, 2007

Fertilization Report, Day 2

The IVF lab called this morning to give us the embryo update. They called about three hours earlier than I expected, so it threw me off a little. Of course, what she had to tell me threw me off even more: all 12 of our embryos have made it to Day 2! The embryologist said that some of them were three cells, some were five cells but the majority were four-celled. She also said that this is exactly where they would expect them to be at this point. Holy COW! What fantastic news! I was really, really surprised and for a quick second I let myself just revel in the fact that this might actually work! I might be pregnant within the next week!!!

Now the next dilemma starts... when to do the transfer. The RE's office "policy" is that if you have 10 or more eggs that make it to Day 3, they wait it out until Day 5 to see if the embryos can get to the blastocyst stage. The theory is that if the embryos can make it to the blast stage, they'll have a higher likelihood of implanting and surviving. That's all fine and good, except that studies show that and average of 50% of embryos fail on Day 4, meaning that they don't get to the Day 5 blast stage. Remember this is an average... we could have none fail or we could have all fail. Which is why my RE's office only allows Day 5 transfers if you have more than ten. They figure that if you have that many that make it to the Day 5 stage, you're in good shape. Right now we have 12 embryos at Day 2.

This could all change, of course, with tomorrow's phone call from the lab. If three of our babies-to-be decide that they can't hold on and make it to Day 3, our decision is made for us. We'll have less than the ten-embryo-minimum for the Day 5 transfer protocol and I'll be putting two back tomorrow and freezing the other seven or so. BUT, if all 12 make it to Day 3, then we have the dilemma of waiting it out to Day 5 or calling our RE and begging for a Day 3 transfer. All the literature that I've read says that if you can hold out for a Day 5 transfer, it's worth the gamble. But in the same paragraph they say that the implantation rate is approximately the same for Day 3 versus Day 5 transfers. It's all so damn confusing.

I guess what it comes down to is are we willing to hang in there for another few days to see if they can survive? Part of me says hang in there, that if all 12 of these little embryos have made it to Day 2, it's worth seeing how many can make it to Day 5. Even if we lose 50%, we'd still have six left; two to transfer and four to freeze. The other part of me says that I've monkeyed around with nature enough now and I just want the two best put back where they belong. If we did that, we'd have ten Day 3 embryos to freeze versus four Day 5. R says to leave it up to the RE and let him make the decision, but personally he's leaning toward wanting a Day 3 transfer. Of course, his reasons are completely different than mine. He's leaving for Chicago on Monday morning and won't be back until later on Tuesday and he'd like to see this over and done with before he leaves so he'll have one less thing to worry about. Plus, I've already taken Monday off and have the Nanny coming to get E so that I can rest on Monday (which was originally supposed to be one day post transfer). Granted, it'll suck out loud (as far as my work) if I have to take Tuesday off, since I already took Monday. But I'll deal with it.

So, now we're just waiting for that phone call tomorrow morning. And in the meantime, I'm chanting 'grow, grow, grow' every waking second. Come on little ones, you can hang in there.

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