An Update: WTH Appointment

After our first failed cycle last May, our friend, Carri, told us we would be having our WTH Appointment.  Basically, this is the meeting with the doctor to figure out what the heck went wrong during the cycle.  Well, ironically enough, when TFC books this appointment and puts it on your portal, it says “IVF FU Appointment.”  Now, if that isn’t irony, I don’t know what is.  (By the way, FU stands for follow-up.  Personally, I think the doctors at TFC have a sense of humor.)

We had our WTH/FU appointment on Wednesday.  Dr. McKinney spent at least 45 minutes talking to us.  It was wonderful, if you ask me.  Todd and I left there with all of our questions answered.

Basically, she said that we have a lot working against us with my eggs being old and in low reserve and Todd’s sperm being immature.  She said that there might just be an awesome month that hits sometime, or we may never get quality embryos.  This is where God comes in the window, and science flies right out.

Also, Embryo 3.0 that we had hoped to transfer the Thursday before was only at a morula phase, which is the phase before blastocyst.  It has to reach blastocyst before they will transfer, so if we hadn’t done the genetic testing, they would have made us wait until Friday to see if it developed any further. 

If we hadn’t done the testing, chances would have been that it could have developed to blastocyst stage by Friday, we would have transferred, and it wouldn’t have worked because it was so chromosomally abnormal.  It could have even been a perfect looking blast, but we now know it was too abnormal to lead to a viable pregnancy.  (Even perfect-looking embryos can be chromosomally abnormal, and you don’t know it until you do the genetic test.)

In the end, she was telling us that we wasted our money on the genetic testing on this cycle.  She probably won’t recommend we do the testing next cycle, either. 

During our WTH/FU, she started talking to us about donor eggs, donor sperm, adoption, etc.  We have discussed the idea of adoption.  However, we have always ruled out donor eggs/sperm for personal reasons.  Everything is back on the table, but it’s something I don’t want to discuss just yet.  Right now, I want to concentrate on finding ways to make the best eggs possible for this next cycle.  If that doesn’t work, we have a backup plan that still does not involve donor eggs/sperm or adoption; it involves a doctor in St. Louis.  I’m praying that we don’t need our backup plan.

As for the next cycle, we found out that we will have our baseline ultrasound on October 22.  (My stomach turned flips when I saw the dates.  Suddenly, it was “so real.”  That’s for you, Todd.)  I can speculate as to when my other appointments will be, but they are just guesses.  All of it will depend on what my body does.  I won’t even know when we start the stim shots until the day of the baseline ultrasound.

She is going to change my shot protocol some, so we are crossing our fingers that it works.  Based on my best calculations, this could raise our costs for meds by about $1600.  Ugh.

Overall, I’m kind of a nervous wreck.  Todd left town for an 8-day business trip on Friday.  My anxiety pulled into town with a U-Haul on Sunday.  I set a last-minute appointment for acupuncture this afternoon.  I’m grateful he could squeeze me in because I need to try something!

If you happen to see me in the next few weeks and I seem to be talking to myself, don't worry about me; I'm just praying.  J