IVF Cycle 5 – Fertilization Report & Embaby Update

IVF Cycle 5 – Fertilization Report

Sunday, May 17, 2015

We received our fertilization report via email at 9:15am.  I was impressed with it arriving so early.  It was as follows:

We retrieved 7 Oocytes (eggs), of those 7, five were mature (M2s) and 1 was almost there (M1); 6 total. Of those 6, 2 fertilized and 4 of them did show evidence of fertilization but were slightly behind. We will continue to monitor their progress and will update you in two days (day 3).

 

In layman’s terms, this is a decent report.  Obviously, we were hoping for all 7 to fertilize, but that’s unrealistic.  What they are saying here is that 2 are doing pretty well, 4 are doing decent, and we have lost 1.  We will just pray, pray, pray for the 6 that we have remaining.

 

The trip home felt considerably longer than the trip there, and we actually made better time.  We were both exhausted and just ready to be off the road.

 

To give you an idea of what Todd has been through recently, here is his schedule for the last 2 weeks:

·         May 3-7:  Buffalo, NY work trip

·         May 8:  Frisco, TX personal trip

·         May 9:  Searcy, AR personal trip for Kaleb’s graduation

·         May 10:  We got home at 4am and were up at 7am for church.  We spent 4 hours at church, lunch at my uncle’s, and dinner at my parents’.  It was a bit exhausting.

·         May 11-14:  Austin, TX work trip

·         May 14-17:  St. Louis personal trip for IVF

 

Are you exhausted for him, yet?!  Because I am!!

 

Anyway, we did watch two sermons by Steven Furtick on the podcast app on the way home from St. Louis.  He’s an excellent pastor.  If you haven’t heard him, I promise that you’re missing out.  That man really rocks my faith-based world!

 

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IVF Cycle 5 – Embaby Update

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

I received an update on our embabies today.  Here is what it was:

We have 1x 6 (2) and a 1x 9 (2) embryos. The first number represents the cells and the second number represents the grade. We will keep an eye on them and see how they progress. You will receive another update in a couple of days.

 

After a few rounds of emails with Shawnie, I found out:

·         2 of the embabies are still growing.

·         The goal for cell division is 6-10 cells on day 3, so we fall in that range for both embabies.

·         The grading is to describe the fragmentation.  The scale is 1-5 with 1 being the best, so a grade of 2 is approximately a B.  Considering I was a straight-A student my entire life, I’m having to learn to handle receiving so many Bs and Cs in IVF.  J

·         4 of our embabies have been lost.  She wasn’t sure if they arrested or just didn’t cleave.  I don’t know what that means right now, but I don’t really want to look into it any further.

 

At first, I was so sad that we had lost 4 of the embabies.  After emailing with Shawnie, I was feeling much better about the situation.  The truth is that we only need one embryo to make it through this entire process of dividing, freezing, thawing, and transfer.

 

God can do great things with one embaby.  He can do twice as many great things with two embabies!