Blasting Babies

Another excellent fortune we received when we returned from Colorado.

It’s been a while since I have written, which I am guessing is becoming nothing new to my readers.  I apologize for being absent.  Two of my doctors have been encouraging me to make more time for all of the things that make me happy, so I’m working on fitting writing back into my schedule.

In my last entry, I left off by telling you that we had six of our mature eggs that fertilized.  We were elated.  The next day, we left Colorado feeling confident with our decision to only continue with this lone cycle.  It was a rough drive home.  Todd and I were both having a considerable amount of pain, so we broke the drive into two days.

Once we were home, settled, and back into our daily routine, we only had a day to wait until we *hopefully* started receiving news from the doctor.  We hoped to hear from them on Thursday, which was considered Day 5 of embryo growth.  This is the best day for the embabies to make it to the blastocyst stage (called “blast” for short) where they can be biopsied for genetic testing and frozen.  Anything past Thursday means they are showing signs of weakness, so to speak.  Thursday came, and Thursday passed.

On Friday, February 12, Todd came to pick me up for lunch.  It was my 35^th birthday, so he was taking me out for a special treat of sushi.  Yum!  We knew we should be expecting hoped we would receive a call some time that day because it was now Day 6.  Just as we wrapped up lunch and received the copy of our bill to sign, my phone rang.  Our hearts stopped.  I quickly picked up the phone and headed for the exit as I answered.  I listened intently as the embryologist explained to me that three embryos were still alive.  One had blasted that day and would be biopsied for genetic testing and frozen.  The two others were still being watched until the next day, Day 7.  I asked as many questions as I could think at the time, hung up the phone, and climbed in the car with Todd.  And that’s where I cried.  One of our babies had finally achieved the level we needed, but it was a day later than we had hoped.  The chances of the other two making it until tomorrow seemed very grim.

It was there in the front seat of our car on a cute little street in downtown Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, on my 35^th birthday that I felt my dream starting to slip away for good.  I cried on and off for the remainder of the workday when no one was around.

The next day, on Day 7, we were doing our best to pay attention at a marriage conference, which we coined our “Continuous Improvement Weekend.”  In the middle of a session, my phone rang, and Todd and I both darted out of the ballroom to the lobby as quickly as we could.  Again, I listened patiently as the embryologist began to explain that we no longer had to wait.  All three of our embabies had blasted, been biopsied, and frozen.  I couldn’t believe it.  Todd couldn’t believe it.  Here we were expecting to only have one embryo, and God reminded us that we needed to have a little more faith in Him. 

Three embabies.  Still alive.  Still fighting for a chance to be our baby.

Continuous Improvement Weekend selfie

After some discussion, we realized that if we had been told nothing on Friday and found out on Saturday that only three of the six survived, we would have been so distraught.  Instead, since we thought on Friday that we would only have one, we were elated at the news of actually having three.  It’s funny how God works like that.

At that point, we were given another wait.  We were told that they could call within 3 weeks with our genetic test results.  However, another friend of ours that was at CCRM received her call at 4 weeks.  Therefore, we told everyone we knew not to expect any information for 4 weeks.

I promise to try not to make you wait another 4 weeks to find out what happened next.  J

Just a little funny