Once again, I’ve been a rubbish blogger. Rubbish in the sense that I simply haven’t blogged!
I seem to have got swept away with the trials and tribulations that IVF brings and become slightly hooked on infertility forums for support through this process. But I’m back with a promise to buck my ideas up and blog away to my heart’s content!
So, where are we now? Here’s a little time-line of events to help catch up:
Wed 16th May – Started injecting 150 Menopur every evening and reduced my Buserelin to 0.25 each morning.
Fri 25th May - Day 10 stims scan. Follicles in both ovaries, although not a huge amount at decent sizes. Menopur upped to 187.5
Mon 28th May – Day 13 stims scan. Growth seen but still told to only expect 4 or 5 follicles to be at the right size for giving mature eggs. Side effects wise, I’ve been really lucky. I haven’t really had any apart from some slight bloating towards the end of stimming.
Wed 30th May – Day 15 stims scan. Similar growth rate to before and expectation for maybe 5 eggs. Egg collection booked in for Friday. Told to do one more night of stims and the trigger shot of Ovitrelle at 2am Thurs morning! It turned out that I didn’t have enough Menopur to do another injection so the clinic told me not to bother – this stressed me out as surely there was a reason for wanting me to do an extra dose! Panicking now that it will affect the number of eggs we get.
Fri 1st June – Egg collection at 1pm. The sedation was amazing and I was out like a light. When I came round we were told they had got 11 eggs! Amazing! Now was the wait to see how many were mature and got jiggy in the lab that night. They were going to be injected (ICSI) as the donor sperm required this after thawing. Later that afternoon, the pain from the procedure really kicked in and the drugs I’d been given made me really sick. Fortunately it passed after a few hours and I was able to relax for the rest of the evening.
Sat 2nd June – We are told that 9 out of the 11 eggs had fertilized and that they would be going for either a 3 or 5 day transfer, depending on how they develop. Wow! We’re feeling really pleased with how it’s gone so far.
Mon 4th June – The clinic called to say that 8 embryos are still developing well (1 doesn’t quite meet criteria) so we will be having a 5 day transfer on Wednesday.
Wed 6th June – 10am is our embryo transfer. We had to wait a while before being seen and I had been told to go with a full bladder so by the time we got in the room, I was about to burst! The embryologist came to speak to us and said that there were 2 embryos that had made it to blastocyst stage but they were reduced quality (she gave them a CC grading). She suggested we have both transferred to give us a better chance of one of them sticking. We knew that this meant our chances of success were low as they would normally be very against someone of my age having more than one put back. She then went on to say that there are only 4 other embryos remaining but they were not yet at blastocyst stage and they would leave them overnight to see if they continued to develop but for us to be prepared that we might not have any to freeze. So the transfer went ahead. I desperately stared at the monitor to see if I could see our precious little embryos enter my uterus but I didn’t see a thing. My husband said he saw a flash of fluid so at least one of us did. We are given a pregnancy test, instructions for the next few days and an official test date of Sunday 17th June (Father’s Day ironically!) We go home feeling very deflated. I struggle to stay positive and try to prepare myself for this treatment cycle to end with a negative result.
Thurs 7th June – The clinic called to say our other 4 embryos did make it to blasts in the end but were not good enough quality to freeze. 
And so, here we are. I am now in what is called the 2 week wait (2ww). Although for us it is actually 11 days. This, however, doesn’t make it any less torturous. I have googled every possible thing related to the success or failure of “reduced quality” blasts and it would appear that we may have a chance this could work for us but it is slim. I am trying so very hard to stay positive and my husband is trying to be realistic – I think he’s dreading how I will react if we get a negative on Sunday. Only time will tell, I guess.
For now, we wait. And hope.
