Well we finally, finally met with the doctor today to discuss our IVF cycle. It took so long to get back in because we wanted to meet with our favorite doctor – he is a great communicator and we thought it very important to meet with the one with whom we feel most comfortable for such an important discussion. We spent over an hour with him and it was great – we got to hear all the impressions from the cycle and ask any questions we could think of. So here is the summary:
- aside from the fact that there was some assistance needed to get the eggs fertilized, everything proceeded as they expected and as they call ‘normal’ until post day three after the egg retrieval – so the eggs that fertilized were developing normally and looking good until after day 3
- after day 3, things took a not so expected turn – out of the 11 eggs that fertilized, only 4 were even still growing and those 4 were all behind in their development. So not looking good at that point – which is why we transferred 3 back in instead of the expected 2.
- even with the information above, there is still no clear indication of what the ‘problem’ is. There could be issues with the eggs or with the sperm – or with our eggs and sperm together, but no obvious signs of where the issue(s) trully lie. There is potentially some sort of ‘genetic’ issue which, as the doctor said, looking at the glass half empty, could prevent us from ever getting pregnant together. The glass half full side is that the embryos just didn’t do well in the culture medium that they use in the petri dish and would have survived and developed much better in my uterus. The doc said, and we believe, that the actual situation lies somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.
- so having said all that, the four doctors in our practice discussed our case at length and believe we still have a reasonable shot of getting pregnant via IVF. They had a list of about 4 things that they will change in the next cycle to hopefully increase the chances of success. A brief overview of those things: 1) take some sort of medicine that regulates insulin, that could potentially help with egg/embryo quality 2) lower the dose of stimulation meds so that I don’t stimulate as fast or produce as many eggs 3) perform assisted fertilization (ICSI) on all of the eggs instead of on just half like they did with the last cycle and 4) transfer the embryos on day 3 instead of day 5 to give them the best possible chance of success.
Going into this meeting, I really didn’t have any major expectations, hopes, concerns, etc. I believe I have finally reached the point of trully letting go – I don’t think there is much they could have said today to affect me extremely positively or negatively. I don’t feel overly encouraged by the discussion nor do I feel discouraged. The best way to describe how I feel is neutral. Alex and I both agree that it makes sense to try one more cycle of IVF – our insurance covers 85% so just from a practical perspective it makes sense. We were also impressed with the doctors analysis and recommendations – that they have a plan in place to attack our situation from a different angle. If they just said let’s do this again without making any adjustments, it would be a harder decision to go through this again. But we are pretty much certain to try another cycle – it is definitely worth it to try again. We will likely take an extra month off (in theory we could go ahead and begin the next cycle at the end of this month) so we likely won’t start until mid to late October. We still need to map out dates, etc to make sure that is what we want to do, but that is our initial thought.
So, all in all, we were pleased with our meeting and feel confident about moving forward with one more cycle. We feel very secure in the knowledge that we are in good hands with our doctors and are glad to have more information on our situation (even though it is still somewhat vague). As a whole, Alex and I are doing well – we are very happy and grateful for the many blessings in our lives. This area of our life is certainly a challenge, but we are so much stronger together and our relationship has grown so much. There is a silver lining to every storm 
.
Oh, I almost forgot – in reference to the title of this post – the doc made a comment that Alex and I both thought was funny. He was mentioning how some fertility practices don’t do certain tests to monitor the cycle and I asked if that was due to the maturity of the practice and he said no, some doctors are just cowboys….hehe.
I’ll continue to update with any news…love to all! m
