I can’t believe I haven’t written at all about our fifth round of IVF, which started late-March with the suppression drugs. After a bit of drama about getting all my drugs ordered and to our house and melting down at the RE’s office because I don’t feel like I get the information I need all the time, we had the best round yet in terms of how my body responded to the drugs. In fact, yesterday morning, two days before my scheduled beta, I saw my very first ever postive reading on a HPT. (I never took a test at home when I was pregnant with M.) I knew it was early and was kind of trying to talk myself out of testing, but the tests were in the house from the last round that I thought was a success, and that is dangerous. I told myself that if it was negative it didn’t mean it didn’t work since it was still early, but there was the second line, clear as day. I tested again this morning and the result was the same. I have one more test that I’ll probably use tomorrow before my beta – just to see it again. : )
This round, Dr. R decided to try a different, new, protocol, which seems to have worked so much better for me. Every step of the process was better. At retrieval they got 23 eggs (the most previously was 14 in August 2008), and from 23 eggs 16 were mature and 10 developed into embryos (the most previously was 4 in August 2008). At our day-5 transfer (we have always in the past had to do day-3 transfers) we still had 6 embryos that looked good so we transferred 3 and they cultured 3 for freezing. Although only one of the remaining embryos was good enough to freeze, that is one more than we ever had in the past. So we now also have one little embryo frozen somewhere in Chicago-land.
Mike was home the morning I took the test and I woke him up after I showered to tell him the news. The first thing he said was “Can’t you get a false positive? Let’s wait and make sure it is right.” SO not a fun response to this amazing news. I think after two tests he is feeling a little more like it might be real. But he won’t breathe easily until we get a call from Dr. R’s office tomorrow, I am sure. I am having a hard time not telling everyone I see – neighbors, friends…But I haven’t yet. There are enough people that we’ll tell tomorrow since they all know that we just finished another round – I just have to wait a little to share the news.
With my body’s amazing response to this round, I am actually feeling a little nervous that there might be more than one embryo in there. While at the beginning (and even two days ago) I would have said that twins would be the best possible outcome since I would love to have 3 kids, I am starting to re-think that and wonder if I am up for that. Too late now either way, but I am feeling anxious about it. Tomorrow’s test won’t tell us anything about that, so we’ll have to wait a little longer and see. And the thought of possibly 3 is absolutely terrifying. Especially after the last week where M has gone on nap-strike and the only way we are (sometimes) getting him down is to lay down with him on an air mattress on his floor and then slip out from under his head and sneak out of the room. And no nap makes for a VERY cranky toddler, so there has been a lot of whining and some yelling here. What would I do if there were three (or four) on nap-strike? And where would we even put that many cribs and babies??? Scary. Hopefully we don’t have to address that. But we are absolutely over the moon thrilled (and a little nervous no matter how many are in there) that our family will hopefully be expanding around the end of the year. There’s a long time to go before then, and a long time to go before we are even in the second trimester and feeling a little safer. But, this is one giant step in the right direction.
