Blasts on board!

Thank you so much for all your good wishes and messages, I do believe the positive vibes have arrived to Dublin from all over the World!

Last night while meditating I did this visualisation exercise that spreads positive energy from your inner self to the last corner on Earth. I imagined this energy travelling down the road to the clinic, really connecting with the embryos in the incubator. I thought about the embryos as mine really for the first time this cycle, I felt them.

This morning I was hopeful we would not get a phone call, I repeated some positive affirmation upon waking up and then off we went to the clinic for our scan. I am not sure what happened, there were so many people n the waiting room, like standing up and all, and we were waiting for ages (normally I never wait more than 5 minutes). Also Mike recognised a neighbour from his home town!! What are the chances! Anyway, the exchanged the usual "how are you keeping? you well?" like they were in a pub or something...I hope they know we won't say anything, we are quite open about IF but of course many people are very private about it.

Anyway, at 9.50 as Ivy as suggested on Sunday, I sent Mike downstairs to see if we would be long as our transfer was at 12.30. I also told him to see if he could get to talk to Ivy and get some news on the embryos and whether the transfer was going ahead. So he did, we wouldn't be waiting that much longer and the transfer was confirmed!! At that point I could have been there the whole day!

Scan went well, it was the Favourite Doctor that did it for me, only a tiny bit of fluid and she wasn't concerned. She new everything about the embryos she said she was checking with the lab every day!! How sweet can she be? She said everyone in the clinic knows us so well and they all can't wait to celebrate our pregnancy in the right spot! Awwhhhh...

We hopped in to work, I faked a UTI and off we were again to the clinic.

We had two nice fully formed blastocysts and wait...two more morulas! The embryologist said they'll culture them until tomorrow and see if they make it to blasts, if so they'll freeze them. The last time it didn't happen but still, our five little heroes are fighters.

I had the Top Doctor for the transfer this time, I never had him before so maybe that was the one I needed between my legs! Who knows. Anyway, he went over all the past transfers, he noted that the first transfer was done 5.5cm deep in the uterus, and it ended up ectopic. Than I had the two FET at 4 cm deep and one was a biochemical. But listen to this, the last transfer was done again at 5.5cm despite me warning the doctor about the previous ectopic, and sure enough...it was ectopic again!!! I could have got into a rage at finding this out, but I opted to let go and be calm for the new two blast-babies. The Top Doctor did the transfer between 4 and 4.5cm then asked me to lye down for a while and to take it very easy for a few days.

One negative omen: they gave me a pregnancy test!!! Noooooooooo I didn't want it!! But we took it (it seemed rude not to) an we put it away. My official test day is the 20th of February and I'm suppose to go in for another intralipid infusion on the 17th. I'd say I'll know if I'm pregnant before then.

So here I am, on bed rest for a couple of days blogging and working and waiting for the computer tech to give me a call before I throw the New Toy out the window myself!

A glimmer of hope

While I was posting about the blog award the clinic called.

The embryologist (Ivy) said it was good news that we have two compacted morulas which is the stage they should be today. The other 3 have not arrested but are quite slow, as if they were a day behind at 10, 7 and 7 cells. I am booked in for transfer at 12.30 which is early than I ever been in for transfer. Of course I have a scan tomorrow morning at 9.10 and Ivy said if they are delaying me to make sure I mention I have this early transfer. She also said that she hopes everything will progress as she expects but that she will give me a call by 10.30 if she feels the blasts do not develop or don't look so good. I'd say I'll ask tomorrow when I'm in.

So I'm breathing a little. After this post I'll be spending sometime meditating and getting ready for tomorrow, I have not been that good in fairness, meaning that I just couldn't even think about the possible transfer.

I also asked Ivy about the SA as I had forgotten when she called on Thursday. She said the sample had 11 million/mL for a total of 70 millions (which is a bit better than before) and a progressive motility of 37% which is much better than before (it was 15%) and normal morphology so Mike was very happy and proud that the vitamins and mineral he has been taking for months now do show some results!

I mentioned to Ivy about the two ectopics and again the possibility of using a minimum amount of medium for the transfer, she was so sympathetic and sorry for me, she said she'll leave a note just in case.

The plan tomorrow is to go in for the scan, go to work and the pretend to be a bit sick and go home for a few days...

(by the way, today the New Toy gave up completely...new BSOD and I was not able to restart the machine ever since...writing from the old one which I decided to reformat completely on friday night...ahhhhgggg thank God for external hard drives where I saved all my latest folders as of this saturday!)

No snow babies for us

Our three little fighters didn't actually make to to the freezer unfortunately.

The blast that had started to cavitate but didn't seem to be doing to well yesterday didn't progress, the other two compacting morulas have compacted today but the embryologist felt that the process was too slow to be good (day 6 you definitely should have blasts) so she didn't think freezing them was a good idea. I actually agree. Beside, two FETs didn't work for me, whether it is the preparation therapy that doesn't agree with my body or just bad luck, I rather have a fresh cycle.

Having said that, all my energies are with these two on board and again the embryologist said that they were "very good-looking blasts" above the rest of the group anyway, so fingers crossed!

I have been in bed-couch-bed most of the day, so I feel I'm giving this cycle the best chance ever! Tomorrow I'm going in for the intralipid IV which I'll visualise as food for the embryos! Doing quite a lot of relaxation and listening to post-transfer CD. No symptom spotting as it would do my head in!

Two blastocysts are with mommy!

Wow...a few little miracles happened today. First of all, your messages kept me calm, they really did and I'll never be able to thank you enough for them.

The second miracle was that when we got to the clinic, after one and half our of reiki and acupuncture together (totally recommend it!), added on top of relaxation techinques all through the morning, I was the most peaceful and relaxed person they have ever seen...

The third miracle was when we talked to the embryologist. We actually had questions written down for her so she knew she was in for a long chat (and my bladder wasn't full enough enyway!). Both Mike and I are scientist and Mike is a molecular biologyst so I mean...we just don't want the dummed down version of what's going on, we need a scientific detailed explanation and if you have papers to back you up we'd love to read them! And she was lovely, she totally engaged in the conversation and gave us every little detail we were asking for.
So here it goes my little science lecture for the day!

She rechecked my E2 value and confirmed that 9 eggs out of 13 follicles is exactly as expected and that it correlated well with the 5642 on monday last. She said a value of 500-1000 is what indicates a mature egg (I had lower values, but maybe these are different units?).
7 mature eggs was perfect out of 9 total and the fertilisation was also very good with 6 out of 7 looking good on day 1.
On day 2 all the 6 embryos had 4 cells. At this stage they get put into a different culture broth to help them developing further.
On day 3 we had 3x8 cells, 3x7 cells and 1x5 cells. They were all doing well with only one having minor signs of fragmentation.
On day 4 (yesterday report), we had 3 morulas, one compacted, one 20% compacted and one 30% compacted (early stage morula), one 7 cell and one 8 cell didn't divide, the 5 cells grew to 6 cell. Again here they get a new batch of growing medium which is richer an should help the step from morula to blast.
Today, day 5 our two early morulas were beautiful blasts with nice cavitation showing (where the embryo is going to form), the compacted morula was also a blast but the cavitation was not as pronounced and it's under observation until tomorrow. Remember the 6 cell embryo? It became a compacted morula today!! Liked the new food apparently! And so did the 8 cell arrested embryo! Another compacted morula! The 7 cell didn't budge. So amazingly, we may have something to freeze tomorrow, in a cycle where we would have been happy to have something to transfer today! She'll phone us tomorrow in any case to let us know.

The transfer in itself was easy and the doctor was the same as I had for the ER, so now he's my absolute favourite one! He was very nice and encouraging which is nice to hear.
Testing day will be on the 9th of August (Mike's comment was "oh, the day of the All Ireland semi-final!" he's a big hurling fan, a traditional irish game...) and I don't have any tests at home because I'm determined not to test ealry! I'll be taking a few days off work this time.
I'm going to go in for my second intralipid on thursday morning instead of friday, but apparently it's no problem. So here I am, in my 2ww for the fourth time! Praying for my dream to become real.

News is in, transfer scheduled for tomorrow!

The embryologyst called at 5 to 5...I didn't think it's was going to be good news at that point...I was expecting a call around 4.20!! But once again I should have done somethign else with my time other than worrying...

So it looks like good news again for the moment, here's the situation: yesterday all 6 embryos looked very good (no wonder they didn't call, but WTF you would think they realise how torturing this is) but today one 7 cell and one 8 cell din't make the transition to morula!

Imagine if those were the one you would have transfered on day 3! They looked good the embryologist said but obviously not good enough, they would have frozen them yesterday.

One is behind schedule, yesterday it was 5 cell and today 6.


But three are morulas!! One compacting morula and two showing signs of compacting, so transfer is for tomorrow at 2 pm getting ther at 1.30 blah blah blah. Of course there is still the possibility of a dreaded phone call by 10.30 tomorrow morning....but let's just hope it won't happen and 10.30 seems so much better than 1pm anyway.

Once again I am getting to transfer with a load of stress on me that it won't be any good, but there's nothing I can do. I'll go to see my acu/reiki french lady before trasfer anyway hopefully it'll help a bit!

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Update!

Thank you for your messages and encouraging thoughts. You are right and I know you are, this is good news and I have to appreciate how good it is. So as I came home I took out my Wii-fit and did lots of yoga and deep breathing while burning lavander oil and citronella! I feel so much better, I feel positive, there will be no call tomorrow, and in any case there's nothing I can do about it so I will focus on a good night sleep and pre-transfer CD! Also the Wii gave a great news that I'm finally loosing a bit of weight!! Since I started 17 days ago (says the machine!) I have lost 3.5 Kg (7.5 lb) which made me feel really good about myself! Damn pill! I'm done with you!!

I'm PUPO!

Pregnant Unitl Proven Otherwise! My home connection gave up yesterday and I couldn't update the blog, so here I am now.

It all went well, out of the 6 penguins we had frozen, 5 survived the thawing and were put to grow. 1 stopped cell division while 4 grew nicely. Yesterday two were beautiful blastocysts and 2 were compacted morulas!! So two were transferred and the other two left in the incubator until today. If they grow to blast they'll freeze them again!

I am so happy and trying hard to be relaxed and stay positive. Only two weeks of madness now!