Not So Pretty

Yesterday I had an appointment to make sure the birth control pills are suppressing my ovaries. Lan (the coordinating nurse) was out of town so they were running late and we had to sit there waiting for over an hour. I didn't think I was going to make it back home in time to get Sawyer off the bus. This is where living an hour away from the center can be problematic. Finally Dr. A was ready to see us, and everything looked good. I'm suppressed (in more ways than one now, haha) and the cyst is shrinking. The hormones are doing their job, beyond just making me really really cranky! I got the go ahead to start Lupron, 20 units a day.

Eric came with me to the appointment because we also had to sign our consent forms. The forms give basic medical information about the various procedures and their risks, as well as the risks of pregnancy. You sign off on those, I guess so you can't later sue the center if things go wrong. Then you have to decide what will happen to any leftover embryos. Since we only have 3 it's not likely that we'll have any left, but we're thinking ahead to fresh cycles in the future where that is a possibility. They take you through every possible scenario - for instance, if your husband dies, what do you want to do with the embryos? If you die but your husband's still alive? What if you both die? Or what if you get divorced? Yeah, all really fun to think about. For each scenario there are several options - donate to another couple, donate to research, store indefinitely, or discard. So we made all those decisions and signed off on them with the notary, Carol at the front desk - who by the way is hilarious. (Our decisions: If I die, discard; if Eric dies, discard; if we both die, donate to another couple; divorce, discard. I would rather donate to research, but Eric is not comfortable with that.)

Then we discussed our embryos and how many we should transfer. This part was pretty discouraging, because after reviewing the images taken 7 years ago, Dr. A said "They are...not so pretty...no offense." (To which I wanted to respond, "Hey buddy, tell YOUR embryos to look in a mirror sometime!") Last time we did IVF we used the best 2 embryos to transfer, which was obviously a good choice because it got us Sawyer. Unfortunately the ones we left behind are much lower quality, and will likely be even worse after thawing (the thawing process can sometimes damage embryos; interestingly, the amount of time they have been frozen is irrelevant.) Two are blastocycts, but not expanded, and one is a morula, which is not great at all.

We are doing assisted hatching, which could help, and the fact that we've had a positive result in the past works in our favor. But still, Dr. A gives us about a 20% chance with these embryos and told us to be prepared for a negative result. Which is kind of funny, because that's already the way I've been feeling about this cycle. I'm prepared for it not to work. But we are still going to give it our all, because we both feel strongly about giving these embryos a chance. As far as how many, we decided to go ahead and transfer all three - since they are lower quality the chances of all three implanting are "zero to minuscule...it would be an absolute miracle." So I feel good about that.

I also asked how likely it is that things will go according to schedule and he said "Extremely likely...98% chance." REs are really good at speaking in percentages.  So I need to reschedule Sawyer's opthamologist appointment that's the same day as embryo transfer.

Next step: I stop birth control pills on Tuesday, go in for another ultrasound on Friday and start Estrace that day if everything looks good.