New Insight

I had an appointment today with Dr. Glatstein, my reproductive endocrinologist. I wanted to have a checkup with him to see what our plan would be for future kids and to go over what happened in the cycle with the twins. And now I know what happened...

First of all, of my eight eggs, here is what happened to them. One of them did not fertilize, two of them divided before being fertilized (it's a meiosis thing), three of them fertilized and then became multinucleated (this means that there is more than one nucleus in a cell, and the doctor will not transfer or freeze these type of embryos because of the high rate of miscarriage and abnormality), the last two are the ones that continued to divide and are now The Twinners. The doctor suspects that I have an egg quality issue which has been causing our problems. Why a perfectly healthy 26 year old should have egg quality issues, I don't know. But it is what it is and the doctor would not change our protocol at all (except for a minor change in medication because of what my insurance covers). He does not recommend doing any other kinds of treatments first (like IUI or clomid), since IVF is what worked and we think that there may be this minor egg quality problem. Also, he doesn't recommend ICSI or PGD because the eggs didn't seem to have problems fertilizing...only one of the available eggs didn't fertilize (the two that divided early weren't available so they don't count). Also, we don't have any known genetic issues, so there's no reason to do PGD. Also, we both agreed that we're only transferring one embryo at a time since I'm not allowed to have twins again. In order to make me feel better, though, we're going to freeze anything that's still cleaving (growing) on day 3 and I'll get to help choose which embryo to transfer based on how all of them are growing. Of course then I asked him if it would be possible for us to get pregnant on our own, and the doctor reiterated that it would be possible. It's a statistical thing...if I have decreased egg quality, there's just less of a chance of me getting pregnant in any given month (say 5% instead of 20%), and there's a higher chance of miscarriage if I develop one of these multinucleated embryos. That may explain my miscarriage on my first IUI! Anyways, I like now having some type of diagnosis and knowing what my next steps are. I need to have all of my testing done again (blood tests, semen analysis, SHG), and then I can start a cycle whenever I want. It most likely won't be for a while since we want to put about 3 years in between the twins and another baby and I'll want to try to plan for a delivery when it won't interfere too badly with school, and we'll get a chance to try on our own for a while. Then, if the statistics just don't go in our favor, we can start in on an IVF cycle when we're ready.

In other news, in case you hadn't noticed, TODAY IS THE TWINS' BIRTHDAY!!!! HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IUI #7

Today I had my seventh (and final) IUI. If this one doesn't work, then it's on to IVF! No pain or cramping today either. :-)

Volume: 3.6ml (normal = more than 2ml)
Concentration: 280 million (normal = more than 20 million; best = more than 90 million)
Motility: 80% (normal = more than 50%; best = more than 60%)
Morphology: 30% abnormal (normal = less than 70% abnormal)
Forward Progression: 3 (It's a scale from 1 to 4 with 4 being the best and 2.5 being average)
Total Motile Sperm: 806.4 million

IUI #6

Today I had my sixth IUI! This one also wasn't really painful.

Volume: 4ml (normal = more than 2ml)
Concentration: 146 million (normal = more than 20 million; best = more than 90 million)
Motility: 48% (normal = more than 50%; best = more than 60%)
Morphology: 58% abnormal (normal = less than 70% abnormal)
Forward Progression: 2 (It's a scale from 1 to 4 with 4 being the best and 2.5 being average)
Total Motile Sperm: 280.3 million

IUI #5

Today I had my fifth IUI! This one also wasn't really painful. Go hubby!!

Volume: 3.6ml (normal = more than 2ml)
Concentration: 110 million (normal = more than 20 million; best = more than 90 million)
Motility: 65% (normal = more than 50%; best = more than 60%)
Morphology: 35% abnormal (normal = less than 70% abnormal)
Forward Progression: 2 (It's a scale from 1 to 4 with 4 being the best and 2.5 being average)
Total Motile Sperm: 257.4 million

IUI #4

Today I had my fourth IUI! This one wasn't painful at all and I didn't even take any advil! My hubby has outdone himself once again, so hopefully we'll get pg and carry to term this month!

Volume: 4ml (normal = more than 2ml)
Concentration: 330 million (normal = more than 20 million; best = more than 90 million)
Motility: 79% (normal = more than 50%; best = more than 60%)
Morphology: 30% abnormal (normal = less than 70% abnormal)
Forward Progression: 3 (It's a scale from 1 to 4 with 4 being the best and 2.5 being average)
Total Motile Sperm: 1 billion, 42.8 million (1.0428 billion) YAHOO!

IUI #3

I had my third IUI today (second one for this cycle). I was really crampy afterwards, but am feeling lots better now. DH has outdone himself this cycle and I am so proud of him! Check out his numbers from today, and remember that it's been less than 24 hours since his last one!

Volume: 3ml (normal = more than 2ml)
Concentration: 125 million (normal = more than 20 million; best = more than 90 million)
Motility: 51% (normal = more than 50%; best = more than 60%)
Morphology: 39% abnormal (normal = less than 70% abnormal)
Forward Progression: 2 (It's a scale from 1 to 4 with 4 being the best and 2.5 being average)
Total Motile Sperm: 191.25 million

IUI #2

Today I had my second IUI! It wasn't as painful as the first because I took Advil first. :-) Hopefully this one will be successful too! (And even moreso, so that I don't miscarry again).

Volume: 4 ml (normal = more than 2ml)
Concentration: 340 million (normal = more than 20 million; best = more than 90 million)
Motility: 56% (normal = more than 50%; best = more than 60%)
Morphology: 29% abnormal (normal = less than 70% abnormal)
Forward Progression: 3 (It's a scale from 1 to 4 with 4 being the best and 2.5 being average)
Total Motile Sperm: 761.6 million

IUI #1

Today I had my first IUI. It was more painful than I thought it would be! I'm all crampy! Anyway, here were DH's sperm numbers.

Volume: 4.4ml (normal = more than 2ml)
Concentration: 110 million (normal = more than 20 million; best = more than 90 million)
Motility: 36% (normal = more than 50%; best = more than 60%)
Morphology: 56% abnormal (normal = less than 70% abnormal)
Forward Progression: 3 (It's a scale from 1 to 4 with 4 being the best and 2.5 being average)
Total Motile Sperm: 174.3 million

Trigger Time!

This is the absolute earliest I have ever ovulated in my life. The problem with this? I can't go to the mikvah yet! 😟 So that means no condom collection for IUI. Thank goodness we got the ok from the rabbi to forego condom collection and do it the "usual" collection way for these sorts of things. No need for details. lol

Anyway, I've got now two follicles looking good for ovulation - 16mm on the right and 18.5mm on the left. So I have a chance for twins! Now wouldn't that be cool? (Or terrifying...) My endometrium is at 11.7mm, so right about what it was yesterday, and my estradiol has soared to 1335 pg/mL, LH is down to 3.59 mIU/mL (probably because of the Ganirelix), and my progesterone is nice at low at 0.565 ng/mL. So it's looking good for trigger tonight. All told, I've done 9 injections this cycle - add one trigger from my first Clomid cycle, and I've given myself 10 total shots. Not too bad! Hopefully I won't have to do any more... IUI in 2 days!

Day 1; IUI Cycle 1

And here we are again....good old Aunt Flo (she really needs to take a LONG hike...off a cliff.) Day one was yesterday, and now I need to start giving myself injections. Yeesh. Not something I ever thought I would have to do, but here we are. I'll be doing 75 IU of Follistim every night for a few days, then will have monitoring done to see when I should trigger for my first IUI. I'm a bit nervous, but if these are the things we have to do to have kids, I will do them.

Pregnancy Plan

So, we saw the RE today and here is the plan. First, I have already started taking Dostinex to lower my prolactin level and I will continue on that med until I get pregnant. Second, I'm going to start on 25mg of Clomid next month and they will monitor my endometrium to make sure it is not too thin. I'll also have an HCG shot to force my body to ovulate once my egg(s) and endometrium are ready. If that doesn't work or if it makes my endometrium do bad things, then we'll go for the injectibles and possibly IUI as well. Hopefully I'll be pregnant this cycle and won't have to do Clomid! (Wouldn't that be awesome?!?)