Answers

So, just to follow up on the questions I posed the day that I was terrified (a few weeks ago). I can now answer the last two!

5) What happens if they get a whole bunch of great eggs that fertilize, but they all die before the transfer?

• Well, we know that this is false as I transferred 2 perfectly nice embryos on Aug 1.

6) What if everything goes well (even the transfer and freezing), but I just don't get pregnant?

• And this was also false!!! YAAAY!

So, this just shows you that I don't need to be pessimistic all the time. All of my questions turned out to be completely wrong.

Embryos that Vote?

One of my more politically inclined friends has asked me if I've registered my embryos to vote yet. I answered by saying that they're not 18...they're barely 3 days old. So he wants me to register them when they're 18 days and preferrably in a swing state. :-) So then I said, well, we don't have names for them--and we don't know what gender they are. So we sat and came up with names (that will 100% change if one or both of them is born next April). Our final two are Baruch/Bracha (which means blessed) and Nissim/Nesiyah (miracles/miracle of G-d). So my two embryos will now be able to vote for our next president! (not really, but you already knew that...)

And if one or both make it to 18 days+, I will be one happy mommy.

Transfer

So, we had the transfer today! As it turns out, 4 of the 8 eggs did not fertilize and 2 of the eggs that did fertilize did not continue to divide. This isn't so bad...if we do need to try again, with ICSI we can get the fertilization rate up and hope for the best. As for the two embryos that made it to transfer....one of them is 5 cells, grade C, with fair symmetry and the other is 10 cells, grade B, also with fair symmetry.


Aren't they cute? I have no idea which is which--they both look similar to me, which is why I'm not an Embryologist. :-) I dunno what the black splotch is, but it has nothing to do with my babies.

For those of you who don't know about embryo grading, I will give you a crash course.

Number of cells: At a day 3 transfer, the embryo should have between 6 and 8 cells...less than this isn't so good, but more is great!

Letter grade: This refers to the amount of fragmentation present in the embryo. As the cells divide, cellular material may break off and end up between the newly formed cells. An A grade means that there's less than 5% fragmentation, B means that there's between 5 and 25%, C means there's 25-50% and D means that there's more than 50% fragmentation. Obviously, you want less fragmentation--A and B grades are normal.

Symmetry: Cell symmetry describes the evenness of size and distribution of cells in the embryo. This is graded as either good, fair or poor--with good and fair being normal.

Basically, this means we transferred 1 real winner embryo and 1 not so good embryo that still has a chance (and we love them both the same).

Trying to be Positive

Well, on the bright side, we've taken care of more of my "worst case scenario" questions from Tuesday morning. Here goes:

2) What happens if they get in there and none of the eggs I have are mature?

• Well, at least 2 of them were mature (and even fertilized)...we don't yet know about the other 6, but the answer to this question is still "didn't happen".

4) What happens if they get a whole bunch of great eggs but none of them fertilize?

• Well, at least 2 of them were fertilized...again, we don't yet know about the other 6, but the answer to this question is also "didn't happen".

Only 2 questions left to answer, and one will be answered tomorrow...the other will take a little while.

*sigh*

2 embryos...8 eggs, and only 2 are still around. I'm in total shock and completely devastated. They wouldn't tell me the grade or what happened to the other 6, but I'm so scared that they'll say they all fertilized and then they all died... I'd rather them say that the 6 were immature (because that can be fixed with holding off on the hCG shot and/or giving a higher dose of Follistim) or that 6 didn't fertilize at all (because that can be fixed with ICSI).

Please G-d...just give me a baby! Please watch over these 2 remaining embryos because they are my children. Please help them to grow properly and have either one or both of them implant into my uterus so that they can continue to grow. Please...I really don't want to go through this again next month!!