Month: July 2018

My Fellow (in)Fertility Warriors

My Fellow (in)Fertility Warriors

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I consider myself lucky because I have a lot of wonderful friends in a number of corners of the world.  With my closest friends, I talk about EVERYTHING, but yet through this process I have felt very lonely at times.   I feel that they just don’t get it.  In no way have they been rude or unsupportive – in fact, they are my cheerleaders – but there is no way I can expect them to understand what I am going through because they haven’t been through the same thing.  They can empathise, but it would be unfair of me to expect them to understand fully the pain and the trials and tribulations of the infertility journey.

One day when I was feeling particularly low – after my second IVF cycle had failed – one of my besties called me.  She acknowledged that, having just had her second baby without difficulties, she’d never be able to understand fully what I am going through.  She wondered if I’d like to speak to one of her university friends (who I knew briefly) about her infertility journey.  She connected us and my friend’s friend (who lives in the US) called me one evening.  We spoke for over an hour.  She shared her experience of her four-year long IVF journey that ended in a traumatic birth of her beautiful baby girl.  She gave me tips on how to cope through the lows and cherish the highs.  For the first time in a long time, I felt a little less lonely – there was someone out there who knew exactly what I was going through.  And for that I was, and still am, grateful.

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And the Frozen Finalists are…

And the Frozen Finalists are…

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… Embryo samples 2 and 5: Sven and Olaf.  We have two normal embryos!!  I AM SO RELIEVED.

H and I were so nervous – especially H.  Normally it’s me, but this time he was pacing up and down the waiting room, so we excused ourselves and got a coffee and some fresh air before taking a deep breath, walking back into the clinic and our appointment.

Funny enough, our two normal embryos are two of the day 6 embryos (BB quality), the stragglers, and not the one which looked to be of best quality (a day 5 AB quality embryo).   Elsa and Anna are out of the game (and so is Kristof).  This makes me think that if we had not done PGS testing, the day 5 AB embryo would have been transferred on day 5 and would have either not implanted or I would have miscarried again.  I find this fascinating.

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Frozen Five’s PGS results day

Frozen Five’s PGS results day

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Today is a BIG day:  we find out if H and I have managed to produce any genetically normal embryos.

After three failed IVF rounds and no embryos in the freezer, we were (naturally) starting to suspect that there might be an egg quality issue. We have tested H’s Sperm numerous times, including performing a DNA fragmentation test, which showed that his sperm contain a whopping 98% normal DNA!!  Considering my age, 38, only approx. 30% of my eggs are likely to be normal  (the age range of 37-38: 30%-40% of eggs are normal).  My AMH is 10.4 (down from 13.2 last year ☹) and shows low-ish fertility for my age, so the odds aren’t great – if 30% of my eggs are normal I’ll take it!   This fact sucks, but it’s reality and we have to work with what we have.  As an aside, I wish that someone had told the younger me about the reality of rapid declining fertility after 35 (it is NOT a myth)…

So, what is PGS testing?

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Five Go On A Frozen Adventure

Five Go On A Frozen Adventure

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I didn’t write an update regarding my little chicks as I had planned to on day 5 because as Ronan Keating so nicely put it “Life is a Rollercoaster”.  On day 5, the rollercoaster took me up high and then, 30 minutes later, threw me back down low.

The high: the embryologist called to let us know that we had two hatched blastocysts (grades AB and BB). These two little embryos were the best looking, highest grade embryos H and I had ever produced. In IVF round 2 and The Disaster Round (round 3), we only ever produced BC quality embryos and no hatched blastocysts on day 5. A few cells from each embryo have been sent off to a lab for PGS testing, and Elsa and Anna went off to the winter wonderland [a.k.a. the freezer] for their for their beauty sleep. Saturday’s straggler had degenerated, so it is our of the game.  The three remaining embryos were still developing on day 5, so the embryologist said she’d take a look at them again that afternoon and on the following day, day 6. She hoped that at least one of the three would develop into a blastocyst. I did a little happy dance.

The Low: 30 minutes after the embryologist called, my dad called. He asked if I had any news about the embryos and I delightedly told him about our two blastocysts. Sadly, that wasn’t why he had called. He wanted to let me know he had been diagnosed with bowel cancer. My world crashed.

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