Sorry, I haven’t updated everyone in a few weeks; I just didn’t have it in me. The first few days after we learned that I wasn’t pregnant were the worst. The support from all of you really did help though, and we really cannot thank you enough for that. I spent the last few weeks preparing for my “What Went Wrong” meeting with my doctor. I did a lot of research, and came up with a couple pages of questions for him.
I was nervous driving to my appointment on Monday, not knowing what I was about to hear. Anthony was in school, so I had to go alone. It was a difficult meeting, that’s for certain. My doctor graciously answered every last one of my questions. I learned that he believes there is an issue with my egg quality. Although I had a feeling he may tell me this, I must say that I am completely devastated to find out that we are no longer only dealing with male factor infertility, which could easily be resolved with IVF with ICSI. I have the egg quality of someone much older than 27. Go figure. Of my 20 mature eggs, only 11 of them looked good, and probably why only 11 initially fertilized. He said that by day 3, only 4 of the embryos were still looking like they had a chance. This is usually indicative of an egg quality issue, rather than sperm. He said that if there is an issue with sperm, you’ll start to see an issue on day 3 or after. He was surprised to see that the embryos weren’t doing as well as they’d expected, especially because they retrieved so many eggs. Going into this, I had a high FSH on one of my base line checks. This indicates low ovarian reserve, or egg quality issues. My doctor wasn’t too concerned because nothing else about me seemed to indicate an issue. I had many resting follicles, and I’m still young; usually not characteristics of someone with high FSH.
Even with the low number of well graded embryos, my doctor still felt hopeful that at least one of the two transferred would have implanted. One of them was a good grade for day 5 (4BB), and the other was an okay grade (4BC). He said that although there are better embryos transferred at day 5, he’s definitely seen worse graded embryos bring a baby home at nine months. As for why they didn’t implant, it’s really hard to say. Sometimes you just don’t know. My lining was perfect, and the transfer catheter didn’t indicate any sort of trauma took place during the transfer. I think that is the hardest fact with IVF to accept. Sometimes, you just can’t explain why it wasn’t successful. It’s a $12,000 crapshoot.
My doctor is still very hopeful, and said that if I was his wife, he’d want me to try again. Even given the egg quality issues, we were still able to produce viable embryos. He suggested doing another fresh cycle first before doing a frozen transfer, since we only have one frozen embryo. Even though our frozen embryo is a perfect 5AA, the success rates just are not that great with one frostie, given that not all of them even survive the thaw. He said that if it comes down to it, he can thaw it and transfer with another embryo from my fresh cycle. I’m hoping that will not be necessary.
After providing me with all of this information, my doctor told me that of course the next steps are ultimately our decision. He said he completely understood if we wanted to seek a second opinion, and that no matter what, his door is always open to us. I had already considered this before our meeting, but ultimately came to the conclusion that I’m not at a point where I feel we need to see someone else. I absolutely love all of the staff at my clinic, and think finding another clinic that genuinely cares so much would be really hard to find. There are many, many people who do not get pregnant on their first cycle of IVF, so I think it’s premature to start all over again with someone else when I still really trust my doctor.
So where does all of this leave us? I am going to start taking a supplement called DHEA. There are mixed studies that show it can improve egg quality after taking it for a few months. Whether this will end up working for me, who knows, but it’s worth a shot. It really can’t hurt, so if there is a chance it can improve things, I’m all in. We’re going to stick with the same stimulation protocol, as everything went really well up until fertilization, and we got a large number of mature eggs. We’re also going to have Anthony provide a fresh sperm sample on the day of my retrieval, instead of using frozen. They don’t believe this will have an impact, but we want to do anything we can to change the outcome. On the day of transfer, I’m going to have someone take me so that I can take a valium. Some people believe this relaxes the uterus (and the patient). Whether this will make an impact, again, we don’t know, but why not switch things up from the last failed transfer.
Planning our second cycle was proving to be difficult with Anthony’s school, and I thought we were going to have to wait and try and again over Christmas break, but the greatest husband in the world said he will do what it takes to be there whenever I want to schedule it. So, we will start again sometime in October. This will give the DHEA time to take effect, and my body will have a break from the intense hormones it received last month.
I will say that I’m really struggling with the question: If there is a God, what is his message? Are we messing with fate? Why would God make Anthony and me with bodies that are not able to reproduce? Is this why so many religions are highly opposed to IVF? I have so many questions, and there are so many ways of looking at things. I just wish I knew why all odds are against us. I really cannot imagine living life childless, and it scares me to death that I may have to.
