Day 39: Day 3 and 6 little chicks still growing

Helloooooo it’s me again!

A quick update from me on this crazy IVF journey.

I had a rather snoozy weekend and quite a lot of pain in my stomach. Also I am either super bloated or I have been eating way too much. It’s probably a combination of the two.

I rested up on Saturday and then unpleasantly on Sunday had to work. (Argh: work!) Which meant I didn’t have the relaxing time I could have done. Thankfully this put me in good stead for this morning’s meeting so can’t complain.

We’d been told by the embryologists that they would call by 09:00 today if I needed to go in and do a Day 3 transfer… 09:00 came and went. (I was in a meeting so just as well.)

I was on my way to the station for work when I received another call. I was immediately worried (esp as I had a colleague with me in the cab) but the embryologist was really nice and said that we were still going ahead with the transfer on Wednesday morning. That will be Day 41. Apparently our little embryos are still growing, which is great! If I heard correctly (I had turned the sound way down in case my colleague heard what was going on – a nice colleague I might add but I don’t really need it broadcast to everyone), we have 3 embryos at 6 cell, 1 at 8 cell and the others are a bit lazy!

This is apparently fine and she said it was all going well!

Our little guys look a bit like this!

Source

For those of you new to the whole IVF thing, there is a good explanation of how they determine transfer here. Basically they look at your eggs 3 days post insemination and they figure out how many have fertilised and how good they are (based on the universal embryo grading system which I assume is super similar to how they grade chicken eggs, haha). If you have a few that are looking pretty good quality then they’ll continue to Day 5 because that way they have time to pick out the one (or two) that will have the most chance of success. If not they will get you in on Day 3 as they generally don’t learn anything more on Day 4.

So we’re all set for Wednesday’s Day 5 transfer. We just have to rock up on Wednesday morning and we will have a quick in and out and then I will have to head back out of town for work. They tell me it’s similar to a smear test although T will be there to see his potential baby be implanted!

Oh and I’m still pushing for twins! 🙂

Probably not these ones

T is more circumspect. He thinks twins would be difficult and more expensive etc etc whereas I think there is a greater chance of success (ie both might not implant properly so at least you have two chances) plus I think twins are awesome, plus I’m not overly bothered about going through childbirth twice! I mean there are pros and cons with both. Someone else in my extended family has twins through IVF and they are absolutely adorable. But as I’ve said many times before, I would be happy with one child! I guess we will take the doctor’s advice on it. Hopefully we will have enough embryos to freeze a couple in case this cycle doesn’t work, and we can try for a frozen transfer later in the year. (Although our hospital is quite strict and says you need 6 months between cycles… I am wondering how strict they are on this, if it doesn’t work – 6 months seems like a really long time especially when approaching 40 when we all know your uterus shrivels up overnight.)

Anyway I keep telling myself that there’s a really low chance of this working and not to get my hopes up. I guess I’ll just need to keep my hopes in check and make sure we still have stuff to look forward to if it doesn’t work. We are planning a nice big holiday later in the year which will either be a babymoon or a consolation holiday (time for some babymaking practice!) so at least that’s something to look forward to. I’m super thankful for my lovely partner T and my lovely dog and nice family so it’s not like I have a lot to complain about.

Off to catch up on all your blogs!

N 🙂