Lilypie

Monday, March 10, 2008

Bad news today regarding our 13 embryos

We are so upset. I got the call today from my RE's office regarding how many embies made it to freeze and unfortunately, none made it. How did this happen?? A recap in the event you don't want to scroll down to previous posts below: 33 eggs, 21 mature, 15 fertilized, (2) 8-cell embies transferred at 3 days, the other 13 embryos who were all still dividing were left to grow to blastocyte (100 cell) stage. None made it. RE says there was fragmentation but that some did make it to a morula (which can be up to 32 cells) stage. Mind you this was my report today, 7 days after the ER. I asked why they weren't frozen on Saturday after 5 days and he said that none of them were blastocytes (ie, not "perfect"). And "perfect" is hard to achieve in a petri dish as opposed to the uterus, where the embryos want to be for the right balance of nutrients, etc that it provides. I feel like he wants to freeze at this stage mainly for the purpose of being able to report his high 50% success with FETs.

I feel like they constantly try to stuff the 'one size fits all' mentality down my throat. Ex: Lupron always begins on CD22. They like for IVFers to start stims on Thursdays, check Mondays and Thursdays, and trigger on Saturdays so that they can have their retrievals on Mondays and transfers on Thursdays. I did this exact outline protocol to fit precisely into their perfect schedule for less work for them on the weekends! I am not an assembly line product.

If we are not successful this cycle, I will more than likely change clinics. I need to be happy, even if he is the best specialist in the Lexington/Louisville/Cincy area.

Granted, I truly hope and pray that these beautiful ones inside me are strong, growing, and stick very soon. But, these other 13 embies could've been hope for a failed cycle. Or, even hope 2 years down the road for baby#2. They were our potential children for goodness sake. Clinic success rates should not be factored in to whether or not they get a chance at life. I'm not talking about freezing all 13, but I just know that they weren't all bad. We could've had 2 make it to freeze and we would've been okay. But none??? This isn't fair.

Infertility isn't fair. I swear if I were some teenage crack addicted prostitute, I'm sure I'd have no problem whatsoever cranking out a litter of kids. You never hear of those people having infertility problems. Sorry for the bitterness, but I'm having a bad day. I'm not perfect and it's hard to pretend that everything is great all of the time to everyone I know.

Now, back to positive thoughts to my little future possible babies who are hopefully already nesting in for a long nap. They don't need an angry Mommy.

3 comments:

Ariella said...

I had a group office visit with my RE to talk about IVF and asked about this. She said my clinic does this too. I was PISSED about it. I asked why and she said good embriologists can recreate 'womb' conditions and thus if they don't grow in the petridish they won't grow inside you.

Personally I thought that was BULL SHIT but I wanted to let you know. (((((HUGS)))))) I really thought you would get some snowbabies. I am so sorry you didn't.

M. said...

So you've got 2 embryos implanted! I thought there were 3. Perfect-- I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed for those 2 little guys :)

I was thinking about your situation this morning. When I first read your post on the nest, I couldn't think of a way my RE pigeon holes his patients. But I have to say, the more I thought about it, the more I realized he does it, too.

I just wanted to say: you're not alone. And lots of strangers out on the web are pulling for you!

Wendy said...

Jill - I just saw your post on my blog and wanted to say thank you. I'm sorry that you didn't have any embryos make it to freeze. I don't think we will, either. We had 8 total and 5 of those had already started to fragment by our day 5 transfer. It's sad; it could have been future children, just like you said. I'm sorry. I'm wishing you all the best, though - you should be finding out really soon, right?