Monday, January 24, 2011

1 or 2

Living in New England has it's benefits, but being blasted with snow twice a week is not one of them. Figures the morning we have to drive to Westboro at 7am, it's snowing profusely. But we bundle up, clean off the car and begin our drive. Thankfully it only took an extra 20 mins to get there. We pull into the un-plowed lot where only one other car is parked. We walk into the office, doors unlocked, lights are on, but no one in sight. We both get a little nervous that no one is there, so I do a perimeter search. Then our doctor pops her head out of her office and says she'll be right with us.

A couple minutes later she emerges and escorts us into her office. "How are you both handling everything?" is the first question out of her mouth. And of course, that question still makes my eyes water. I manage to pull myself together and control the water works. She starts by going over our embryo count and how things progressed in the growing process. To our surprise, she states that having 2 frozen embryos is wonderful. Apparently not alot of couples get to that point and have to go through the grueling process of creating eggs, egg retrieval and transfer every round! And, we have the option to either use the frozen eggs, or start all over again to create fresh ones. The downfall to using frozen eggs drops our chances of conceiving from 50% to 40%. And not all embryos come out of the freezing process properly.

We asked a couple questions which she answered to the best of her ability. Then she asked the question we've been discussing for the past month: how many embryos to implant for round two. The one question Chris and I have been trying to answer. Chris has been adamant about one, mostly for the fear of having twins with two. I have been thinking implant both. My reasoning has been sort of all over the place. The risk of having twins increases along with the stress level when they are born. However, I have been concerned that there could be an issue with our embryos. Thankfully Dr. D explained that all our eggs and sperm have done what they should. All the embryos have seemed to look great. She believes it was a fluke, just an unhealthy embryo. Her medical opinion is to try one again. Chris of course was grinning ear to ear, knowing he won our "discussion".

We have been now attempting to have a child for two years, two unsuccessful years. Although we are young, which Dr. D keeps stressing, I feel like we may be wasting time. We spent a year and 3 months trying on our own. Spent 3 months contemplating bad advise from a urologist. Spent 2 months creating embryos, 2 months pregnant, 2 months healing from the miscarriage. Before we can implant again, I'm going to be hopped up on estrogen pills and gonalF for 20 days. The morning of the transfer is when they unfreeze the embryo. So we could get all the way to that point and neither of the embryos come out of the freezing process correctly, then we're back to square one. So we had a consult to determine that nothing is determined, except we'll be using one embryo.

2 comments:

  1. Hope all goes well! My vote was for two as well, but I'm glad the doctor was helpful for you to make your decision. Best of luck! Anxious to see what March will bring!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm so proud of you both for pulling it all together and continuing on. It's that determination that will make you successful.....parents of a sweet little baby.

    ReplyDelete