Today has been a complete day of ups and downs. After a really anxious and crazy morning almost going insane waiting for a call from the embryologist we finally got the call, and were pleasantly surprised by what she had to say.
I just had so many negative thoughts going through my head this morning, and when the embryologist didn’t call us early morning, like they normally, my mind started coming up with all sorts of conclusions as to what we might expect. The longer we waited for the phone call, the more anxious I got. Roger was good at recognising my lashing out in the morning about needing to tidy the house was simply disguising my anguish.
We were expecting none of the embryos to have survived for 5 days and be at blastocyst stage. I couldn’t help thinking about the day 3 embryo I had implanted 2 days ago was not of high quality, so my little brain was getting ahead of itself thinking, well the chances of that taking are pretty low, and if that fails to get me pregnant and we have no embryos that make it to being frozen stage, it will be a wasted cycle with no results. I guess it is just such an involved process going through IVF I want at least all those injections, those drugs, to give us a chance at something. I want us to be able to have a good shot at getting pregnant.
In the end I couldn’t handle waiting any longer and called and left a message for the embryologist just before midday and we got a call back soon after.
We were both just really happy with what she had to say. We have one good quality blastocyst that would be frozen today, for use in the future should we require it. Whew! Just so nice to have that little back up, although it isn’t fool-proof, since not all frozen embryos will survive the thawing process… only something like 80%. And sometimes the embryo can be damaged in the thawing process too. The great thing about having a frozen blastocyst is because they are ‘older’ embryos (5 days old rather than 3), they have divided to a point where it is possible to see the area in the embryo which will become the baby and the placenta. So because of their advanced development they generally have a much better chance of survival, and therefore a better chance of me being pregnant.
We also have one embryo which is not quite at blastocyst stage yet, but they will take a look at it tomorrow and if it is looking OK they will freeze that too (it will be a day 6 blastocyst).
I don’t even want to think about the possibility of that embryo surviving too and being frozen… perhaps I don’t want to seem to greedy. I am just so happy that we have one frozen embryo, I don’t want to tempt fate by wishing too hard for the day 6 embryo to survive and be frozen too. We are happy with 1 frozen embryo, 2 would be amazing!!
And of course 2 embryos have dropped off or ‘arrested’ as they call it.
I am curious to know if our frozen embryo is the same embryo that was 12 cells on day 3. Both me and Roger had a good feeling about that embryo for some reason. Partly because it was the only embryo on day 3 that had no sign of ‘fragmentation’. For me I did some relaxation visualisation while I was having acupuncture done before the embryo transfer, and tried to ‘send love’ to all the embryos. I felt like I wasn’t able to as the first embryo in the line was sending it to me instead… weird I know, but I got the feeling that one was going to be ‘the one’. When the embryologist showed us her sheet the first one on her list was the 12 cell embryo.
Despite this we listened to the advice of the embryologist as to which one she would recommend for transfer, and went for that embryo. Who knows though, perhaps the no. 1 in the line like my visualisation is actually the first in line according to the embryologist ranking.
Who knows… another wait to see if our other embryo survives and if it gets to be frozen. Either way we are just thankful we have one little embryo inside me right now, and one frozen.
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