IVF Diary Vol III: 17-19 Apr 16

April 20, 2016April 20, 201617 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). 3DP5DT (3 days past 5 Day Transfer) PM Progesterone in Oil 1ml Intra-muscular injection, vivelle dot estrogen patches 0.1mg x2.

Injecting into my right side is much harder than my left side – even though I’m injecting with my right hand on the right side – it’s just that I have more flexibility in turning my torso left than I do right. Is that weird? Or is that standard for right handed people??

Last night, my first night in a hotel on my own without Chris on hand, I gave myself the progesterone in oil injection. I felt queasy and thought I was going to pass out as the needle got half way in. Fortunately I didn’t, but the whole experienced has made me feel nervous about doing it again tonight :-s

We also experimented and replaced the needle with a new one after drawing up the oil to see if it made a difference. It felt slightly sharper/easier to pierce the skin so I will keep doing that – I have enough needles stored up!!!

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil! Woohoo!!!

Any results? The nurse called with the news about our embryos – none of them were of sufficient quality by the end of day 6 to freeze. Chris came to my work to give me a big hug. The news definitely sucked…but now we know what we are dealing with. We have both kind of pushed this news into the corner for another time to think about. We need to focus on the right now instead. These two little cheeky embryos had better stick!!

What are my symptoms? The Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome symptoms have subsided, my ovaries have had lots of sharp pains and twinges the past two days, but the overall abdominal pains has almost but dissipated except for after eating. Sore boobs….Chris hugged me and I yelped a bit from the tender boobs!!!!

How do I feel today? I had a lovely dream that I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl…like she was the most beautiful baby anyone had seen, the day of coming back home from the hospital we went to a party and showed her off to everyone, then I realised that I didn’t know how to breast feed her and some ladies had to help me. Awkward. That was weird…but what wasn’t weird was the fact that this dream felt so real when I woke up for a slight second I thought it had actually happened for real 😦 I hope it was my body telling me something!!!

What’s next? Is it test time yet????!

The Final Countdown!!!

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal), 5mg Melatonin at bed time and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

IVF Diary Vol III: 14-16 Apr 16

April 16, 2016April 16, 201637 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Transfer Day!!!! PM Progesterone in Oil 1ml Intra-muscular injection, vivelle dot estrogen patches 0.1mg x2.

The past few days Chris has been giving me my progesterone in oil injections because I have been too sore to turn around and attempt to give one to myself in the behind! Last night I prepped the medication as per usual, I iced my backside, then usually I go lie on the bed face down ready for Chris to inject, but this time I decided to secretly attempt to inject it myself! I stood with my side facing the bathroom mirror (which I didn’t actually use in the end). I held the needle like a dart, but it’s very difficult to get a true dart like action when doing this to myself! There was no hesitating this time (I must have tried this about 10 times last cycle). Rather than ‘dart’ it in, I placed the needle on my skin and pushed a little – it didn’t break the skin! I couldn’t feel it because I had iced the area anyway, so I pushed harder. You definitely have to push that thing in a whole lot harder than you might think!!! Anyway, it went in and I started to inject the oil. Chris walked into the bathroom as I was doing this and for a second ignored me…then realised what I was doing, I hadn’t told him I was going to do it!!! He was super impressed!! After I took the needle out I realised that there was quite a lot of blood with this one – typical!!! I hadn’t got the gauze ready. I felt a little dizzy, but not too bad. I put my heat pad on the injection site as usual and gave Chris a high five! Can I give a high five to all my lovely supporters who have cheered me on with this injection!!! You helped me do it! Thank you so much!!!

Medical procedures undertaken. 5 Day Embryo Transfer!!!!! I was very nervous that we would arrive and the procedure would be cancelled because I was still feeling the OHSS symptoms. We arrived at 0700AM at the clinic and we were second in line – there were only two of us patients in the OR today. Learning my lesson from previous transfers I did not drink anything when I woke up and ensured my bladder was as empty as it could be by the time I arrived at the clinic. I started sipping my water about 40 mins before they took me in. They recommend drinking 24oz, but seriously my bladder can barely hold 12oz and with the OHSS the past few days I have only been able to drink about 8oz at the most before needing to pee. Once I was in the OR the doctor told us we had two beautiful embryos to transfer today and one potential to freeze. Once I was in the stirrups, the doctor placed the speculum and the other doctor used the transabdominal ultrasound on my tummy. OH MY GOODNESS it hurt! And this time not from a full bladder! The Doctor exclaimed ‘Oh yes, you do have super enlarged ovaries!’ I just laughed out loud because I could tell him that without the ultrasound. Anyway, the canula tube that the embryos would be transferred by was inserted into my uterus and we were ready to go! The embryologist checked my identity, and went back into his lab and showed us the embryos on the TV screen, confirming they were ours – one of the blastocysts had started to hatch since he took the photo earlier in the morning (a new thing the clinic does!!!! Very cool because before Chris would snap a pic of the TV screen with his phone!). At this point I was crying because of the pain from the ultrasound!!! We watched the embryos on the ultrasound screen ‘arrive’ into my uterus 🙂 We had the same doctor do our transfer for our Positive result last year…not that this should make a difference…but….this is a good sign!!!!!

Any results? The two embryos we transferred were graded 3BB and 3CB (Here is a useful link to find out more about blastocyst grading). There is one blastocyst that might make it to the freezer (FINGERS CROSSED!!! This would be amazing so it can join our other frozen embryo!!!) Sadly the other 7 embryos are highly unlikely to make it to the freezer 😦

The one on the right is the 3BB the one on the left is the 3CB – we haven’t decided on a name for them yet!

What are my symptoms? Still suffering with OHSS, but the important thing is that it is not getting worse. Now we have to hope that it doesn’t get worse if I get pregnant (OHSS can either appear or get worse as hCG levels increases once you actually get pregnant)…so we are still on the watch. I am really getting bored of not being able to do anything other than a gentle walk – and that is a short distance gentle walk too 😦

How do I feel today? I was feeling really anxious last night about today’s transfer and I did not sleep well at all. I had awful nightmares about the Brussels attacks too. I woke up from them and couldn’t stop thinking about it for about an hour or so before I fell back asleep. Today I am feeling relieved that we had at least two to transfer and all those emotions came bubbling up in the form of tears as we left the clinic – a true mix of happy, scared and pained feelings!

BUT I am PUPO! (Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise) and for that I am truly grateful. We will be over the moon if this one blastocyst also makes it to the freezer.

What’s next? The two week wait…..eeeeeeek!!! To pee or not to pee (on a stick)…..that is the question!!!!

The Final Countdown!!!

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal), 5mg Melatonin at bed time and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

Average number of blastocysts per IVF cycle

February 21, 201624 Comments

It’s a really simple question – what is the average number of blastocysts per IVF cycle? After our failed IVF cycle I posted a status update in my local resolve support group’s facebook page, I explained what had happened with our cycle: 14 eggs retrieved, 11 mature, 11 fertilised, 2x 5 Day blastocysts transferred (5BB & 5CC) on Day 5, 9 still alive on day 5, but 0 were of sufficient quality for cryopreservation. Some ladies commented how they had similar results with 0 embryos making it to the freezer, and one lady posed the very good question how common is it to have 0 make it to the freezer? Perhaps it is more common than we think? So it got me thinking…at no point has my doctor said what a typical number of eggs, embryos or blastocysts she would expect out of a cycle for us – the only stats we were ever told was all about our likelihood of a successful pregnancy from 1 cycle of IVF, and ultimately, a live birth. And of course, that is the only statistic we only really care about, right? This holds true, until you get a Big Fat Negative (BFN), then the other statistics start to matter and grind at you.

So I looked into it, and asked google – what is the average number of blastocysts per IVF cycle? But I couldn’t find an easy answer, or at least one that I held great confidence in. I’m the kind of person who needs to see the supporting evidence, and not just some seemingly arbitrary numbers some random person has posted on a website. But although I didn’t find any national statistics per se, what I did find, made me feel a whole lot better about our last cycle.

The statistics that the Pacific Fertility Center in Canada are claiming are [1]:

11 – Average number of eggs retrieved

9 – Average number of mature eggs

7 – Average number of eggs that fertilise (approximately 80%)

7 – Average number of fertilised eggs that will form embryos (98%)

7 – Average number of embryos on Day 3 of culture

3.5 – Average number of blastocycts on Day 5/6 (50% of good quality day 3 embryos make it to blastocyst)

It was not clear if this was their clinic’s statistics or where the source of this data came from. So my confidence is not high in it, I don’t know over how many cycles or patients this average is calculated. But at least it gives you a flavour of what numbers to expect. Note, it does not mention average number of blastocysts making it to cryopreservation!

Another clinic, Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago, provides a nice pretty chart of their own statistics, broken down by age for the period of 2003-2005. First of all my first alarm bell is that is over 10 years old now! Has anything changed in Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the last 10 years? Hmmmmm. Anyway, here it is….

Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago’s average number of eggs, mature eggs, fertilised eggs, 8 cell embryos and Day 5 blasts [2]

Their numbers are slightly lower than the Canadian clinic’s…but there could be many reasons for this because, again, there is no clue as to how many cycles/patients this average is calculated over. This clinic does publish their statistic of how many blastocysts make it to cryopreservation. And here is the money shot statistic people!!!!

Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago’s average number of blastocysts frozen per cycle in 2010-2011 [3]

Just look at how low these numbers are! An average of 1.7 for women younger than 35 years old. And this statistic is a little bit more up to date than the ones above – this was for cycles from 2010-2011.

So what is the point of this post? The point is that we didn’t have any blastocysts that made it to cryopreservation, but we did have 2 blasts that were transferred and 1 that could have been frozen, but they decided it might not survive the thaw. For our first cycle we had one blast make it to the freezer. The point is, we had high expectations for more to make it to the freezer, when in actual fact the reality is, we were better than average to have so many good Day 3 embryos and we were typically average with transferring 2 on Day 5. Yes, IVF cycle 2 was a failure, but we were pretty average with our second cycle!!! This doesn’t mean we are less likely to succeed with cycle 3, rather the odds ARE in our favour.

Happy dance Dani!!!

stay the path

[1] Source: http://www.pacificfertility.ca/our-resources/guide-to-ivf-lab-results/

[2] Source: http://www.advancedfertility.com/ivf.htm

[3] Source: http://www.advancedfertility.com/cryo.htm

IVF Diary Vol II: 31 Jan – 1 Feb 16

February 2, 2016February 2, 201611 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Progesterone in Oil 1ml Intra-muscular injection, vivelle dot estrogen patches 0.1mg x2. I still have not mastered injecting this thing myself, but getting used to seeing the needle going in and injecting the oil myself.

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil

What are my symptoms? I have had some aches and pains around my ovaries. I am also quite tired, mostly because I have not been sleeping overly well since starting the progesterone.

How do I feel today? A little stressed with work situation at the moment. At work as we were trying to sort some issues out amongst the team, and I was sat there consciously trying to remain calm, breathing through my nose and exhaling through my mouth slowly and consciously. That worked for the morning, the afternoon I was just plain sad about work. Someone who I barely know came to find me after a meeting and asked if I was OK, I seemed a bit sad and not my cheery self.

Any results? At 5pm my phone rang with the clinic’s number, I couldn’t think why they were calling me. The nurse answered the other line in a somber voice. She had bad news. Our 9 embies didn’t make it to cryopreservation. So, no frosties this time around. I tried hard not to cry on the phone, and burst into tears at my work desk as soon as I got off. I cried in the car on the way home from work, trying not crash through the blubbering tears and snot. We are gutted. I am grateful we managed to transfer two at least.

What’s next? Beta HcG test will be 12 days from now :-s

Weight. NSTR.

Waist. NSTR.

Boobs. NSTR.

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.