Christmas Past

Christmas Day passed without incident.

Certainly, unlike last year, we do not know whether our recent cycle will end in another negative.

There is hope, but I think I read somewhere our chance is in the vicinity of 17% (due to the loss of all other embryos) - a significant drop from the original 56% we believed we had in cycling with Star as our donor.

This is the fifth Christmas in a row we have been dealing with one or other of the yucky aspects of Infertility.

First Year – We’d started trying and after a couple of months I was already living in fear of being the 1 in 10 couple. I’d seen my gynae, had the basic blood tests and ultra sounds and being told to go away, try for the next three months and come back if we didn’t get pregnant. Mr. S promptly got Chicken Pox!

Second Year - getting over my miscarriage. Spending Christmas Day with my sister, who, even though she knew I’d recently miscarried, insisted on throwing her ultrasound pics around and complaining about how hard life was for her.

Third Year – Starting our third cycle straight after our second failure. Two perfect cycles in a row resulting in Grade 1. blastocysts both times, ending in perfect failure.

Last Year – Finding out ‘on the day’ our fifth cycle had failed. Vowing that was ‘IT’, no more cycles, we were going overseas to get eggs and we were going to look into adoption.

This Year – We made the jump, we went out and found a local donor. Got ourselves and Star through the counselling and testing, decided on our specialist and took our leap of faith.

Until we know the results of our transfer, we won’t know what our next step will be.

Mr. S has become a little more determined than I’ve seen him before. He has no issues with getting a second opinion, he welcomes it. He’s prepared to do more testing, but neither of us can see what that could possibly be. In his view, if we go again we change everything – new donor, new clinic, new doctor. I’ve told him I’m not agreeing to any absolute proclamations at this point.

The cycle still shocks me.

While I’m happy to have an RE with a great emotional understanding of the situation, I’m not happy with the post mortem.

While I know that you can’t compare eggs with eggs, I think there are a few comparisons that are relevant.

- My eggs always fertilised and developed normally.
- Our embryos always made it past Day 3. in Grade 1. condition
- Some of my embryos made it to blast.

This, with the specific tests we’ve had done on Mr. S, rules out a lot of the doubt around this being a sperm issue.

With Star, her eggs fertilised beautifully, but things started going wrong from Day 1 development.

I’m not prepared to cast doubt on Star without further investigation either, she had all the relevant hormone tests and karotyping done prior to starting. Her eggs were mature and looked good.

I have read that sometimes there is an issue with the media used, this can cause the embryos not to develop. The scientist also said to me, with some patients it’s the drug protocol.

Meanwhile, how is my 2WW going?

Nothing to report.

A trivial fact = my blood test is booked in for January 3rd.