Mumble .. mumble ...

So now there are three in my mother's group who are officially pregnant. All safely passed the first trimester. Bated breath for those waiting to announce. It seems 1st birthday's were the signal to have another.

The other day in the park, the conversation strayed into the now oh-so-boring mandatory mutterings about the global financial crisis or the GFC as its become [sarcastically] known in our home.

Several people murmering about job losses, budget cuts, bleak futures. One who works for the so-called 'millionaires club' (pregnant) bemoaning what a crap outlook there was for the coming year.

'I think you can pretty much write off the whole of this year'
'Yeah 2009 is going to be pretty miserable' agreed the other

'Well its not going to be that miserable' I said 'you're having a baby!'
'Yeah!' said someone else ...
'Well that's not going to be that great ... the first six months are going to be awful'

What can you say?

Some people have only ever known what its like to have ALL their dreams come true.

Here's What It Means

To culture frozen embryos.

The scientist explained that it was suggested at our last FET because while our first embryo thawed okay, it then went on and 3 cells fused into one, suggesting an abnormality. Our second embie thawed okay and only lost one cell - but it didn't stick.

So we have three remaining.

The suggestion is that they thaw all three and then culture on to either day 3. or day 5. that way being in the best position to pick the strongest embryo to transfer.

Yowza!

So the risks are that when you thaw all the embies you are then exposing them to the lab conditions, potentially causing embies to arrest - and there being no way of knowing if those embies could have implanted if transferred earlier.

The pros are that you could end up with say two of the embies going on to beoome high quality blastocysts and being in a position to make a decision on transferring the best and then having one to freeze. Thereby having the best chance of success.

To me this means one thing - an all or nothing cycle.

Problem is I don't have a back up if it doesn't work.

Thawing and transferring one by one is the slower way, the more conservative, but the least risky in terms of losing embies.

I think scientists take a more dispassionate view - they are looking for the fastest way to find the strongest embryo and have the maximum chance of success.

Nagging in the back of my mind is ... we've never been lucky ... we transferred high quality blastocysts before (mine) and didn't get success - so no guarantee there ... we've never been lucky.

I lie, we have been lucky, we have BabyG - but we had no other embies from that cycle - either to transfer or freeze. It was all or nothing with that one 4-cell embie. Wow that thinking has bought me full circle ... all or nothing worked once... shit...

Thoughts?

Well

Here we go again ... we're cancelled for January.

We were attempting to do a Natural FET ... scan this morning showed 1 small follie and lining at 7mm on Day 10.

Blood results unfortunately showed eostrogen to be too low - under 100 - so cycle is cancelled.

Now I am to start immedicately on the bcp ... for the next 3 1/2 weeks then ... start the miserable synarel.

The main positive to this is that it gives me a few more weeks with my new acupuncture goddess ...

Don't know why I'm not more upset - have a feeling its all for the best.

So February here we come!

There's also a whole new dilemma with this culturing embies thing - too many pros and cons to go into right now.