We’ve been through IVF before.
We’ve been told we have perfect textbook looking, grade A no fragmentation Day 3 embryos (x 4) and textbook perfect looking expanded Day 5 blastocytes (x2). We’ve transferred all 6 of those supposedly perfect blasts and embryos over three attempts only to end up with 1 chemical pregnancy.
My last RE said its been a long time since she’s seen anyone make such perfect embryos and blasts during multiple IVF cycles. She also said she’s never seen someone make this type of quality (based visually of course) to find out that they don’t make any chromosomally normally embryos. She said she didn’t believe I had an egg quality issue at all. She also didn’t believe I had an immune issue causing my miscarraiges-or apparently any one for that matter as they don’t actually exist.
My current RE thought I would make absolutely no chromosomally normal embryos. He feels comfortable treating me as if I have an APA issue due to a single borderline test result and my complete insistance upon steriods and lovenox but if he had his way, I wouldn’t be on either of them-just a baby aspirin. He was sure given my history of 5 miscarriages that I had a severe egg quality issue causing this.
I said I thought if I could get 8 embryos that I was certain I would make no less than 2 normal embryos. I keep saying that I think there is something wrong with my body that is preventing normal and even slightly abnormal pregnancies from even COMPLETING implantation.
She was part right and mostly wrong.
He was all wrong (but I still love him).
And so far I was very right and hoping that the steriods, double dose of progesterone, claritin, prepcid, baby aspirin and Lovenox that I’m currently hopped up on proves the rest of my thoughts wrong.
Dr. P. ended up biopsying the 3 celled embryo anyways as he felt it wasn’t going to make it to day 5 so might as well lose it to science than natural causes. Out of 8 embryos tested-
4 were not normal
2 were very not normal
2 were perfect…
(click to enlarge)
When we got the news that we did indeed have 2 normal blasts-I did indeed freak out mentally the rest of the ride down to NJ because I don’t have any faith that the drugs I am on will stop my crazy ass UOD from killing these 2 perfect blasts. The only thought that has prevented me from a full on panic since learning this news was this…
perhaps…just maybe…my best LOOKING embryos aren’t my normal ones?? And perhaps the drugs I am currently hopped up on will stop the mass murdering UOD in her tracks??
Is it possible that Lizzie selected the best 2 looking embryos out of 4 last October only to select 2 abnormal embryos and freeze the 2 healthy ones-which didn’t handle the shitty antiquated BWH freeze/thaw process and were only 2 and 4 cells at time of transfer-and thus too damaged to propagate?
Is it possible that the same thing happened again during our blast transfer in August? We had 4 blasts on day 5 and selected again to transfer the 2 best LOOKING and then discard the others because we didn’t want to freeze our blasts because they hadn’t been genetically tested.
So to try to set my mind at ease-I asked Dr. P when we arrived in NJ–if he didn’t have that report telling him which blasts to transfer-could he look at our blasts right now and tell me which 2 he would transfer based solely on just LOOKING at them?
We transferred embryos #1 and #3 because the genetics report told us they were normal.
Without the CGH testing report he would have transferred embryo #2 and #7 because they were fully hatched blasts and therefore had a higher score than the 2 normal ones which had just started to hatch.
Please let the reason our previous 3 Assisted Reproductive Therapies have failed to bring me a take home baby be because my best looking blasts and embryos aren’t my normal ones. And while I try to focus on that being the reason that I’m not half way to healthy take home baby right now, I will try to forget about the other 4 natural cycle miscarriages that we can’t explain why they didn’t go to term (or at least a frickin heart beat) either.
Amen.