Counting your chicks before they hatch...

I am at that weird stage where I am not sure about blogging updates on infertility. The emotional pain and fear is so raw. I am trying to have faith but faith is hope and that can be dangerous. Here goes... read if you are curious how those fertility drugs worked...

The egg retrieval was two weeks ago Thursday and to say that it is an unpleasant experience would be an understatement. The best part was the anesthesiologist who I have a spiritual connection with. You know those people who you just connect with for some reason that even you don't understand. He has a tender soul and he provides the good stuff to knock me out and temporarily relieve me of the madness that whirls in my mind about my ability to hold another baby in my arms. I started weeping in the procedure room, as they set me up for the egg retrieval. My last memory before going under is of him wiping a tear from my cheek in the most tender gesture of humanity and compassion. I think only those who can be empathetic to infertile women should be allowed to interact with them in their hormone induced state and he does an exceptional job especially in a profession where the practitioners are typecast as cold individuals. My doctor aspirated eggs from both of my ovaries but had to puncture my right ovary four times to access all of the follicles that developed. They retrieved 16 eggs.

The morning after the retrieval the geneticist called to tell me that 14 eggs had fertilized and were forming cells.

On Sunday she called to tell me my petri dish had 4 eggs that were developing nicely and 10 that were coming along .

On Monday I called to check in on my little petri dish and the lab assistant told me I had 10 that were developing nicely and 4 that were not progressing. Feeling unsure that she was unsure about her information I called back and left a message for the geneticist. It can take hours to hear back so I finished work and left for Costco. The geneticist called while I was in the middle of Costco and gave me the full update. She had checked the eggs and none appeared to be doing well. She suggested we still proceed with the embryo transfer and wait and see what happened overnight. I was standing in line at Costco and debated running from the warehouse or continuing to quietly wipe the tears away. I cried myself to sleep that night and woke up crying. The Valium I had to take to proceed the embryo transfer was a blessed thing and that combined with the acupuncture to help relax me during the procedure seemed to do the trick.

The geneticist gives a full report of the embryos she wants to transfer and we are invited to look at them. I declined but Jerry looked and we have pictures of the embryos that were transferred. Embryos are graded based on averages and overnight one embryo had caught up to where they wanted it to be and 4 others were "good enough" to transfer. The geneticist encouraged me to transfer 5 embryos and I wholeheartedly agreed. Remember, I was drugged. Luckily Jerry was not on drugs and the geneticist also remembered to remind us that our decision should be based on whether or not we believe in selective reduction. She encouraged us to transfer 4 and so we did. She reminded us that they transfer less than ideal embryos all the time that end up in pregnancies with completely healthy babies.

The whole process is so overwhelming and little science fiction to me still but I trust in the geneticist's years of experience and the fact that there is not always rhyme or reason to how IVF works when it does. They have a patient who is pregnant now with four babies from the two eggs she had transferred. The patient is giving birth to identical triplet boys and a single girl - two eggs and four babies.

About two days after the transfer Jeremy told me he wanted me to have four babies. We had not talked about the transfer in front of him in terms of numbers so I am really hoping he's not getting heavenly inspiration. My mom said if we have twins she will come help, if it's triplets she will stay home and pray for us and if it is more than that she and my dad will be submitting their paperwork for a mission - foreign preferably. I definitely would not want a litter at one time but I think never holding another of my very own babies would be harder than holding a couple at once.

My overriding feeling is that this has not been a successful round of treatment and I do not expect to be pregnant when they do the test next week. I can't honestly tell you if I feel that way because hoping for a positive pregnancy test feels like I open myself up to too much pain or if I am being prepared for a negative result.