IVF STIM day 6
Today has probably been the hardest day so far. We had our first doctors appointment in Utah. We did a hystosonorgram (aka water ultrasound), blood work and follicle count. Everything was going pretty well until we got to the follicle count. We currently have 8 follicles over 10mm and 16 total but some are pretty small still and might not make it. That news felt…devastating. 8 good ones right now. I know we have 4 more STIM days which means those other 8 might get big enough to make it but I was hoping for like 30-40 not 16. It’s kind of a numbers game in that however many follicles you have, you’ll have fewer mature eggs, then you’ll have less that are mature eggs, and then fewer that fertilize and even fewer that make it to day 5. So when you start with only 8….that seems like bad odds.
I know that I’ve done everything in my control to have a good outcome. I can’t help feeling just sad by that number though.
Another maybe possibility is that the embryos that make it (if they do) might be really poor quality and not survive the freeze/thaw process in order to do genetic testing. My sister in law was telling me that they had planned to do genetic testing and then had poor quality embryos that weren’t expected to survive the freeze/thaw so they switched things up and ended up doing a fresh transfer (embryo was never frozen and instead transferred right back in that same cycle month). I guess that could end up being a possibility for us as well. I hadn’t really thought that would be an open but I suppose it could be.
Driving down here I told Drew that part of me is scared to go through this because we will get answers and we might not like them. You can never go back to when you didn’t know a piece of information. Maybe after learning that information you decide you wish you would have never known it. You can’t put pandora back in the box. As I was taking Xion for a walk before leaving Spokane to drive to Utah, I was walking around our normal neighborhood thinking “this will be the last time I see this bush/house/etc before I will KNOW”. The next time I see our neighborhood I will have a different perspective on life and I don’t know if I will like that view.
I don’t know if it’s the medication or the stress of traveling or simply the stress of this whole process, but today was just more difficult emotionally.
Pictures: Post injection gift from Akemi, hanging out with the family we are staying with, Xion walking along the Spanish Fork River, Getting more blood drawn for stupid testing (so much blood!)
Walking along the Spanish Fork River Trail
