Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Better Late Than Never?

After a very ambitious beginning to my blog writing -- in which, at one point, I managed to produce seven days of consecutive posts -- I seem to have fallen off the wagon. But now I'm back and with an update on my last cycle, which culminated in a May 5 retrieval.

They managed to get 15 eggs, of which nine were mature and fertilized. (I'm convinced I could have stimmed one more day.) By Day 3, eight were still going strong. So strong, in fact, that the embryologist prefaced our conversation with, "You're just getting better and better with age." This really threw me for a loop as I'm not used to getting compliments from him. He went on to say that they couldn't have created eight better-looking embryos if they had tried and that everyone in the lab was quite surprised (in a good way).

Needless to say, my hopes were quite high, so when I found out I only had three blasts -- and on Day 6 -- I was a little disappointed. Nevertheless, the embryologists were very happy with my results and recommended that were I to have a good number of eggs next time, I should definitely go to blast. This significantly upped my spirits and I am now quite encouraged by the fact that I made three. Even if they are only 2/3 and not gradable yet. Still, I'm optimistic because I've never made a blast before (not that I've tried, but it certainly was a big unknown), so I see it as quite a milestone. And based on my previous cycle in which my normal ratio was approximately one of ten, I suppose it's possible that out of the nine embryos I made this time, one could be normal and that one could be one of the ones that made it to the three. I hope that was clear.