Testing... Testing...

We've been doing a lot of pregnancy tests the last couple days, or my sister in law has anyway. Here are the latest. If there was any doubt, having it confirmed by a third brand of test, the digital, removed it.

Friday she goes in to get blood drawn for the beta test which will tell us how much hCG she has in her, which will give us some idea of how well things are along. There will be another one later to see how things are progressing. Then it'll be officially official, but I'm going to say it now: WE'RE PREGNANT!

Hope or a Tease?

Faint lines on the latest pee sticks. They run in the picture from the earliest at top right to the latest at bottom left. Click the picture for a larger view.

We stopped at my sister in law's house this evening to check on her report of faint lines on the pregnancy tests she's been taking. We were honestly expecting them to be merely evaporation lines - greyish lines sometimes visible on such tests after they dry, even if the result is negative. This is what we saw.

The fourth down was from this morning. The next was from this evening. The last was from late tonight, and was done about an hour after my sister in law last used the bathroom. We were not expecting to see anything at all on that one, but the fact that we saw a faint line on that one leads up to believe there is something happening. We know it's not an evaporation line since it started to show while the strip was still wet, and they are definitely pink/purple colored.

False positives are very rare, but we are trying to be only cautiously optimistic. Even so, it's difficult to restrain ourselves. Only our past disappointments keep us from being more positive about our chances. Realistically, though, a pregnancy can fail at any time. Our previous attempts failed before this point, so hopefully the one problem was that my wife's uterus was somehow inhospitable, but these are from forty year old eggs so we're not free and clear yet. On our first attempt we got a single test with a faint line - probably what's known as a "chemical" pregnancy, when an embryo starts to implant but doesn't quite. This has gone on longer, so we're hoping for better but still worried.

Wish us luck. We'll still need it!

Going For Five

We did the transfer this morning, putting five of our embryos into my sister in law. They were of average quality, all with some degree of fragmentation. We have some somewhat lesser quality ones still incubating, and will hopefully see a couple make it to blast and be freezable.

My wife's parents tagged along this time, though they had to sit in the waiting room. I was waiting with them during the actual procedure, though I did go back with my wife and her sister to weigh in on how many to transfer. We were pretty much unanimous on five given the quality and the nine we'd transferred in previous failed cycles. They had her drop trou and get ready right away, though, so I had to duck out of the room until she was in the bed and covered. The procedure went smoothly and afterward they left a freeze frame of the ultrasound up for me to see, showing my sister in law's uterus in magnified cross section with a little white line visible where the embryos and the fluid containing them were released. We talked with the doctor and estimated about a 20% chance of success.

Afterward, we went home to tend to some business and then went to my sister in law's to hang out and talk while my father in law cut the grass. My other sister in law, the middle one, showed up later with her two kids.

The doctor recommended three days bed rest, but everyone says he's a bit conservative about that. We talked about it among ourselves and decided her taking off work today and tomorrow would be a good compromise, given that she has a desk job.

We'll find out in about a week and a half if it worked or not. The odds are long but we can't help but hope for the best.

IVF 3: Post-Retrieval Update

The retrieval went better than we were anticipating in some ways, not as well as we'd hoped in others. Despite the worryingly estrogen plateau we got a good number of eggs. If I recall correctly it was 11 or 12 mature ones out of 21 good ones. As before, five others had cracked zonas which has the doctor puzzled. Still no idea why she's had so many do that, five every time.

The doctor called yesterday to tell us we had 13 fertilize. If things go as they have in our previous tries we'll have about half of those give us embryos, so we're anticipating roughly six or seven to choose from. Not sure how many we'll put back. I think my wife would like to put them all in, after having nine fail in her, but I think ultimately it's up to her sister to decide what she's comfortable with. The transfer is scheduled for tomorrow morning, though thankfully not near so early as the retrieval.

Wish us luck!

My wife's in the retrieval

My wife's in the retrieval room now. They've already given her a shot of anesthesia and I can hear her laughing.

IVF 3 Update: Triggered But Anxious

We triggered last night, but we're not feeling all that secure about it. My wife went in for a progress check yesterday. The follicles were the right size, but her estrogen was not up as much as expected. The doctor doesn't think that continuing the stimulation will make any difference so he told us to go ahead and trigger. We did so at 9:30 last night and have to be at the clinic for 7 tomorrow morning. In case you haven't read my earlier posts, it's about a hour drive so we're going to be getting up pretty early. I'm used to getting up a little before 8, so this will be fun, I'm sure.

We're not sure what we'll be getting out of this in terms of egg quantity or quality. I guess we'll find out tomorrow morning. Wish us luck.

IVF Take Three

Well, a lot has happened since my last post on this subject. I started a draft post mid July, but let that sit so long it's woefully out of date. So here's what's going on...

We went to the consult with the new doctor. We thought it would be a straightforward deal, just getting the details down for a try with my sister in law as the carrier. The doctor presented us with some options to mull over, though, including using donor eggs since my wife is now over forty. We went home and after a bit of hand wringing my wife decided that this is our last chance to have her own child so we would go with her eggs this time. Her sister is several years younger so if she's still willing we could try again later with donor eggs or adopted embryos. (Probably the latter since we're both not entirely comfortable with a child being from one of us but not the other, but would be fine with adoption if it weren't such an ordeal.)

Anyway, the protocol is underway. My wife is in the stimulation phase and will probably be ready for the retrieval in a week or so. Meanwhile my sister in law is primed for the transfer and waiting. (She has it easy: instead of shots she gets to use vaginal suppositories.)

We also got some good news today. My sperm numbers have improved greatly. The motility is greatly improved and the morphology is at 4% normal. The best morphology I've gotten in previous collections was 1%. I've been taking coenzyme Q-10 and vitamin E supplements most nights with dinner for the past month or so, the E for a bit longer. I don't know if that's what's made the difference, but my numbers are all at or near the minimum levels to be considered "normal" and I intend to continue. We both will be increasing our exercise as well to get in better shape, given that we now have an off chance of getting pregnant on our own. (It would be really crazy if she and her sister were both pregnant with our babies at the same time.)

I do believe we'll be having more sex. We've been off it for a bit. The low sperm counts & quality have been a bit of a downer, and it's hard not to think about it when you're thinking about sex. It just gives the whole thing a feeling of futility. Now, though, that load is lifting and we're both excited about it. I'm not sure when or if I'd be having any more analyses done, though, so there's a danger of uncertainty undermining that feeling if much time goes by with no luck that way. I guess we could always request an analysis.

With the numbers improved my wife asked the doctor if we were in IUI range now, and he said yes. I don't know if we'll do that, though. I read about a study recently that indicated that in cases of unexplained infertility using IUI (artificial insemination) or Clomid (to stimulate egg production) work no better than increasing the frequency of sex. Of course, you might say our infertility would be explained by my low counts & quality, but that in itself in unexplained, as is the fact that we've had three transfers of decent numbers of decent embryos with none implanting. I guess we'll see.

Another Dip In The IVF Roller Coaster

A couple days ago my wife and I ran into a bit of a conflict.

After a conference call between us and an adoption agency rep that didn't go so well she indicated she was having second thoughts about going through with the upcoming IVF cycle. I think the call may have only brought this to a head, but that her doubts may have been mostly stoked by an orientation meeting we had with another adoption agency with a local branch. At the meeting one of the things they mentioned was embryo adoption. (One of the couples there is older than us and is planning on doing that.)

She said she wasn't entirely comfortable with creating embryos without their being able to survive. We've discussed this before. My view is that this is what happens when people conceive naturally, or us at least. A naturally fertilized embryo has little more chance to implant and carry to term than an artificially fertilized one - less if the protocol includes measures to stimulate the growth of a better, more hospitable, lining in the uterus. All we are doing in IVF is accelerating the process so that we get to the one that survives sooner. Her problem, though, is in knowing that's going on.

She also is frustrated with going through all the pain of the injections with nothing to show for it. The expense is a factor too. Adoption would be much more expensive, and would bring in outsiders with a say in things, but is much more of a sure thing.

As for myself, I really want us to have our own child. I'm an atheist, if I haven't mentioned that before. I don't believe in any kind of afterlife. I believe that the only way we live on after we die is through our biological descendants, and I don't want to disappear when I'm gone. I'm ready to accept that when we've tried everything we can it will be time to move on. I'm just not ready to accept it before we've done everything, and this cycle with her sister as the carrier would be our best chance yet for a child of our own.

She's gone through such doubt before, and it was also around this time in her cycles. She does get very emotional when she is premenstrual. I'm not dismissing her feelings. I'm just saying they are hormonally amplified at the moment. I think that ultimately we will go through with the IVF. We have a consult with the doctor coming up this week, with my sister in law present, so we can go over the protocol and know what to expect. (There is some extra testing, for STDs mainly, beyond what was done already for our earlier attempts.) My wife hasn't indicated she was canceling that, so I think we will likely ride through this dip.

It's still very frustrating and depressing. I didn't anticipate this kind of thing when we started. But I think that ultimately we can get through it.

UPDATE: My wife was out this morning and came back to pick me up to get lunch and bring it to Secret Headquarters. Over lunch she mentioned the appointment we have Friday and how we should go about convoying or carpooling with her sister. (I suggested that we carpool in her sister's car since she has the GPS and we've only been to the doctor's office once before, and that we should pay for the gas.) She said she hoped it worked. We also talked about what to do after if it doesn't, like maybe trying out doing interim care (short-term foster parenting) for infants and/or small children in the process of being adopted. It could be a foot in the door if we decide adoption is right for us, and would help us decide and get ready.

Another IVF Back On The Table

My wife's sister called last night and said she was up for carrying our baby for us. My wife was trembling while she was on the phone with her. I talked her down, a little, since we want to keep our expectations realistic: though this may well be our best shot at our own baby yet, the odds are still against us. We're hoping, though, that the big factor was my wife's health and the conditions in her uterus. We're also hoping we get some extra embryos to freeze again this time. Oh heck, we're hoping for a baby.

Meanwhile, we have an adoption orientation meeting/class coming up. We're going to be laying what groundwork we can for that, particularly researching adoption agencies. (Any tips, recommendations, or warnings are welcome. Please comment.)

Infertility Endgame

It looks like we're going into the final stages of our fight with infertility. Our plan was to do a couple IUIs with my sperm supplemented with a donor's, then if that didn't work (and odds are it wouldn't) we'd try one last IVF with my wife's sister as the carrier. After a bit of delay, I looked over the info we had on donors and picked one I thought matched me best. (Redheads are scarce among sperm donors, by the way, so if you're a healthy male redhead who wants to make a few extra bucks, head on over to your local sperm bank.) It was a bit late to catch that cycle, so we waited until the next month.

The next month is here. In the mean time my wife has gone back and forth on whether she could do another IVF, so that's still technically up in the air, but I think if it comes to that she'll come to a point sooner or later where she's up for it. Her sister has also been having second thoughts. It seems their mother has been pressuring her to do it. I think we should tell their mother we've decided not to do it that way, for some sort of medical reason, just to take the pressure off. It's possible whatever reticence she's feeling is from an instinct to resist the pressure.

As I said, the next month is here and today my wife expressed some doubts about doing the IUI. It's a more expensive proposition with donor sperm in the mix (so to speak,) not likely to work, and with her health issues it would be a high-risk pregnancy if it did work (even though her health has improved with better diet & exercise habits.) I told her we shouldn't do anything unless and until she is comfortable with it. She went off on an errand, saying she'd think about it while she was out, and order sperm when she got back if she thought she was ready.

After she left I realized I had felt a bit of relief when she talked about not doing the IUI. As the time went by the thought of ordering that sperm, and having my wife pregnant by another man got me sicker and sicker. I realized I couldn't handle it, at least not yet, and, with the doubts she was having, maybe this approach just wasn't right for us.

When she got back I told her what I thought. She says she agrees.

I guess the plan now is to see what happens with her sister. If she and my wife sync up on the IVF we'll try that once. Beyond that, there's adoption which we may start looking into soon regardless.

This infertility thing is not for sissies.

Further Fertility Developments

We saw the new doctor today. He was very personable and more forthcoming than our old one, or at least more talkative. He looked our case over and asked some questions. He recommended that if we did do another IVF that since my wife's sister is willing using her as a gestational carrier would be the way to go, given the number of decent embryos we've put in so far. He also said, though, that our chances with three tries at IUI with donor sperm would be about the same as one try at IVF. IVF tries are generally at least two cycles apart, so with the financial considerations the IUI seems to be our best long term shot. Also, my wife is really feeling worn down emotionally by all she's gone through in the IVF's we've done and gotten nothing.

For IUI we would also have a better shot if my sister in law did it, but we were told tonight by my mother in law that my sister in law told her that while she would be just fine with carrying our child, she wasn't sure she'd be able to give up a child that was genetically hers. I can certainly see that, and understand. I think we were a bit blinded to that possibility by our desire to have a child by whatever means are left at our disposal, and I think my wife was especially so and is having a hard time dealing with it.

So, it seems our next try or three will be an IUI with my sperm augmented by donor sperm, put into my wife. I hope it works, but my wife has other health issues that would no doubt make pregnancy difficult. If the IUI doesn't work, I hope she can find it in herself to do one more IVF with her sister as the carrier.

Wish us luck. We're going to need a lot.

IVF Update And Plans

Well, in case you hadn't heard, the frozen transfer didn't implant apparently. We knew it was a long shot compared to the fresh transfers, but it's still disappointing.

We're changing gears now. Tuesday we have an appointment with a new doctor. We've heard good things about him. He does his procedures at the same fertility center as our original doctor, (I believe they and a few other doctors own it together,) so that will be convenient if potentially awkward. I'm sure other couples change doctors often enough after a few failures for them not to be really surprised. I think it's good to get a fresh pair of eyes on the situation anyway.

Unless he has some really novel insight into what could be done to improve our chances with another IVF, our plan is to shift to doing IUI with my sperm augmented with a donor's.

I'm a little bit of two minds about that. On the one hand we've produced multiple embryos via ICSI with my sperm, transferring nine in total and having some that did not make it nevertheless survive longer than initially estimated. So we know my sperm can work if given a ride to the egg. It's tempting to say "why are we bringing in donor sperm when mine is good enough?" In fact our chances per try are much better with IVF than IUI.

On the other hand, IVF is rather expensive and the protocol is rough on my wife. She is also still rather overweight, but has lost a good forty pounds or so since we started this and is continuing to improve over time. Taking a break from IVF for a little while would give her a chance to improve her health and through that improve our chances, and also give us a chance to catch up a little on the financial side of things. While we're doing that, we may as well take a few shots with the augmented IUI and maybe get lucky.

The plan is to do that for a few months, then maybe, if she is still willing by then, have my wife's sister do the IUIs. She has no interest in being a mother again, has said she would be willing to help out, and would be much cheaper and easier to monitor than a paid gestational carrier. I'm not sure if my wife would still try alongside her at that point. If their cycles were offset enough so that each would start the drugs after the other had their pregnancy test that would let us avoid the possibility of having both pregnant.

At some point my wife may decide she's up for another try at IVF. We just turned forty, so we can't put that off too long, but as long as she's losing weight it's a question of whether the aging is making our chances worse faster than the weight loss is making them better. If only we had some sort of indication of the optimum window. We don't though, so we can only guess and do what we can when we can.

Maybe Tuesday when the new doctor weighs in we'll know better where we stand.

Frozen Embryo Transfer.

We transfered two frozen embryos today. The quality varied a bit between the two. When blastocysts are frozen the collapse like raisins. When they are thawed and survive they reexpand like grapes. (Well, grapes don't actually reexpand, but you get the idea.)

One of the two was in the process of expanding at the time of the last check before the transfer. It had some ruptured cells, but that is expected in frozen embryos. The other one was still raisiny, but did have plenty live cells. The doctor told us that usually if they had only the one raisiny blast they wouldn't bother transferring it. Since we did have the fair one, though, we put back both.

Now we wait. The pregnancy test will be on the 17th, if I recall correctly. (It's been a long day.) We asked what our chances are, and after thinking about it a bit the doctor said we have a 20% shot. It's not that much, but a frozen transfer is a much less expensive and uncomfortable cycle, so it's a shot worth taking. If this doesn't work, I'm not sure what we'll try next. My wife may or may not feel up to doing another fresh cycle. Our contingency plan is to do IUI with donor sperm supplementing mine. Hopefully, though, we'll get pregnant this time and not have to worry about that.

Lining Is Good

We went in for another uterine lining measurement yesterday. It was over 8 mm and the doctor declared us ready to move on to the next phase. Today I start giving my wife injections that will shift her from growing the lining to making it hospitable.

The transfer is set for this coming Thursday afternoon. If neither embryo survives the thaw - they pretty much always lose some cells, but at this stage they can usually weather that - they'll call us around mid-day and tell us not to come in. They said we can call if we don't hear anything, to make sure. I think we'll probably call when the employees go to lunch.

I hope this one works. After this the next thing to try is IUI augmented with donor sperm along with mine. If we simply can't have a child that's mine so be it - I'll take what we can get. When we were first getting to know one another I briefly suspected our nephew might actually by my wife's son, and I was okay with that. I really hope this new child will ultimately be our own, though, and as long as what we're trying involves sperm, and I have some to contribute, I will.

Lining Check and Restroom Adventure

Lining Check
We went to the doctor this morning to do a lining check in advance of our frozen transfer. It was a little thinner that he'd like, so he gave her some estrogen patches. She put one one before we left. I later joked with her that all the weight she's been losing lately has been from her deflating, but now that she's patched we can pump her up again. We talked with the doctor about the embryos and their chances, and he thinks it's unlikely both wouldn't survive the thaw. If neither does survive, the fertility center will call the dr.'s office and they'll call us before we leave. (For those just joining the blog, it's an hour drive there - a long way to go just to be disappointed.) Just in case, we'll call ourselves before we leave. We also asked if the embryos' surviving to blastocyst stage boded well for their viability. He said that while some abnormalities would prevent them from getting that far (implying they don't have those particular abnormalities at least) there was plenty enough abnormalities that would cause them to arrest later. That's the possibility every couple doing IVF has to deal with anyway,though , so there ya go.

Restroom Adventure
After we returned to Secret Headquarters I soon had to use the restroom. Long drives will do that to a person. We share a restroom with the rest of the floor, and since we're on the first floor and the restrooms are accessible from the lobby we share them with pretty much everyone in the building who can't wait to get up to their floor, or who don't want people who know them to know how much they stink up the things. It wasn't that big a surprise, then to find that the toilet hadn't been flushed. What was a surprise was that it was clogged with what if I didn't know was a turd I would have sworn was a sweet potato.

I tried flushing several times in an attempt to erode it enough to flush away, letting the water slowly drain past the monstrosity between attempts. It didn't work. So I went and got the plunger from the ladies' room, figuring I'd make short work of the thing. Nope. It disappeared from view, but apparently lodged somewhere farther in. I pumped the plunger repeatedly with no apparent effect. I pumped it harder and some of the water splashed on my hand and the leg of my jeans. Ick!

After that I slowed down a bit and eventually got things flowing. I finished my pressing business, washed up, and returning to Secret Headquarters I globbed some alcohol gel hand sanitizer on the leg of my jeans. Hopefully that was sufficient.

Test Results and A Weekend Of Painting

Test Results - We went in for the HSG test Thursday. The wait in the outpatient check-in was a long one. From what I could overhear my wife wasn't in their system for some reason. Eventually they called us up and we got checked in and she got a bracelet. Off to the radiology waiting room from where we were very soon escorted to the x-ray room. I had to wait in the hall, so I pulled out my Palm and read a book on it.

My wife had been dreading this test for a while after reading stories of it being very painful for some women. I could hear her laughing from time to time, though, so I figured it maybe wasn't nearly as bad as she had thought it would be. Still, I was prepared to hear a scream and rush to the door. (Okay, maybe just comfort her after - there were x-rays in there after all.) Soon, though, the nurse came out and told me I could come in. The delay in the check-in didn't amount to anything consequential, as it turns out, because the doctor was late. We chatted a little bit, and my wife flashed her bare hip at me as she sat on the xray table, and I patted her butt. She asked me to fetch her a bit of paper from the adjoining restoom, and as I came back the doctor entered. They shooed me out and I went back to reading.

Before long I sensed someone near. I looked up and the doctor was there, rolling down his sleeves. He said everything looked normal, and there was nothing he saw that would get in the way of her getting pregnant. When my wife was done dressing she came out, and as we left she told me about it.

As with many of the procedures so far the worst for her was when the doctor was inserting the hardware. Once everything was in place they had her lie down and the x-ray machine was moved into place. Then the doctor started injecting the dye. My wife says it felt like a bad cramp at its peak. Afterward the doctor rewound the tape (they recorded the whole thing rather than just take a few shots along the way) and showed her what was what. There was nothing amiss in her uterus, and the dye flowed freely through one tube. There was so much flowing through the one, it was hard to see the other, but he could see enough to know that at most there was a blockage, and nothing else.

Before the test she had taken some anti-anxiety medication, so on the drive home she slept most of the way. She woke up right as I turned off the highway.

Weekend Of Painting - As I had promised my wife earlier in the week, this weekend I finished a long put off project: painting the den. When we first moved into the Secret Lair we painted the walls in this room a pale peachy pink. I don't remember the name of the color. The trim was sort of a pastel pinkish mauve. It worked well, but I don't think it was quite what she was after. A few years ago - October of '04 according to the sticker on the paint can - she picked a different pair of colors: terra cotta for the walls, and sand for the trim. We pulled the furniture away from the walls in phases, painting each wall and its trim and allowing it to dry before moving the furniture back and moving on to the next wall. The end of the room where the computers are posed a bit of a problem. My wife had, at that time, a huge corner desk with cabinets, and of course my smaller desk was heaped with junk on top and underneath. It was a daunting task. She wanted to get a new desk anyway, so we decided to put off finishing the paint job until she could pick one she liked.

Finally, not long after alluding to it in this post, we got the new desk. The old one is in the dump now. It was fun tossing it into the compactor. But still we didn't paint. We had the whole IVF thing going by then, and that just ate up too much of our time. Plus, I was hesitant to expose her to paint fumes. We're in a lull now, and since we're doing a frozen transfer next we don't have to worry about the conditions for developing eggs, so now is the time. Friday night my wife cleared off her desk. Saturday morning she headed out to the gym and then to Secret Headquarters to catch up on some paperwork. I stayed home to paint.

The first thing I did was disconnect her computer and move the components out of harm's way. Then I removed her keyboard tray and drawers, taped the computer cabinet door shut, and rolled the desk away from the wall onto its top. It slid over the carpet easily after that. Then I started clearing off mine. That took a while. I boxed up most things, and put some in a pile on the sofa. There were many things I threw away, but the piles of papers I just moved intact without going through them. I'll do that when I put them back. My current computer has been sitting on top of the desk, while my old one remained in its cubbyhole below. there was also a much older computer, salvaged from the junk pile at my former workplace, sitting idle on the floor under the desk, with the cable modem and router on top. I moved both old computers out permanently. (I'll strip out the hard drives later.) Man there was a lot of dust! I vacuumed as I went along and the dust cannister, which started out pretty empty, is now about 1/3 full. The place where the older computer was on the floor is visibly lighter than the rest of the carpet. I think we need to clean it, or replace it - it's been here since before we bought the house.

My desk is much lighter, so I was able to lift it out of the way. That being done, I started the actual wall prep, beginning with a wash with some TSP substitute. My wife has had a long habit of squishing bugs against the wall, then not cleaning them off, so the wall by her desk was a bit of a mess. I scrubbed the worst spots, then did an allover wipe down. After that dried, I did a dry wipe with an old clean towel to clear off any lint from the disintegrating washcloth I'd used with the TSP, and the walls were ready for paint.

We had a full can of the terra cotta left, plus a partial cam. I opened the partial can first and found that there was some corrosion around the rim that had rubbed off and sprinkled into the paint as I opened the can. If the paint had been fully mixed I would have skimmed it off the top, but after over three years the color had all settled to the bottom. I tossed that can and opened the other, which was fortunately pristine. I finished up, including the brush painting in the corners and along the ceiling, around 9PM and after a quick clean-up we headed out for a much-needed meal. Afterward I discovered I had had my fly open the whole time we were out. Good thing I was wearing a coat. We had to switch from one sale to another at midnight, so I rolled her desk back over, moved mine back into place, and set up the computers.

Today my wife headed out again, to the gym, Secret Headquarters for a bit of work, and to her sister's house for a visit with the family. I stayed home to paint the trim. This time it didn't take so long to move everything out of the way. The main part of the trim went fast, but the den is sunken a couple steps down from the rest of the house, so there was a banister to paint as well. It meets the wall with an oval piece which was a lot of fun to tape around. After that I went back to the beginning and gave it all another coat.

My wife wanted to get on the computer tonight, so I set them back up again. It's still temporary and the desks are out from the wall a bit since I want the paint to have time to dry well and adhere tightly before we have anything rubbing against it. Tomorrow evening I plan to go along the trim with a small art brush to touch up the places where the trim paint seeped under the tape. After that, it'll all be done. Yay!

IVF Update: Our Next Test - HSG

Thursday afternoon we're traveling to the Dr.'s office, or rather the hospital adjacent, for my wife to have a hysterosalpingogram, or HSG test. Basically, the doctor will inject a contrast dye into her uterus through her cervix and take some x-rays as it goes through her fallopian tubes. If everything is normal, we'll see a clean triangle-ish shape of her uterus, the lines of her tubes, and a couple wispy plumes of dye coming out of them into her abdominal cavity. It can reveal some things that can cause infertility, such as tubal blockages (not so much of an issue for IVF since we're bypassing the tubes altogether,) uterine polyps, adhesions, etc. She's already had a sonohysterogram (saline & ultrasound instead of dye and x-ray) which is said to be better for detecting polyps and fibroids and nothing was found, so we're not expecting those.

What we do next will hopefully be informed by the results of this test. To be honest, we're not sure what our next move will be if we find nothing wrong. At that point we'd be left with abnormal embryos or just dumb luck as the cause of the failures so far. I guess we would move ahead with the transfer of the two embryos we have frozen, if they survive the thawing. (Chances are at least one will, though.)

I'm kind of hoping something is found that can be easily fixed. We may be no better off, really, than we would be if nothing was found, but at least we'd be better off than we had been.

At this point we have to accept that the odds are against us. We have two frozen embryos, but also two failed IVF cycles with three and four embryos transferred respectively, and in a couple months' time we'll both be forty. I really hope this works. I think we can afford one more try after this, financially. Will we be able to put ourselves through it again emotionally. I think I can - I'm sad and frustrated, but also a bit psychologically numbed by it all. It's much harder for my wife, though, which is really the worst part of it for me, and I'm not sure she could handle another. Fortunately, a cycle with frozen embryos is much less involved and taxing for a woman since she doesn't have to go through the hyperstimulation and all it entails, so maybe that will be the break we need. Here's hoping.

For The Record

A few of you may have already heard. Our second IVF cycle failed. This time we didn't even see a chemical pregnancy, though we may have just been lucky to catch it the first cycle.

We're regrouping now. We still have two embryos frozen so we can try again at a lower cost than a full cycle, though there is a chance neither will survive being thawed. My inclination at this point is to let my wife's younger sister try carrying them, or at the very least have a more thorough examination of my wife, perhaps a scope of her uterus, to determine if there are any factors preventing implantation. If there are, and it's just something correctable, we can do something about it before we try again. If there's something that's not fixable, we'd pretty much be left with my sister in law as a carrier.

If that fails, we might consider IUI with donor sperm. I'm thinking since I do have some fair-enough sperm, though admittedly not much, I'd like to see if we could do IUIs with a mix of my sperm and that of a near-lookalike donor. At least then any child to come of it could be genetically mine.

For now, we're taking a little time off to get some distance from the disappointment so we can make good rational decisions to maximize our chances for a baby. It's not that difficult to take our minds off it at the moment, actually, since we both have bad colds. I'll be getting back to blogging about other things as well.

Post-Transfer IVF Update

We transferred four embryos Wednesday, all graded 3+. (Yes, that's actually them in the picture.) We talked to the embryologist afterward and he told us he tends to be a little tougher in his grading than the other embryologist who graded the three we transferred last time, and she probably would have given three of this batch's embryos a 4-. Last time we had a 4-, a 3+, and a 3, so we have more and somewhat better embryos transferred this time around. As it turns out, a tenth fertilized embryo was spotted, though it was less developed than the others. A late fertilization apparently.

It was kind of rough on my wife. She was rather bloated from all the fluid built up before and after the egg retrieval, and the ultrasound nurse had a very firm hand. She feels now like she may have a bit of bruising from it. It was the good nurse at the clinic this time (she was off the day of the transfer last time) so they were able to use the ultrasound to guide the transfer and verify the placement. Last time they had to resort to dead reckoning based on the measurement taken in the mock transfer.

After a rest in the bed and an hour-long talk with the embryologist that my wife said reminded her of being in college (she was a biology major) we headed home. The next day, after doing one or two essential things at Secret Headquarters to get the rest of us started, she headed home to the recliner for the day.

I called the clinic Friday to check on the progress of the other embryos. They said one was in a pre-blastocyst stage and could be ready to freeze Saturday. The others were still in the multi-cellular stage and had a bit to go before being ready. Hopefully more than one will make it to freezing. There's always a chance an embryo won't survive the freeze and thaw cycle so you want more than one to help ensure there's something to transfer if you're working with frozen. We'll call again Saturday or Monday, I guess, and find out what happened.

Meanwhile, the embryos we transferred should be reaching blastocyst stage and hatching from their zona (the jelly-like shell human eggs have) about now. It'll be another week or two before we know if we had one or more implant. Part of me is hoping for twins, but that would most certainly make for a rough pregnancy. So I guess I'm hoping for an unusually smooth twin pregnancy. I'll readily settle for a single, though.

Wish us luck!

Nine Eggs Fertilized

We went in for the egg retrieval and sperm collection yesterday and just got the fertilization report this morning: Nine fertilized out of an attempted 18. If I recall correctly, last time we had five out of about a dozen, so we're doing better.

The retrieval and collection went about like last time, except for being cold and rainy and my wife's recovery from the anesthesia taking a bit longer. They used a bit more this time because, and we just learned this Sunday, she was moving around a bit during the procedure last time. After she came out of it she was fine except for her blood pressure being a bit low. They monitored her for a while to make sure it was at least stable and finally let us go around 1PM after a call to our doctor for approval. The procedure had been around 9:30.

The sperm collection went a bit better than the first time, or at least the scrub-up before was much less messy. I left a bit of water on the floor the first time. I also don't recall being instructed to scrub to the elbows last time. Hmmm. It didn't seem to hurt things that I didn't then. The collection was in the same room as last time. (Did I ever post the pictures I took of te decor? I'll check and edit them into this post tonight if not.) They had some of the same magazines and some new ones. I went with the new ones, settling on a recent Penthouse. Black Tail also gets credit for an assist.

After they released us we drove to a nearby mall and ate at Panera. We both had some hot soup. It was good to get some food in our stomachs. I hadn't had anything but a glass of orange juice all day, and my wife hadn't had anything at all since the night before. (Though they did give her a few crackers and some ginger ale after the procedure.)

We had been planning for me to do some painting in the house, finally finishing a room where access to one end is blocked by our computer desks, and all the junk that naturally accumulates around them. With the long recovery and heavy post-Thanksgiving Sunday traffic, though, we didn't get home until after 4:30 so I didn't get much more done than mostly cleaning off my desk. I'll do some more tonight, but save the computer removal for last.

The embryo transfer will be Wednesday. We're still waiting for the time. They're supposed to call us tomorrow once they know which couples will be doing what that day. Hopefully we'll have enough develop well to leave us some to freeze. If they all do well I'm inclined to put back four to maximize our chances this time. Embryos don't always survive the freeze and thaw process, so having the other five frozen should give us enough for another try or two if we need it, or want another child later. It should be significantly less expensive and uncomfortable to do another cycle with frozen embryos.

Things can still go wrong, but so far it's better than last time and we've corrected what problems we can that we identified from the first try. I think our chances are good.