Positive Vs Negative (Take II)

We waited up until about 2am last night hoping that we would get the email we had been waiting for before we went to bed. Instead the email came at 3:30am and Frankie and I were instantly awake at the sound of my phone going off. I set the ring tone to the “good news” jingle in the hopes that it would give the universe a cue. The universe did not disappoint. The email read:

“Congratulations! Your pregnancy test is positive!!

We will retest in one week.”

It was the best wakeup call we could hope for. We looked at the attached report and the serum HCG was 287.80. We couldn’t be happier. Up until this point, we’ve been chanting: “stick little embryo, stick!”, now our cheers turn to “grow little embryo, grow”.

We learned after our last attempt that managing our expectations is paramount. We’ve been here before, and things ended all too painfully. So, one week down, and just a few short weeks until we hear that little heart beating. Once that’s confirmed, we’ll be popping out the champagne.

Our fingers are optimistically crossed. 

Two Guys Vs Ten Days (Take II)

Well, here we are again. The ten day wait.

Last night was day 5 / embryo transfer and right now we’re feeling a mix of excitement, anxiety and unfortunately, slight disappointment. This time around, there were ten eggs fertilized…out of those, 5 made it to day 3…and out of those only 2 good embryos and 1 with a vacuole were left on day 5. We were really hoping for a better outcome this time with the fertilization process, but it just wasn’t to be. 

But, we’re of course also very excited. We're sending out lots of positive energy to the universe, and we all know it only takes one good embryo to make a baby. The surrogate had a great lining, and it sounds like the transfer went smoothly. They transferred 2 embryos; one good and one with the vacuole. And, the other will be frozen, so at least we have a bit of a safety net. 

Now all we have to do is wait. We should hear whether or not we’re pregnant on the same day that we close on the house and get the keys. So hopefully it will be a great day. (If not…at least I’ll have pent up aggression to take out on the house that weekend when we break down some walls!)

Fingers crossed! 

Positive Vs Negative

The ten day wait is finally over. We prepared ourselves as much as possible for either result. Positive. Or Negative.

I said before that I’m always one to get the bad news out of the way first, so here it is…Unfortunately, Willow still has not learned to jump through a hoop of fire.

But the good news is that our surrogate had a positive pregnancy test!!!! So, I think it’s safe to say that makes up for it. ;0)

It’s still way too early to let our guard down and celebrate, as this result is only based on one HcG test and generally speaking things are so fragile right now. For all we know this could result in a chemical pregnancy; But just getting to this place is incredible. Even if things take a turn for the worse, it gives us confidence that we can get through this.

We have another test next week and hopefully we will see the HcG levels climb at the appropriate rate. Until then, Frankie and I will stay cautiously optimistic. Fingers crossed. 

Grow little embryo, grow! 

Two Guys Vs. Ten Days

Wow. I can’t believe we’re here. So the short of it is that we’re now in our ten day wait. I was expecting a two week wait, so ten days really doesn't seem that bad. But you can still imagine how slowly time seems to be moving. So, I've come up with fun ways to help time pass more quickly:

Teach Willow to jump through a hoop of fire.

Obsessively check my email to make sure I have the date of the pregnancy test correct.

Teach Willow to sleep on her head. (Already in progress)

Obsessively recheck my email just in case there was an update that didn't get forwarded to my phone, despite the fact that this has never happened in the past.

Teach Willow to ignore me when I call her name. (She’s all over that one)

Send myself a test email from one email account to another to make sure I’m getting my email in a timely manner.

Work on my wound care skills on the scratches Willow will give me while teaching her to jump through a hoop of fire.

And last but not least, ask my Thai family to send me daily emails from Thailand to ensure that the NSA isn’t blocking Thai emails to my account.

Yeah….it’s going to be a fun ten days.

Now, the long of it is a bit more involved. At the three day mark, Frankie had 7 good embryos, and I had 8. However, the morning of the transfer we were notified that unfortunately only 3 of Frankie’s embryos had made it to day five, and only one of them was of good quality. :-/  I still have 8, which is awesome but somewhat irrelevant given that our plans revolve around having a child genetically related to him. (He gets 6 weeks off at half pay for paternity leave, but it’s unclear if the pay or leave would apply to a child born that’s not genetically related to him.)

I suppose this is where the great 3 day vs 5 day transfer debate comes in to play. Did we save ourselves a lot of time and money by waiting until day 5 to make sure we only transferred strong, viable embryos? Or, did we needlessly loose embryos because they were in media longer than they needed to be? I really don’t know the answer, but I do know we knew that All IVF transferred on day 5, so it’s nothing we didn't sign up for. While it’s not an ideal outcome, with IVF you never know what will happen, so you just have to roll with the punches.

So, the embryo with a “good” rating, and a not so good embryo were transferred to our surrogate yesterday, and Frankie has one more not so good embryo frozen. Whether or not it would be worth trying again with that embryo remains to be seen. So, this might be our only shot with his material this time around. It certainly wouldn't put us out of the game just yet…but it would be a set-back.

However, we've decided not to worry about it just yet. What’s the point?! All it takes is one. And there’s as good a chance as any that one of those little blastocysts will be the one. And if not, well…. we’ll deal with it later.

And here are the little cell clusters we’re hoping will cling on to that lining:

So, for the next ten days we remain cautiously optimistic and hope for the best.  Fingers crossed.