A few things they don't tell you....

So we are knee deep in IVF right now.  Egg retrieval went well.  We got 14 eggs which was good.  8 were mature and could be fertilized.  From the 8 we got 5 that looked good and 1 that was questionable on day 1.  They decided to do the embryo transfer on day 3 and expected to put in 2-3 and freeze the others.  When we went in for the transfer I was excited and ready. 

The embryologist took us back to the room and explained that all 5 embryos were poor quality.  WHAT!!!  SHOCK....HORROR  WHAT?!?!?!  I just sat there looking at her, what do you say, how to do you ask questions you don't know you have?  I was stunned.  She tells us how the scale embryos and what has happened with ours, calling it fragmentation.  She continued that they had talk to my doctor, the other doctor in the practice and all three of them agree that putting all five back is our best chance.  She explains that there is not a good chance for any to continue to grow to the freezing stage so putting them back is the best thing..... SHOCK.... She asks if that is ok.....  I have had about a full 3 minutes to pull all this together in my head, I have no answer.  I look at hubby and he says, "Gotta do what we gotta do."  All five go back in.  And we all just have to hope that they (one, two, whatever) will take.  It isn't impossible.

Good Embryos

Our Five, not so good, ok, POOR quality Embryos

The doctor (not mine but the other) comes in and explains how we do the transfer and we do it.  He leaves but says if we have question to just get him from his office.  Lay here for 20 minutes he says.... ok.  He shuts the door and lose it.  I cry my eyes out as quietly as I can.  Hubby is there and holding my hand and trying to be a comfort.  Before the door leaves he gave us a picture of our embryos.... after he leaves I tell hubby the look sick, not right at all.  I was so angry.  I wasn't sad, not then I was pissed and for a few reasons that I didn't even understand at first.

1- they didn't tell us the grade of our embryos just that they were poor - I ended up calling back to get the fragmentation % of our Five... the answer was... "Your best was 50%, the rest were worse.
2 - no one told us about this and that it could happen
3 - my doctor wasn't there to give it to me straight and tell what was going on
4 - they called it being aggressive in treatment but I feel like it is a last minute attempt in a basketball game to through the ball into the net from the other end of the court.

Honestly there should be some book about the common things that can go wrong with IVF.  I spent probably an hour or two just trying to understand what "fragmentation" was and how bad a poor embryo is, and what it chances of making it are.  Maybe a call before we went in to say... hey look things aren't going great but we want to continue.  Come in and we can talk.  Something!  Anything!  I didn't want to lay there with no bottoms on crying about what may or may not happen.


So now it is a waiting game.  I could have 5 happy embryos or no happy embryos or some number between 0-5 in there.... we will see.  I hate waiting games.