IVF Series: 11

6 days after the retrieval we received a call that we have 9 successful embryos! I feel beyond blessed that that many of them made it! I was really hoping for 8 going into genetic testing so to have 9 it’s just amazing! These made it to the blastocyst stage and are complete and ready to be frozen! As I was so very excited to hear about this, when I was trying to confirm next steps into the genetic testing, there was a mix up. All along, I made it known that we wanted genetic testing done. I wanted this done to possibly rule out any genetic flaws that would lead to a miscarriage. Having Endometriosis, I have a higher risk of having a miscarriage anyways, so to possibly weed out other issues was crucial. For some reason, through a lack of customer service error (to put it nicely) they had in my file that “the couple was unsure” about genetic testing. It was never confirmed with us either way so they just assumed no. So, my embryos were frozen without being tested! Um what? That's kind of a big oops. I am absolutely furious. We spend thousands of dollars on this life changing, life altering, grueling process, so I would only expect the best. I feel incredibly discouraged and have fears of spending all this money on a miscarriage. The doctor had originally said that because of my age and quality of eggs, it isn’t necessary to even do the genetic testing. However, that was a little extra thing that we wanted to do. Also, Brock was thinking that he wanted to pick the gender of the next child. Obviously that option is out now too. You could say that in a normal pregnancy you don’t get the luxury of choosing a gender, or choosing to lessen your chances of a miscarriage, however, this was never a normal pregnancy. That was one thing I had to quickly get over and understand that it was different and couldn’t be compared to a normal pregnancy. This entire fertility journey has been extremely painful with many ups and downs so to have this one special perk, just one positive thing was so encouraging. But that was taken away. Or so I thought. The next day we met with the doctor to see what our options and next steps are. He told us that we have at least two embryos that are a grade A++ and he is extremely confident in the success of those. The other embryos are graded in the B and C range. He offered us a suggestion that we could go ahead with one of the A++ embryos and move onto the transfer phase (without the testing). As for the other embryos, if we wanted to have them genetic tested, they could thaw them and have a biopsy done. There isn’t a time frame on having those tested which was extremely relieving to hear. I am just so happy that through this difficult mix up we still are able to have a positive outcome! So going forward here is the plan. We will transfer ONE grade A++ embryo and hopefully have a successful pregnancy. Then, when we are starting to think about having more children, we will have the other ones tested so that going into the second one, if we want to choose a gender we can, and that way we can get some further information on the B and C grade embryos as well. I know this whole process has been a ton of overwhelming information and hard to understand at times. Trust me, I am still learning new things everyday with it too. But thank you for being a part of this journey with me and willing to learn. Oh, and as for the huge lack of customer service that we have received through this, don't worry....that was also addressed.

And for now,

Xoxo