I had the chance to ask a bunch of questions at my hysteroscopy pre-op appointment yesterday and finally have a bit of a better idea of how this whole IVF process is going to go.

1 or 2 Embryos

We still can’t decide if we should transfer 1 or 2 embryos! 1 of the RE’s said 2 and he said it in a “Why would you even consider doing only 1?!” kind of way. 2 of the other RE’s (including MINE) said they would only transfer one since we’ll be transferring a day 5 blastocyst that’s had PGS testing. Ultimately though, it is up to us. Although my RE recommends only transferring 1 embryo he is fine with whatever choice we make. He said something along the lines of, “You’re a Labor and Delivery nurse. You know the risks. You see women with twins come in and deliver. You see premature twins go to the NICU. You know the risks so now you have to decide what risks you’re willing to take.” Unfortunately I’ve known that all along and it’s a really hard decision to make! I’m not even a tiny bit afraid of having twins. 2 babies at once does not scare me. Twins are adorable and I KNOW it would be very difficult but I also think it’d be a lot of fun! It’s also kind of a let’s get 2 for the price of 1 scenario. The reality is IVF is an extremely expensive and invasive/involved process and it seems logical to pay for 1 and get 2. For all of those reasons D and I really want to do 2. I’ve seen plenty of twins deliver vaginally and at term. I’ve also seen plenty of twins deliver pre-term. I’ve seen plenty of twins deliver via C-section. It’s the pre-term, C-section scenario that I do not want! I want a normal, natural full term vaginal delivery and everything that goes with it. I also really, really want to transfer 2 embryos and if I had to make the choice today I’m pretty sure I’d choose 2! Luckily we still have a while to think on this one, but I don’t know how we’re going to make the choice.

Fresh or Frozen Transfer

We’ve also been debating whether or not to do a fresh or frozen embryo transfer. D and I really want to do a fresh transfer because we’ll be able to do it shortly after the egg retrieval (early February). Fresh transfers are also about $1800 cheaper! The longer wait feels like a MUCH bigger deal than the added expense! If we do a frozen transfer we won’t be able to do it until the end of March/beginning of April. Unfortunately, dang near everything I have read leans toward frozen AND all 3 of the docs I’ve asked have recommended frozen too! Again, they’ll go with whatever option we choose but there are a lot of scenarios in which they’d cancel a fresh transfer due to the risk of hyper-stimulation and a less than optimal pregnancy environment. If everything isn’t looking perfect they wouldn’t want to move forward with a fresh transfer and my Dr. thinks it’s going to be very difficult to not over-stimulate me a little bit and thinks it’s highly likely that a fresh transfer would end up getting canceled but said we can definitely give it a go. On the other hand…If we go into it knowing we’re doing a frozen transfer we can stimulate a lot more aggressively for a better chance of getting lots of eggs. At this point we’re planning on doing a frozen transfer so we can just focus on mentally preparing for that.

The Timeline

Our baseline ultrasound and labs as well as an IVF class are on January 19th. We’ll stop the birth control and start the stimulation meds on/around January 23rd. We’re guessing I’ll stim for about 12 days and then the egg retrieval will be sometime around 6/7/8/9 February. Out little embryos will grow for 5 days at which point they will be blastocysts and they’ll pull several cells out of them to be tested. All of the embryos will be frozen on day 5 and we’ll begin preparing for a frozen transfer at the end of March and will likely transfer the embryo(s) in early April.

Goals

My doctor said he’d be happy if we get 15 mature eggs, 6 blastocysts to test, and 3-4 normal embryos to implant/save for future pregnancies.

Now I just need it to be January so we can get this ball rolling!