Follow-up

We had our follow-up appointment with our RE today and he didn't tell us much that we didn't already know. He did validate our feelings of emotional chaos and he expressed a real motivation throughout the office for our 3rd round to be successful. It's always good to have a few more people cheering for us.

We went to the appointment prepared with our TYPED list of questions with space between them to take notes (that's Craig's job). I'm the question asker and he's the note taker. We have it down to a science.

These are the questions we asked and the responses our RE gave:

1. What more can you tell us about the genetic test results?
He answered this question before we asked actually. He said that just because our test came back "normal", it does not mean the baby was developing normally. In fact, he said that when it comes back normal that just means it was inconclusive. He believes in our case, it was a chromosomal problem. He explained that when the tissue is sent to the lab, they use cells and try to get them to grow so they can see how they are developing. In our case, the cells grew normally, but the abnormal cells may have been there but did not grow. I know, it's confusing... The important thing is that a miscarriage is very unlikely to happen again.

2. Is further testing of Nicole necessary to rule out other fertility problems?
No. He said further testing would be unlikely to reveal anything useful at this point. However, I will have a hysteroscopy before we do another series just to look for scar tissue and/or polyps from the D & C.

3. Is there a correlation between my progesterone level and miscarriage because I was no longer taking progesterone at time of miscarriage?
Doubtful because my levels were around 150 and a typical woman's progesterone level is 20 when they become pregnant.

4. Would you recommend a fresh or frozen cycle?
Due to the fact that we have "paid for" (still have to pay for meds and procedure where they inject sperm into egg each time) three rounds of IVF, it's probably best to do a fresh cycle. Fresh will give us the best chances for success. Frozen is always less successful because not all of the frozen embryos thaw well and make it to transfer day. Also, frozen embryos aren't the "best" embryos produced because the best ones were used for fresh transfers the last two times. Chances of success with a fresh round is 60% and frozen is 40%. ***A side note that our RE's office only freezes very good quality embryos, but they transfer the best of the best. Not all IVF offices do it that way.

5. Should we transfer 2 or 3 embryos?
It will depend on the embryo quality on transfer day, so we will have to decide later. He is okay with transferring up to 3, but will help us decide on transfer day.

6. Are our chances of success higher, lower or the same since the last round worked?
They are generally the same, however, when comparing a woman who has become pregnant through IVF and miscarried and a woman who's doing her first round of IVF, the chance of success is higher for the one who has been pregnant before.

7. What will change medicine wise for our next round?
Very little will change. However, he will have me take 2 extra shots of one of the meds because apparently my body reacts to one of the meds and he wants to counteract that a little bit.

Sooo, we left his office feeling pretty much the same about doing another round (we will be doing the November series)...we are emotionally drained. We are hoping for success, but know it may not work. We're still taking things one step at a time, so we're unsure about the "what ifs" and we're okay with not having all the answers. We don't want to look back and have any regrets, so we will do everything we can to make this round a success. If there is one thing I've learned about IVF, it's that it is WAY more emotionally difficult than I ever imagined. Before we began our first round, we were both most worried about the shots..would we be able to do them correctly considering how much we both hate needles? Before the 2nd round I was most concerned about all the trips to Spokane. Now it's definitely the question of whether we can emotionally handle it if this round doesn't work. All the fears of needles and travel have disappeared and we are left with the thought of how hard IVF is emotionally.

Finally...we have results!!

After 4 long weeks of waiting, we have the genetic test results from the tissue of the baby. The pregnancy was "normal" meaning there were no chromosome or genetic problems. This means that it is very unlikely to reoccur. All of this news, plus 5.5 weeks of processing the miscarriage has left us feeling pretty optimistic for the next round. Don't get me wrong, I still have tough days. It doesn't help that I work with primarily women between the ages of 25 and 32 who love to share their pregnancy and birthing stories on a regular basis. However, I think it has helped me have some amount of faith that we could be sharing our story someday.

We will meet with our RE on September 28 ( only 2 more weeks) and he will give us more specifics on the genetic testing, as well as discuss our next step.

More later...