Our Quest For Another Baby...

This morning we had a sit down with our fertility doc to discuss the details of our upcoming round of embryo transfer set for late August. We had Stryder all set up with the iPad watching Bob The Builder (although his newest fave is Curious George). Man, we should have gotten a picture... he was so cute! And he did amazingly well for such a long appointment.

Dr. K first went over the details of our 5 frozen embryos... he started off by explaining the grading process. Each embryo's grade consists of 1 number and 2 letters. The combination of number and letters tells the embryologist how well the embryo was developing at the time of freezing. For example, one of our embryo's grade looks like this: 4CB. Out of the 5 Dr. K said 2 are "beautiful and have really good grades." The other 3 not so much... Dr. K explained that any time there is a C in the grading process it is his belief that they are not viable embryos. He went on to tell us that in his lab they don't even recommend freezing embryos that are graded with a C or below. Chris & I explained to Dr. K that we are committed to giving all 5 of our embryos every chance at life and therefore would like to use even the 3 he says aren't viable. That being said: we chose 1 "good" and 1 "bad" embryo to be transferred in this cycle.

In preparation for embryo transfer I had to have some blood work done last week, Dr. K also talked about those results with us. They tested for 3 specific hormone levels. 2 of the 3 came back normal but 1 was concerning. And even though this particular hormone level doesn't effect our attempts at embryo transfer, it is concerning for if we ever need/want to do IVF from square one again. This hormone is called AMH (I had to google it, I'd never heard of it before). It basically tells the quality and quantity of remaining eggs a female has... at least that's my non-medical explanation:o) For a woman my age Dr. K said he'd be looking for at least a 1.0, I am at 0.51. My understanding of what this means for us is that we should praise God for leading us to do IVF when we did several years ago as this change in my hormones is unchangeable, even with medication. The likelihood of me being able to produce good enough eggs for future IVF are slim. This probably also explains why it's so challenging for my body to conceive and hold on to pregnancies. Anyhow, just thought all that was interesting.

I have started taking my first of the meds in this early stage of embryo transfer. Our next appointment with Dr. K will be to go over the remaining medications/injections.

We are feeling anxious and excited, terrified and peaceful, scared and hopeful. Years ago when my cousin went through IVF she shared that if God wanted to bless her with a baby she had a 100% chance of it working, and if it wasn't a part of His plan she had a 0% chance of it working... this has really stuck with Chris & I over the years... we were reminded of this truth yet again today.

River Walk  in San Antonio

The Alamo