Things aren't looking good....

I could probably use the above title for 90% of my posts.

Last week, I found out that we actually had 17 embryos fertilized (apparently 1 more made it) and, of those, 13 were growing on target. Four were lagging and probably wouldn't make it. I was really happy with that report because by Day 3 the last cycle we did, we had 11 embryos growing on target and all 11 of those made it to blast. Of those, only 2 were competent and capable of creating a healthy pregnancy according to the CGH testing. So, of course, I got my hopes up that we might have 13 blasts which would give us a great shot at 2 normal ones, if not 1 or 2 more than that.

As usual, my optimism was short lived. I found out a few days later that only 7 embryos made it to blast to be frozen. Last time about half our embryos made it to blast by Day 5. This time they all took until Day 6. I suppose that, in and of itself, that's not necessarily a problem. One of my embryos that tested normal last time around was a Day 6 blast. However, I asked for the embryology report on the 7 embryos and things look even worse than I thought. One of the embryos was 10 cells on Day 3. Since it was dividing too quickly, the Dr. said it's likely to be abnormal. Two of the embryos weren't even expanded as of Day 6 and they should have been. One embryo has over 20 percent fragmentation which is not a good sign. So, the way I see it, I really only have 3 embryos that have any remote chance of passing the CGH testing as compared with 11 last time. Needless to say, things do not look promising.

I have a phone consult with Dr. S. today. I guess I'm looking for some kind of explanation of why this cycle went so poorly in comparison with the last one considering I was on the exact same protocol. I don't think I did anything different lifestyle-wise although, as you can imagine, I've been driving myself crazy trying to think of any possible little thing I might have done differently that ruined things.

I'm feeling so frustrated and scared.....scared that this really is never going to work no matter how long I persevere. This was my 6th fresh cycle. One was canceled right before the trigger ....a bad call by a Dr. who got worried about OHSS. So, I guess I could say it was my 5th fresh cycle in terms of not having success but my 6th if I'm looking at how many times I've gone through it and exposed myself to all the medications. On top of that, I've done 4 FET's. I may have already passed the point of excess. The thing is, the first clinic we went to didn't do well with my case so I feel that cycle really doesn't count. The 2nd clinic canceled my first cycle due to the OHSS fears. Then, the cycle after that, the Dr. put me on a ridiculously low dose of meds. It took me forever to stim. and I had far fewer eggs. The embryos we had seemed to be good quality but they usually do appear to be on the surface. Then, the next fresh cycle my meds. were upped some and I had a better response. The problem there is the Dr. opted to freeze 10 of my embryos on Day 2. I haven't used those yet. He left another 8 out to go to blast for the fresh transfer. On Day 5, we had 1 blast and 2 morulas and the rest were still growing. We transferred the 3 and, of the others, 2 became blasts by Day 6 and were frozen. So, I have 12 embryos frozen at that clinic. The reason why I didn't do those transfers before moving onto another clinic was because the Dr. there refused to let me use viagra to treat my lining. I didn't feel comfortable transferring with a lining of only 7. At the moment, it looks like the plan is to get a surrogate to transfer those embryos to. My fifth fresh cycle and first in Las Vegas went really well; the best ever. I finally found like maybe I found the solution. And, even though 2 out of 11 blasts being normal (only 18%) was far below what one would expect even at my age, I was happy with that because I suspected it was the first time we've ever had normal embryos to transfer. I did the fresh transfer a few months later and it worked. I thought maybe my dream was finally coming true. Wrong again. Transferring the normal embryos resulted in a missed miscarriage at 8.5 weeks leaving me uncertain if it's me or the embryos that are the problem. Maybe neither was the issue and it was just a case of bad luck with the embryo implanting in too high a location and lack of blood supply. The thing is we'll never know. At the very least, I had hoped to get an answer from the last cycle regarding why this wasn't working and I don't feel like I have it.