The Result Of Our Day 5 Blastocyst Transfer

 

It’s been a while since I posted. My mind has been elsewhere. My life pulled in different directions all at once. In November, after my return from Texas, we took out another egg.

It failed to mature.

My lining was over 10 mm, which is very good. We decided to go ahead and transfer our second best Day 5 blastocyst. Let the cards fall where they may. This would be my first Day 5 embryo transfer and I had no idea what to expect.

According to our clinic’s own data, our Grade 3 Day 5 embryo had a 60 % chance of becoming a pregnancy. Should be great odds, right? Despite being an optimist towards life, I’ve become a pessimist towards my own fertility. I hardly felt confident.

Reading other blogs, countless infertility blogs, where pristine day 5 embryos failed to implant, did not boost my confidence.

The transfer proceeded smoothly. The embryo was flash-thawed (how they do it in Japan). They showed me a picture. Three hours later they transferred it back in me. When I saw it on the video screen it had changed dramatically in those three hours. The embryos looked completely different. It was definitely a lively one.

I agreed to let them remove the embryo from its shell, to help increase the odds. (There is a lot of debate if that does help or not).

Immediately after transfer I felt my insides reacting. There was a constant tugging on my left and it felt like my uterus was being pinched all over, but mostly on the left side. I consulted Dr. DuckDuckGo (better search results than Dr. Google) for signs of hope.

At DPT 5, I felt convinced we had failed. Our dreaded two week wait was an eight day wait since we used a Day 5 Embryo. I noticed one strange thing, my feet were freezing. That was… odd.

On DPT 6 I gave into temptation and used one of our leftover pregnancy tests. I knew DPT 6 is way early. Most don’t get positives until 8 or later. I used it not expecting much. I expected a negative, what I got was a very, very faint positive.

My heart leapt.

I called my husband in, holding it up to the light and demanding he tell if he could see the line. Was I hallucinating? Was it really there? At DPT 6?!

After reading the instructions on the box, he confirmed it was a POSITIVE.

What else could we do but rush to the pharmacy and buy an excessive number of pregnancy tests? I mean, we’re only human. We had to try other brands to be sure. I had never seen a positive on a pregnancy test before. Never.

These were the results of DPT 6 and 7 and 8 in both the morning and evening. You can see the faint line getting stronger.

They were faint lines, but they were there. The top was the first I took and the bottom of the picture is the last.

I was supposed to go on DPT 8 for a blood check. The clinic let me change that to DPT 7. When I told the nurse about the results of the pregnancy tests, she at first started to console me, believing I had said they were all negative. When I explained that they were positive, she lit up and smiled from ear to ear.

“Positive? Then you have a good chance,” she said before taking away the vial of my blood sample.

Thirty minutes later they buzzed me into the doctor’s office. It’s funny, they were almost more excited than me. When results are good, they summon you in ASAP. When they’re bad, you’re usually last. Not sure why.

The doctor tried to be stone-faced, yet a smile was sneaking through. The nurse didn’t even hide it. They KNEW.

“Congratulations. You are pregnant,” he said. “HCG is 65. Very, very good.”

We even shook hands.

And it felt like I had entered a dream, one that could end at any moment.

I called my husband right away and told him. I could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke. When I got home, I skyped my dad and told him.

I know things might not work out. I know it’s still early on a long journey. But I don’t want to miss this moment out of fear of the outcome. For now, it DID work. It IS working. We are living every moment of this dream while we can, for as long as we can.

Just like that famous scene in Groundhog Day, where Phil Conners says, “No matter what happens tomorrow, I am happy now.”

This is our moment. No matter what the future brings, good or bad, we are happy NOW.

Let’s hope for a bright tomorrow and the end of a very long day.