Friday, November 14, 2008

Another Chance!

After my bout of depression over our lousy mature egg ratio, I just couldn't shake the pit in my stomach, and knew I needed to do something. So I listened to that nagging inner voice!

One of the great things about joining fertility boards is that you pick up a lot of valuable information along the way. And I remembered that a couple of girls, who had bad maturity/fertilization rates, actually grew their immature eggs out in the CCRM lab for another day to see if any turned mature. I'm not sure how many labs are capable of doing this, but I know CCRM has done it for a couple ladies. So I got on the phone and made the call to ask our embryologist if our eggs had been thrown away yet, and if not, could we please try to grow them out for an extra day.

He proceeded to tell me that they usually only do this is cases where the first attempt at fertilization is really really low, sort of as a back-up -- and reminded me that these eggs are usually not the greatest and mostly lead to poor embryos -- but that it is possible that they would turn into strong viable embryos, and that if we really wanted, he would do Day-2 ICSI on any of our eggs that become mature this afteroon! We ended up with 5 additional eggs that were mature. He agreed to ICSI them and let us know if any more make it. So it's possible that we will have a few additional embryos tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

I am SOOO happy that I listened to my inner voice, yet again, and made that call.

It just goes to show you that you can never let those nagging inner voices slide. If I hadn't have called, we wouldn't have this extra chance. And we are both so thankful that we do!

After the call, we were feeling so much better and went out to enjoy the day in sunny (and snowy!) Colorado. We had a fabulous day at the GARDEN OF THE GODS, and offered up a prayer to those Gods, if they were listening, to help our embryos grow nice and strong!




5 comments:

Not Your Aunt B said...

Wow! I never even knew they could do that! Always listen to your inner voice. Sending you and your 16 embies good thoughts and prayers.

Anonymous said...

That is great!! Even with the 11 you have a GREAT number. I have never, ever had more than 6 embryos (no more than 8 eggs, grrr) for 7 IVFs, so I think you are looking good.

GOOD LUCK from California!!

DAVs said...

Yeah they did that with three of my immature eggs, too. Only one fertilized. Hoping all of yours do!

Retro Girl said...

They did this with 4 of my eggs at CCRM. 3 of the 4 fertilized , and on my day 3 transfer, they told me that those 3 that fertilized late didn't look so great. You know what? 2 of those 3 were the ones that made it into nice looking blasts that await us in Denver...none of the original made it to freeze. So, great job on the follow up and best wishes on the outcome!

Anonymous said...

Oh Lisa and Retro Girl, thanks for this good information! I had never heard of that! I will request it from now on.

I'm up early on Saturday, Lisa, wishing you and DH well today.

Annie in Seattle

PS If you are into movies, the new James Bond movie is fun and will take your mind off things for 2 hours. :)