Transfer day!

After I was convinced it wasn’t going to happen, I actually had an embryo transfer today!

So for those who I haven’t updated, I was in a lot of pain following my egg collection. It started as soreness and very quickly developed to constant achy/stabbing pains in my pelvic region. I couldn’t walk, and if I had to walk (say, to the bathroom for example) I was hunched over in excruciating pain, and that was with paracetamol and oxycodone tablets.

The pain spiked at day three. I thought I may die from the pain. I couldn’t do anything but lay in bed and either sleep (from the drugs), or read. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great miniature vacation! I was so lucky my mum was able to look after Scarlett so much.

So when it spiked, I called my clinic asking to speak to my doctor. When she rang me she was pretty sure I wouldn’t have the transfer, but the options she gave me weren’t sitting right with me:

1. We freeze all embryos and try again next month, but it means I won’t get to do the PGD testing like I wanted on the frozen embryos and I would also have to pay for a FET cycle on top of my fresh IVF cycle.

2. We freeze the good embryos and grow the bad ones to see what happens, perhaps we freeze them if suitable, or we throw them out. Essentially, same issues as above.

3. We don’t freeze any at the moment, but we grow them to day 5 WITHOUT doing a transfer. The problem with this option is that sometimes there are blastocysts that make it to day 5, and even though they would be happy to transfer them, they won’t freeze them due to quality issues or whatnot. So there is a possibility that I would be discarding potential embryos without giving them a chance. Since you can’t guarantee that you’re going to get ANY good quality blastocysts, this was a real possibility.

4. We do a transfer, biopsy (PGD test) any other blastocysts that make it to day 5 and hope to hell its not OHSS because it could become doubly worse and threaten everything. 

I had no idea what to do. Ideally, I wanted to do a transfer, but not at the risk of my health. I already have a daughter and right now, she is my main priority, so if I made myself really sick to the point where I couldn’t look after her, that wouldn’t be a good option.

But then I didn’t want to just waste them. It sounds terrible, but I paid A LOT of money for this, and all I saw was the money dwindling down the toilet.

I was pretty convinced that would be the route I would have to take though. I have no money left to pay for an FET right now. I would have to wait at least 1-2 months before I could transfer anything. Which sucks! Just delaying everything more and more.

However, on Friday I woke up with minimal pain! I had been eating a diet of high protein and isotonic drinks, plus a few salty foods, so perhaps that helped, but literally nearly all the pain was gone.

I took paracetamol in the afternoon where it started to get a bit sore again, but otherwise, I was fine.

So I called the clinic and told them the transfer is on!

This morning I woke up a little sorer than yesterday, but nothing dramatic. You know what is the worst thing today? I have this like… cramping butt hole. I know, TMI and totally weird. But it’s like my butt hole is really sore. I’m not constipated, so it can’t be that. And when I’m on the toilet to do number 2’s it’s fine, then it suddenly hurts and it feels like my organs are all going to rush on out of my body. Gross, but a legitimate problem that I’m going through.  

So, i went in this morning and was literally the only one in there. It was so freaky to see the clinic so bare. I walked in and immediately spoke to the embryologist. He told me that he had looked at my embryos this morning and he had two blastocysts to show me!

Both were starting to hatch, one was a 5AB and the other was a 5BB.

It’s déjàvu. Scarlett was a 5AB embryo, and you know that other blast that I got from her cycle? The one I just miscarried? It was a 5BB. Crazy!

At this point 3 of the others don’t look like they are going to catch up. The 4th one looks like it’s slowing growth so also likely won’t get there. But there is still one more that could catch up by the time it’s grown to day 7. Who knows. 

So anyway, he asks me what I want to do. He asks if I would prefer to biopsy them both and freeze them, or transfer one and biopsy the other.

Of course, TRANSFER THE 5AB please!!!

Everything gets set up and my doctor eventually arrived. She wanted to ultrasound me before she agreed to a transfer as she wanted to know what was going on internally.

So… yeah, it turns out I was completely justified in my pain.

My ovaries are the size of small footballs. You know the kiddie ones they make? The small versions of the big ones. This kind of football for my friends around the world 🏈.

One measured just over 20cm long and 15cm wide. The other was 17cm long and 16cm wide. Obviously these measurements were at their ‘widest’ since ovaries aren’t perfect circles.

They have also migrated to the front of my abdomen, one in front of my uterus and the other right ontop of that.

She said that they are both very swollen and they will go down in size, but yes, it seems I was overstimulated.

She didn’t see any fluid anywhere else though so yay! The transfer was allowed to be done.

So here’s my little babe. I already think it’s a girl. Is that bad? I guess I only have a 50% chance of being wrong 😄

Now we just need her to stick (im going to call her ‘her’ by the way, until a gender test can prove me wrong 😄). I cleansed all my crystals tonight and they are sitting in the moonlight right now. I’ve got my visualisations happening and my air purifier going. 

I’m feeling good. I really want this to work. And something that I learnt from my miscarriage is that it’s either going to happen, or it’s not going to happen. So while I’m unsure, I’m going to be excited. I’m going to plan and do crazy things like work out her due date and think about names (October 9th, by the way 😅).

Here’s to a sticky embryo!