Embryo Update

It's unbelievable. All of our embryos survived to three days when they take them out of the incubator. Twenty-one were of good enough quality to freeze. 7 were put into a culture to see if they would continue to develop and then could be frozen and four were taken out to grow to blast. I had been given the impression that the doctor would consult with us today about the status of the embryos before anything was done but it was more of a report from the nurse. We would have preferred to have more taken out to go to blast since we have plenty to work with. Our nurse is checking to see if we the others have already been frozen or if we could take another one out.

On average you lose about 50% of embryos during the blast process and we really want to have two good embryos to transfer to the surrogate on this cycle. With four out it is an 80% chance. We want to up that if we can. Fresh invitro cycles have a higher sucess rate than frozen although frozen can still work very well.

I'm a nervous wreck waiting for Wednesday and I'm sure at each step it will be the same. How do people go through this 6, 7 times or more? You would be shocked how many people mortgage their entire lives and just can't stop trying. The emotional toll is so huge with each cycle I don't know how they can keep facing it. Boy, that biological urge is unbelievable.

I'm trying very unsuccesfully to not think ahead and just trying to stay busy and sane. For me, the two most important things I will ever do in my life are marry Tom and have children. That is a lot of pressure on this process since it is our best shot at having a baby for so many reasons. We are so grateful for everyones good wishes and prayers in our behalf right now.