Wednesday, July 17, 2013

One third of the way there!

Last I wrote, there were 14 eggs donated. That turned into 8 fertilized eggs on the day after donation. Then, on day three, I was told I had 7 embryos, one had stopped growing. They said they would call me on day 5 to let me know how many survived that far. Day 5 was yesterday and I received a phone call saying that they froze 4 "beautiful, perfect embryos" and were letting the others grow one more day. They said that they were where they should be but not quite as good as the 4 they had already frozen but that things could change over night and if they had made it to "blast" then they would freeze them too. The phone call I received this morning was to tell me that two of them had continued to grow and they made it to blast and were able to be frozen.

So, as of today, we have 6 "snow babies" just waiting for an oven!

Now, all we have to do is get all the legal stuff out of the way and plan for transfer. The goal is to get everything ready to do transfer for early December so if and when it all works, baby would arrive in August.

We are a third of the way there, however, I am not completely breathing just yet, but at least we have embryos......

Until next time, thanks for the prayers and support.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

A few hurdles down, a few more to go....

There is SO much to share since my last post!

Lest's see, as of my last post, I no longer had a surrogate and after that post, I was told my egg donor was no good. So after a short bout of depression, we searched again and decided on another donor and asked the other two ladies who expressed interest in helping. They were both still interested but one is currently pregnant and as it is her first pregnancy, she didn't know what to expect and would let us know after delivery if it is actually something she thought she could do again and for someone else. Completely understandable! She is a great friend for even being willing to do such a thing, not knowing what it really entails.
The second woman has had three children and according to her they were easy pregnancies and she would have no problem doing it again. There were just a couple hurdles to jump through first. She is out of state and she in her early 40's. The doctor wanted her to go through a stress test and a blood test before saying that she was a good candidate. She willingly did both and has been approved! YIPEE! She is an amazing woman who also happens to be a member of my husband's family. I really married into a wonderful family and I am blessed! I hear horror stories from other women who just hate their spouses family and I feel so very lucky to know and love every member of Dan's family!
So, with a new donor and a surrogate, the next step was to get the donor the medication she needed to grow the eggs she would be donating and to contact the lawyer to make a contract between us and the surrogate. The donor started her cycle of medication a couple of weeks ago and today was the egg retrieval.
As you all may remember, the most eggs that were ever retrieved from my cycles were 6 and those resulted in only 2 embryos. We have been hoping and praying for more than that and just enough if that makes sense.
Well, today the donor gave us 14 eggs!!!!! I am amazed and so excited about this. If her eggs fertilize and grow like mine did (worse case scenario), I would expect to have 7 embryos to freeze. If they are way better than mine, we will have more. They will call me tomorrow to let me know how many fertilized. Then they have to grow them for 5 days and let us know how many they will be freezing. Once they are safely grown and frozen, we can finalize the legal stuff and prepare the surrogate for transfer.
We have a couple hurdles more to jump before transfer day and the dreaded two week wait, but we are getting closer!
As always, thank you all for your continued prayers and support!