the fun continues

All lowercase......nuf said

I'm in NC this week. My brother and his family rented a house here and he asked me too. It's so nice to get away, but it's also hard to get away with the limbo of IVF. I've been on the phone with my drs office countless times trying to coordinate what we should do for our next cycle. One person tells me it's not a problem, the next says "well you're not in town so I'm not sure this is going to work out". Frick people! I need to have a life! I can't just sit at home and wait to NOT be pregnant!

So, here I am. I spoke with the dr on Tuesday. There was a suggestion a few months ago about a new "idea" that doing a D&C could "reboot" your system and make your IVF more successful. Well, I've not been able to find anything out there (aka on the internet) indicating this is true. I've actually found lots of notes saying that the opposite might be true and the risks involved in doing a D&C. Honestly though, it's more of an emotional decision to do that procedure for me. It's not something I ever wanted to do once, but had to....much less CHOOSE to do!

After talking it over with my doctor, he didn't have any concrete evidence that this would help me....so we nixed the idea. I suggested another course of action (yeah I know, shouldn't the doctor be doing that?) and he was all for it. I suggested a doing a fresh cycle, letting all the embryos get to blastocyst stage (120 cells) and doing a co-culture biopsy. OK, in non-ivfer terms here is what that means. Instead of waiting 3 days and seeing if the embryos get to 6 or 8 cells, you wait 5-6 days and see how many make it to blastocysts. Blastocysts are much more likely to implant...but at my age, it's a risk. The other risk is that embryos do much better in the womb than they do in a petri dish. That's where the co-cultured biopsy comes in. In the cycle before my ivf cycle (which is what I'm working on now) they will do a biopsy and take some of my lining. They will freeze this, then put it in with my embryos next cycle to help them grow.

Studies have shown this to be very helpful, but it is still considered experimental. Still, it's much less experimental than a pointless D&C.

So, that's the plan. We're taking a chance that none will make it to blastocyst...but both D and I feel like we need to change it up. What we've been doing feels too much like a shot in the dark and we need to increase the odds. Cross your fingers! Away we go....again!