Donor egg IVF week in Finland

My donor egg IVF “vacation” to Tampere, Finland finally came and went and everything went much better than we expected! Partly, because I have a hard time believing good things can happen after the last couple of years and because we thought our clinic was only thawing and fertilizing a total of 6 eggs from our donor. They ended up doing 10. So imagine our surprise when the next day they tell us that 9 out of 10 fertilized correctly?!

It turns out that our donor had 10 eggs in a batch, so they went ahead and gave us all of them to give us a better shot. Which is very nice of them! Usually about 70-80% fertilize, so getting 9 is an excellent result.

One thing that makes IVF so stressful is the attrition that occurs during the 5 day process. This means that when you start with a certain number of eggs on fertilization day, each step of the process causes you to lose some, lose more, and then you have a small number of blastocysts at the end. So it works like this:

Day 0: Eggs are fertilized with a sperm sample.

Day 1: They tell you how many fertilized normally.

Day 2: Embryos begin to divide.

(This is the point where, last time, they transferred one into my uterus. Usually they do this on Day 5, but since we only had 2 eggs, they decided to try early with one and see what happens. I got pregnant, but miscarried).

Day 3: They gave us an update that all 9 embryos were still dividing and looking good. Good news, but starting Day 3 is when you lose, on average, 30-50% of the embryos.

Day 4: All 9 still going strong! They tested my progesterone levels, which were normal.

Day 5: They told us that 5 had become blastocysts (which means they are ready!) and 4 were a bit behind, but will continue to be observed. This is also embryo transfer day! So they chose one of the blastocysts and transferred it into my uterus. More on that here.

Remember how I said in the last post that they wanted to cancel the transfer because my lining wasn’t optimal? Well, it caught up by transfer day, so we had nothing to worry about!

Day 6: We were told that 1 of the remaining 4 turned into a blastocyst, so now we have 6 blastocysts total (1 in my uterus and 5 frozen).

Whew! You can see what a week we’ve had. In one way those 5 days feel like a lifetime while you’re waiting to see how it all turns out. But in another way, it is kind of amazing that so much can happen with embryos in a lab in just 5 days.

So now I am officially what they call PUPO (Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise)! I will take a pregnancy test in approximately two weeks to see if it took. This time period is so stressful that it has a name, too: the Two Week Wait. But I will try my best to be ZEN!

One thing is all the meds! I’ve spent over a month preparing my body for this transfer. Since the beginning of July I take estrogen pills 2-3x/day and a morning and night progesterone suppository. Alexis had to give me a GnRH shot last night and we have to do a trigger shot on Sunday.

The main reason we moved to donor egg IVF is my MS attack that happened after IVF last year. IVF with your own eggs involves ovarian stimulation drugs, which are mostly avoided when using donor eggs. But GnRH was one I took, so it made me nervous. Alexis reassured me that my attack was likely the result of an immune response to the entire process, not just one drug, and now that I am being treated for MS, there is little chance of this happening again in the exact same way.

What’s more, we had a wonderful adventure in Finland. We explored Tampere and visited the capital city, Helsinki, which was a train ride away. A highlight was experiencing a true Finnish sauna, which involves sitting in a scorching hot room with rocks you pour water over and then jumping into the cold lake for a swim! We laid in the sun to dry off and repeat. We did this for hours; it felt so invigorating!

Just being with Alexis doing anything is my favorite thing. He is the best life partner I could ask for and we are also madly in love. Our resilience as a couple through all this continues to amaze me. That’s why I know that we will grow our family somehow, some way!

It’s so hard to have hope, but I think I’m actually there again. Come on little embryo, please attach and grow!