Monday, June 17, 2013
FET schedule
I have a FET schedule! I already started etrogen twice daily on 6/15. On 6/27 I go to estrogen thrice daily. On 6/28 I have my lining check and if everything looks good then I will start my progesterone shots. The transfer of my two little blasts is 7/3 - just in time for them to see their first fire works show from my uterus :)
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Freaking out
My previous post seemed very calm and collected but now I am freaking out. I was googling IVF, balanced translocation, and PGD and it really freaked me out. It seems the theoretical 50% unbalanced, 25% normal, 25% balanced ratio is purely theoretical and there can be a lot more abnormal than normal. I found a website where women posted their eggs retrieved, # fertilized, # PGD, # normal, # transferred, and result and the statistics did not look good. The sample size wasn't that large, probably 30 women, but it seemed that a lot ended up with no normal embryos, and although some did end up with 1 or 2, there were very few BFPs.
I know I am jumping ahead here and freaking myself out unnecessarily, since we don't know if K is a carrier or not... but I am really upset. I just want a baby. I'm trying to reassure myself that both his siblings with the translocation have children. I am just terrified of the number of miscarriages it took them to achieve those children. Also, they didn't have any female factor (or male factor in his sister's case) involved. It has taken us so long just to get pregnant the first time, I don't want to lose any more babies. Ugh. I feel at every step of this journey we keep getting bad news after bad news: I didn't ovulate, then I didn't ovulate on clomid, then K had low sperm counts, then K had 0 morphology and we needed to do IVF, then we got pregnant just to lose the baby, and now maybe we have a chromosomal factor on top of everything else.
I hope that our 2 frozen embryos are normal and that everything will work out ok. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we move forward with this FET.
I know I am jumping ahead here and freaking myself out unnecessarily, since we don't know if K is a carrier or not... but I am really upset. I just want a baby. I'm trying to reassure myself that both his siblings with the translocation have children. I am just terrified of the number of miscarriages it took them to achieve those children. Also, they didn't have any female factor (or male factor in his sister's case) involved. It has taken us so long just to get pregnant the first time, I don't want to lose any more babies. Ugh. I feel at every step of this journey we keep getting bad news after bad news: I didn't ovulate, then I didn't ovulate on clomid, then K had low sperm counts, then K had 0 morphology and we needed to do IVF, then we got pregnant just to lose the baby, and now maybe we have a chromosomal factor on top of everything else.
I hope that our 2 frozen embryos are normal and that everything will work out ok. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we move forward with this FET.
Unbalanced
No, this post is not about balancing life and infertility, which is a constant stuggle and a topic I could write several posts about (and am working on writing!), but rather genetics.
I think I have mentioned that my husband and I are not "out" about our infertility. However, after our miscarriage we looked to his family for support. I was talking to my sister-in-law last night, who has had several miscarriages in the past but now has 3 children, when she stated: "don't you know about the genetic mutation that runs in the family?" Why no, in fact I did not know.
It turns out K's older brother and one of his older sisters have been tested (after several miscarriages each) and are carriers of the same large balanced translocation. This can happen randomly, but considering they both have an identical translocation, it is likely genetic, which means one of K's parents is a carrier of the balanced translocation as well, which would mean K has a 50% chance of being a carrier.
The good and bad news is that the translocation is very large, so unbalanced embryos have genetics incompatible with life. K's sister-in-law shared that she has had 9 miscarriages and they all happened before 8 weeks (except in one of her early pregnacies where she learned at a 12 weeks ultrasound that she had a missed abortion and the embryo had stopped growing around 8 weeks.) It's unfortunate that the mutation causes miscarriages, but "good" in that the miscarriages occur early and since it is incompatible with life, it doesn't cause children to be born with serious health conditions or problems.
K's sister-in-law also shared that she and K's brother were patients at the same RE clinic we are patients at. They were going to do IVF, but had to wait 5 months due to scheduling, and concieved their second child with IUI + femara while waiting.
Overall, I am not sure what to think about all of this information. Our 2 blasts that we have left can't be tested since they are already frozen. I am planning on transferring them both in July (btw I got my period today on my own) and hoping for the best. However, now that I know about the translocation, I will be very hesitant to embrace the pregancy (if I get pregnant) till we get past 8 weeks. Moving forward with future IVFs we will have 2 options, we can test K for the translocation or we can do PGD on the embryos. We have the shared risk program with this round of IVF and I don't know if K being a carrier of the balanced translocation would exclude us (which would really, really suck if it did).
There is still a 50% chance K isn't a carrier of the translocation, but I am afraid he is given what happened to bean sprout. Bean sprout could have had a random genetic mutation by chance, but what happened with my pregnancy sounds a lot like what happened to K's sister-in-law with many of her miscarriages.
Other considerations: if K is a carrier of the balanced translocation 50% of his sperm will be unbalanced and create embryos incompatible with life, 25% will be completely normal and make normal balanced embryos, and 25% will have the balanced translocation resulting in embryos that are balanced (like K's brother and sister) but will be carriers of the translocation. Here is a picture:
If K is a carrier, in our cause all of the "unbalanced" would result in early miscarriages.
I'm trying to reassure myself that our IVF resulted in 3 good blasts. Even if K is a carrier only 50% of the embryos created with his sperm should result in unbalanced embryos. Thus, at least 1 of the embryos should be normal. However, we do have the confounder of ICSI. So I hope that the scientist who picked which sperm to inject into my eggs picked the right ones!
I think I have mentioned that my husband and I are not "out" about our infertility. However, after our miscarriage we looked to his family for support. I was talking to my sister-in-law last night, who has had several miscarriages in the past but now has 3 children, when she stated: "don't you know about the genetic mutation that runs in the family?" Why no, in fact I did not know.
It turns out K's older brother and one of his older sisters have been tested (after several miscarriages each) and are carriers of the same large balanced translocation. This can happen randomly, but considering they both have an identical translocation, it is likely genetic, which means one of K's parents is a carrier of the balanced translocation as well, which would mean K has a 50% chance of being a carrier.
The good and bad news is that the translocation is very large, so unbalanced embryos have genetics incompatible with life. K's sister-in-law shared that she has had 9 miscarriages and they all happened before 8 weeks (except in one of her early pregnacies where she learned at a 12 weeks ultrasound that she had a missed abortion and the embryo had stopped growing around 8 weeks.) It's unfortunate that the mutation causes miscarriages, but "good" in that the miscarriages occur early and since it is incompatible with life, it doesn't cause children to be born with serious health conditions or problems.
K's sister-in-law also shared that she and K's brother were patients at the same RE clinic we are patients at. They were going to do IVF, but had to wait 5 months due to scheduling, and concieved their second child with IUI + femara while waiting.
Overall, I am not sure what to think about all of this information. Our 2 blasts that we have left can't be tested since they are already frozen. I am planning on transferring them both in July (btw I got my period today on my own) and hoping for the best. However, now that I know about the translocation, I will be very hesitant to embrace the pregancy (if I get pregnant) till we get past 8 weeks. Moving forward with future IVFs we will have 2 options, we can test K for the translocation or we can do PGD on the embryos. We have the shared risk program with this round of IVF and I don't know if K being a carrier of the balanced translocation would exclude us (which would really, really suck if it did).
There is still a 50% chance K isn't a carrier of the translocation, but I am afraid he is given what happened to bean sprout. Bean sprout could have had a random genetic mutation by chance, but what happened with my pregnancy sounds a lot like what happened to K's sister-in-law with many of her miscarriages.
Other considerations: if K is a carrier of the balanced translocation 50% of his sperm will be unbalanced and create embryos incompatible with life, 25% will be completely normal and make normal balanced embryos, and 25% will have the balanced translocation resulting in embryos that are balanced (like K's brother and sister) but will be carriers of the translocation. Here is a picture:
If K is a carrier, in our cause all of the "unbalanced" would result in early miscarriages.
I'm trying to reassure myself that our IVF resulted in 3 good blasts. Even if K is a carrier only 50% of the embryos created with his sperm should result in unbalanced embryos. Thus, at least 1 of the embryos should be normal. However, we do have the confounder of ICSI. So I hope that the scientist who picked which sperm to inject into my eggs picked the right ones!
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Super Sweet
I'm excited to announce that I have been nominated for my very first blogging award :) Aislinn over at Baby Makin' nominated me. Thank you Aislinn! I love reading your blog.
And to all my other readers - 11 now! :) I love the support I get from you ladies. Most days I come home from work and take a break by catching up on your blogs. Reading about your journeys and struggles really inspires me, and I am rooting for you every step of the way. I feel that you are the only friends I have who really understand what I am going through. So thank you to all of you!
Super Sweet Questions:
1. Cookies or cake? For my birthday I always have Dairy Queen icecream cake. It is my favorite. But K makes some awesome chocolate chip coconut cookies that I love. If I eat cookies I perfer them in either dough form or straight out of the oven.
2. Chocolate or vanilla? Dark chocolate :) I eat way too much of Brook.side's dark chocolate covered pomegranate.
3. Favorite sweet treat? This is a tough one. At the top of my list are: under-cooked brownies (that are still gooey), oreo balls (ground oreo mixed with cream cheese covered in almond bark, and I don't even like oreos), better-than-sex cake, and butterfinger icecream.
4. When do you crave sweet things the most? After lunch and dinner. Once I have something savory I always have room for something sweet.
5. Sweet nickname? My father-in-law calls me his "Dee-dle daughter," which I think is the sweetest thing ever :)
And to all my other readers - 11 now! :) I love the support I get from you ladies. Most days I come home from work and take a break by catching up on your blogs. Reading about your journeys and struggles really inspires me, and I am rooting for you every step of the way. I feel that you are the only friends I have who really understand what I am going through. So thank you to all of you!
Super Sweet Questions:
1. Cookies or cake? For my birthday I always have Dairy Queen icecream cake. It is my favorite. But K makes some awesome chocolate chip coconut cookies that I love. If I eat cookies I perfer them in either dough form or straight out of the oven.
2. Chocolate or vanilla? Dark chocolate :) I eat way too much of Brook.side's dark chocolate covered pomegranate.
3. Favorite sweet treat? This is a tough one. At the top of my list are: under-cooked brownies (that are still gooey), oreo balls (ground oreo mixed with cream cheese covered in almond bark, and I don't even like oreos), better-than-sex cake, and butterfinger icecream.
4. When do you crave sweet things the most? After lunch and dinner. Once I have something savory I always have room for something sweet.
5. Sweet nickname? My father-in-law calls me his "Dee-dle daughter," which I think is the sweetest thing ever :)
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