Frozen embryo update!

In the words of children’s author Judith Viorst, this past Wednesday (the day of our embryo transfer) was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. After things seemed to be going so ridiculously well in this IVF cycle — our egg donor Marie produced 15 mature eggs, 100% of which then fertilized and were looking strong in the days that followed — we learned on Wednesday that only a single embryo had developed into a viable day-5 blastocyte. Two others had also become blastocytes, but they were too poor-quality to be frozen. When I tried to ask if there were any other embryos still in-the-running, the doctor was — excuse my language — a ginormous dick. He sounded so pessimistic — admitting it was a below-average response, and even hiding his chart so I’d stop asking questions(!) — and I left feeling completely despondent.

I sobbed the entire 2+ hour drive home from Belgium. Once back at our house, I transitioned onto the couch for further sobbing. I had made a deal with my husband earlier in the day that he had to do whatever I said all day so that I’d feel happy and relaxed after the embryo transfer. Before the bad news, this had come in the form of sassy decries (e.g., “I decry that you escort me around on your arm all day”; “I decry that you stop sending me stupid Reddit videos”). After the news, and back at home, I decried that he leave me be so I could mourn the unfairness of the Universe in solitude.

A sudden turn of events

After such a miserable day, you can image my surprise when I received an email the next morning saying that 5 embryos had been successfully frozen. FIVE! Not trusting my Dutch reading skills, I copy-and-pasted the email into google translate just to be sure. It still said the same thing…FIVE EMBRYOS COULD BE FROZEN!!!

IVF is such an insane emotional roller coaster.

So why the sudden turn of events? Well, my husband and I are still complete newbies when it comes to blastocyte development, since we never made it this far with my own eggs (or lack thereof). Apparently, in addition to freezing any good-quality blastocytes on day 5, they let the remaining embryos continue to develop overnight, allowing the stragglers to catch up. These slower-growing day-6 embryos may still turn into blastocytes which can result in a healthy pregnancy, and they will freeze any good-quality ones as well. I had no idea that there could be such a big change from day 5 to day 6, and it would have been nice if the dick — Sorry, I meant doctor — told us that there was still some hope.

What does this news mean?

Obviously we hope that the embryo I currently have on-board will decide to stay put. However, based on its quality, it only has a 17% chance of resulting in a live birth (though a ~30% chance of pregnancy…fun implications there). If it decides not to stick around, then we can try what’s called a ‘frozen embryo transfer’ (FET) without having to go through the whole egg retrieval process again. Most of the embryos should theoretically survive the thaw, so that would hopefully give us another few chances.

In the meantime, I’m oscillating between cautious optimism and (more statistically realistic) extreme pessimism with the current embryo on board. It’s far more likely that it won’t stick….but there’s still a non-zero chance that it will. I seem to be growing (unwisely) more optimistic each day, which is probably the emotional equivalent of that slow upward climb on a roller coaster before the huge stomach-lurching drop. In that sense, the (potentially poorly translated?) advice that our favorite Belgian egg donation nurse gave me might actually make more sense: “Keep your head on.”