IVF Adventure

It’s Thanksgiving time:

• I am thankful for being healthy
• I am thankful for having a lovely and supportive hubby
• I am thankful for having a job that helps pay my bills
• I am thankful for having two cute dogs
• I am thankful for being able to do most of things I like
• I am thankful that my parents are always with me when needed
• I am thankful that my family members are healthy and happy
• I am thankful that I can blog and share info with people
• I am thankful that I still have a high chance to have a healthy baby

I’ve been through 1 IVF and 1 FET and currently in 2nd FET 2ww. I think it might be benificial if we can share our symptoms during 2ww (2 week waiting) after IVF or FET.

Below is a list of symptoms that I had during my 2ww after IVF/FET:

• cramping
• Fatigue
• bloating ovaries
• headache
• low back pain
• emotion swing
• sore nipples
• itchy tummy skin due to Estradot patches
• weight gain
• poor concentration before ET due to Estradot patches

How about you? What symptoms did you have during your 2ww after IVF/FET?

2WW (2 week waiting) is really tough for us – so much anticipation and so much stress! We want to know if we are pregnant or not as early as possible. So, when is the right time to do a home pregnancy test (HPT) ?

One of my FET buddies, Alex posted a list of day-by-day developing steps of embryos for IVF or FET. I would like to share with you here. We will have a better idea how embryos grow inside our uterus, and hence when we can do HPT.

For 3-Day Embryo Transfer:
1dpt ..embryo is growing and developing
2dpt… Embryo is now a blastocyst
3dpt….Blastocyst hatches out of shell on this day
4dpt.. Blastocyst attaches to a site on the uterine lining
5dpt.. Implantation begins,as the blastocyst begins to bury in the lining
6dpt.. Implantation process continues and morula buries deeper in the lining
7dpt.. Morula is completely inmplanted in the lining and has placenta cells & fetal cells
8dpt…Placenta cells begin to secret HCG in the blood
9dpt…More HCG is produced as fetus develops
10dpt…More HCG is produced as fetus develops
11dpt…HCG levels are now high enough to be immediately detected on HPT

For 5-Day Embryo Transfer:
-1dpt ..embryo is growing and developing
0dpt… Embryo is now a blastocyst
1dpt….Blastocyst hatches out of shell on this day
2dpt.. Blastocyst attaches to a site on the uterine lining
3dpt.. Implantation begins,as the blastocyst begins to bury in the lining
4dpt.. Implantation process continues and morula buries deeper in the lining
5dpt.. Morula is completely inmplanted in the lining and has placenta cells & fetal cells
6dpt…Placenta cells begin to secret HCG in the blood
7dpt…More HCG is produced as fetus develops
8dpt…More HCG is produced as fetus develops
9dpt…HCG levels are now high enough to be immediately detected on HPT

Here is what I am going to do this time. I currently have 3 HPT sticks at home.  So I plan to do HPT on 11dpt, 12dpt and 13dpt (Oct 13, 14, 15) regardless the outcome of HPT – anyways I will do beta on 14dpt Oct16 to find out the acurate result.

How about you? On what day did/will you start HPT?

Now I must focus on helping my embryos implanting in my uterus.

Here is a list of Do’s and Don’ts that I think that might help implantation in 2WW after IVF/FET:

Do’s

• No. 1 rule: POSITIVE ATTITUDE
• No. 2 rule: Eat healthy
• No. 3 rule: Drink plenty of fluid
• No. 4 rule: Enough sleep

-prenatal pills daily
-timing of meds, stick to the schedule
-pineapple core (helps implantation)
-yoga
-massage
-light exercise (gardening,walk)
-yams increase progesterone

Don’ts :
-no hot baths/sauna or long hot shower
-drugs/meds
-heavy lifting
-fish in excess (high mercury levels)
-swimming after ER for 2 weeks
-alcohol
-smoking
-caffeine

What do you think? Do you have any tips during your 2week-waiting to help your embryos implant and grow? Please share with us

We did ET this morning as scheduled -  I am officially PUPO (Pregnant Unless Proved Otherwise) !! Beta will be on Oct 16. I probably will do POAS (Pee on a stick) around day 10

My clinic thawed 2 embryos and they both survived. We still have one embryo left on ice.

1. 8 cells, Grade 2 –> 6cells, Grade 3
2. 4 cells, Grade 1 –> 4cells, Grade 1

Everything went well. I just had some wild cramps.

We have a nice sunny day today in Vancouver. I will take it easy for the next 3 days.

Have a nice weekend ladies:-)

Today is my cycle day 14 (CD14). So this morning I had ultra sound and blood work done. I called my clinic at noon and the lining is 9mm and estrogen is 2009. The Dr. and nurse said everything looks perfect and the embryo transfer will be Oct 3 as expected.

This time we will transfer 2 3-day ICSI embryos with assisted hatching for both. There has no obvious evidence that assisted hatching (AH) will improve the chance of embryo implantation or live birth. However, the doctor said it is worth to have a try since I have one failed fresh IVF and one FET, plus my age. Some people did finally get pregnant with AH after a few failed IVF cycles. It won’t hurt to try something new as long as it is reasonable.

Since I am doing assisted hatching, to lower the risk of potential affection, I also started to take Medrol 1 tablet daily and Doxycycline (antibiotic) 1 tablet twice a day. These medicine will continue to the day of embryo transfer.

Fingers crossed for this FET.

This morning we planned to visit our friend Betty and her one-month new-born boy. We went to a baby shop to get some gifts. I bought a nice blue baby cloth and a pair of shoes. The baby stuff is so cute! I can’t wait to buy them for my own baby!

It looks like eveyone around me is getting pragnant – in-laws, friends and colleages. Why not me? It’s so frustrated. We’re nice people and we will definitely be good parents. Baby, please don’t let us wait too long…

AF (period)  eventually came today. It’s 2 days longer than last month. I started one Estrodot patch this afternoon. I will do ultra sound and blood test to check the lining and E2 on Sept 30. If it’s good to go I will do ET (Embryo Transfer) on Oct 3. This time we will transfer 2 3-day ICSI embryos with assisted hatching.

Hope this time we can get pregnant with a healthy baby

So today we had an appointment with our IVF doctor for about 20 minutes. We will still use the same FET protocol as our 1st FET.

I will start with Estrodot patches on CD1 and then do u/s and blood test on CD14 to check lining and E2. If it’s good to go, then I will start Crinone on CD14. ET will be 3days later since i have 3-day ICSI embryos.

My period this month might be around Sep 15-17. If everything goes well as planned, I will do embryo transfer on around Sep 31 – Oct 2.

We decided to transfer 2 embryos this time and we will also do assisted hatching for both embryos – We will try everything reasonable to get pregnant.

Fingers cross for this FET

I heard that some people did assisted hatching with their IVF or FET. I know that most of people will do anything reasonable to get pregnant. I’m trying to collect some info that might benefit most of us.

My questions are:

1. Will assisted hatching help implantation?
2. Who, in what situations, are good candidates for assisted hatching?
3. if we have 2-3 embryos to transfer, can we do 1 or 2 embryos assisted hatching, and the last one without hatching?

Anyone else has done assisted hatching or planning to do assisted hatching?Any info or insights are welcome.

Thanks.