Embryo transfer day finally arrived!

This morning I received the phone call from our fertility doctor saying that 5 of the eggs were looking excellent and of those 5, 3 were perfect for transfer.  She would make the decision at the time of transfer which 2 of those 3 would make the trip.  The doctor almost pleaded with me to only transfer 1 since they were looking so good but I told her that we accepted the risk and wanted to proceed with both of them.

After the phone call, I had to wait an hour until our carrier's appointment to hear how everything went down.  The appointment was at 10:30 this morning and at about 10:45 I received this picture via text from our carrier........it was quite a moment.  

OUR FIRST BABY PICTURE!!!

I called her after she got back to her hotel to find out how everything went and she said that they were in and out of there in about 20 minutes.  I knew that it was a quick process but it still seemed too fast for such a delicate procedure.  She said that everything went well and that she was laying down in her hotel bed watching a Walking Dead marathon.  She's now on bed rest for 24 hours to help these little zygotes along in their efforts to grab on tightly to her uterus.

Now we just wait two weeks for her to take the blood pregnancy test to confirm one way or the other if we will be expecting one or two little Porterfields.  It's going to be a LONG two weeks!!

Day 3 Fertilization Report

I'm visiting friends this weekend and didn't have time yesterday to post fertilization report so here it is.  Yesterday we received our report and transfer time for Monday.  There are still 8 embryos but this nurse (apparently we have a different weekend nurse) didn't tell me the size or the progress of each of our little guys but I guess we didn't lose any so that's good.

She did tell us that our transfer will take place on tomorrow, the 30th, at 10:30 am.  Neither Chris nor I will be there since there's really nothing for us to do and our carrier will have her husband with her but I will talk to her after the transfer to find out what all happened.

Here's hoping that all goes well!!

Day 2 Fertilization Report

Our fertility doctor, Dr. G, called me today to give me an update on the 8 embryos.  She said that 5 of the embryos were looking really good and healthy (8 cells after they've done their multiplying), 2 of them look ok (6 cells) and 1 of them is looking pretty weak (just 2 cells).  On Monday morning,  she will look at the 5 really good eggs and take 2 that look the best and transfer those to our carrier.

While we were on the phone, she was really pushing us (in a friendly way) to only transfer 1 embryo but I was set on 2.  Apparently she has to document that she suggested transferring 1 and that we were going against her medical advice.  Whatever.  I mean, as much as I would love to spend another $80 grand on this, I'd rather kill two birds with one stone.  Maybe not the best analogy but you get the gist.....

So we'll get an update tomorrow and then on Monday right before the transfer.

Day 1 Fertilization Update

Yesterday they extracted 14 eggs but only 10 were mature enough to inseminate.  Well today we got an email from our nurse telling us that only 8 are growing and developing nicely.  Since the other 2 embryo did not continue to develop, they were discarded. 

We're still on track for a 5 day transfer on Sept. 30th but we'll know for sure tomorrow.  

Egg Retrieval Day

Today is the big day to find out how many eggs were retrieved from our donor and we just received an email from our nurse.  She told us that we received 14 eggs but only 10 were mature.  They are inseminating the mature eggs today with my frozen sperm and the other 4 immature eggs were discarded.  

We will be getting daily updates on our embryos up until it's time to transfer!!

It's about that time!

So we're just one week away from transfer!!  I've been waiting to update the blog when we had some dates set in stone for the egg retrieval/insemination and for the transfer and we (finally) got confirmation today so here we go.......

I'm going to write this in chronological order so it doesn't get confusing.  If you remember, we decided to split the number of eggs (and the cost) with another random couple.  Since the fertility clinic now had to deal with two carriers (or surrogates), they had to wait for the menstrual cycle of our carrier and the other couples carrier to fully complete before they started taking their hormones. This led to a bit of a delay but only by a couple of weeks.  

On Sept 4th, our carrier started taking estrogen injections to "trick" her body into thinking it was pregnant so it would build a thick uterine lining for the embryos to attach to when it came time to transfer.  She's been giving herself these injections every three days and will continue to up until the day of transfer.

On Sept 14th, our egg donor starting taking her hormones to get her ovaries to produce as many follicles (that will end up being eggs) as they possibly can before retrieval day.  

Sept 17th our carrier went to her local clinic in Wisconsin to check her uterine lining and to make sure everything looked healthy.  There was some concern over a cyst that was found on one of her ovaries but the doctor wasn't worried so luckily there was no hang up with all that.  

Yesterday (the 23rd) we received an email from our nurse saying that currently there are 34 eggs (17 for each couple) and they all look healthy.  Keep in mind that even though we're getting 17 eggs, not all of them will be viable for transfer so we might only end up having 12 or 13 eggs to really use.  

Today our clinic told us that our egg donor will "trigger" this evening; apparently they give the donor some type of final injection to mature the eggs.  Since she will trigger tonight, she will come back in on Wednesday to have her eggs removed.  

On the 25th, the egg donor will have her eggs removed by using a hollow needle that will go up and thru her vaginal wall toward her ovaries.  Once the needle is near the eggs, a suction device will suck up all the eggs that have accumulated over the last week and a half.  Almost right away, they will inject my sperm into the eggs.  They have my swimmers frozen at the clinic so I don't have to make a trip to the clinic on Wednesday for this.  

After the eggs are fertilized, they will sit in a petri dish anywhere from 3 to 5 days.  Since we'll likely have quite a few eggs, they'll transfer the eggs on the 5th day.  If we didn't have many eggs to start with and if they didn't look like they were doing too well, they'd want to transfer the eggs into the uterus sooner but hopefully this won't be the case.  On the 5th day, the top two eggs that look the healthiest and most viable will be transferred to our carrier.  The rest of the eggs we will freeze in case we want to add any brothers or sisters down the road.  I'm really pushing for more kids but Chris wants to be done at one or two.....so likely we'll have more kids.  :-)

Our carrier (along with her husband) will fly into DC on the 29th and the transfer will happen on Monday, the 30th.  The transfer process takes less than 5 minutes and then she will be on bed rest for 24 hours at their hotel.  Then the next day they fly back to Wisconsin.  

I'm not too sure how long they wait to do the pregnancy blood test or the pee test but once they do, I will of course shoot out another post.  Keep in mind though that only one or maybe neither of the eggs that are transferred will make it.  I think it's like a 74% chance that one will make it and 63% that both will make it; so our chances are good but it's still not a guarantee.  

I won't do that whole thing where we wait until after the first trimester to tell y'all (that whole jinx thing)......as soon as I know, y'all will know.

Thanks for reading!