Embryo Growth Report

Saturday, 7-25-09 (Day 25)

Dexamethasone (.75mg, oral pill): Check.

Ciprofloxacin (500mg, oral pill): Is a drug used to treat bacterial infections, and from what I read, should not be used on pregnant women. Yet they have me taking it for at least another week and a half, of which I should be pregnant during the later part of.

PIO (1ml, IM injection): The shots are still going well, but I'm starting to feel the side effects now. My chest is very tender and sore, and it feels as if someone has literally kicked my butt.

I'm also experiencing a lot of pain in my midsection. The entire core of my body feels as if someone has taken out all of my insides, rearranged them, then put them back in the wrong place. I'm also severely bloated, but I'm told this is normal, so I'll just keep taking my extra strength Tylenol and using my heating pad until the pain subsides and is replaced by pregnancy symptoms.

Sunday, 7-26-09 (Day 26)

Dexamethasone (.75mg, oral pill): I finally got back on the scale again, and was surprised to find I'm not quite as heavy as I feel.

Ciprofloxacin (500mg, oral pill): Common side effects are headache, nausea, and abdominal pain, which I'm already experiencing from the egg retrieval anyway. Why not make it worse?

PIO (1ml, IM injection): It's getting hard to receive these shots and their vicious side effects when I'm not even sure if it will be worth it; and I'm not being a pessimist, but rather a realist.

We're down to one embryo today, and it has only 3 cells.

A strong, healthy embryo should have at least 6 cells by now.

Monday, 7-27-09 (Day 27)

No meds to report today because this cycle is over, prematurely.

Our sweet little 3-celled embryo still has only 3 cells, 24 hours later. This means that unless something drastic happens, our final embryo is not viable and non-transferable.

I still haven't cried yet.

Trying to find the silver lining on this raincloud, we are so thankful that we still have one more try. By tomorrow we should be speaking to Dr. Greene and have a better idea of what happened and what we can do to avoid this next time. The nurse told us to not give up hope, she said that we learned so much from this cycle and we'll continue to learn even more from the little embryo that we have struggling in a petri dish right now.

I don't believe this is happening. I can't help but wonder how things would be right now if we had waited just one more day to trigger. Would those 4 almost mature embryos have been fully mature given one or two more days? If they would have been mature, would they have fertilized normally and become healthy blastocytes, or would they have arrested and stopped dividing like the two we already had? Does this mean that my husband’s sperm and my eggs just don't make viable embryo's, or is this simply a timing issue and luck of the draw?

I'd be lying if I said I'm not terrified to do this again. Since we signed up for a two cycle plan our next try will be our final try, and all of the naive bliss and positive thinking that came along with our first cycle will be hard to hold onto, now that I'm aware of what can really happen; even for a couple that has all the odds in their favor.

All we can do now is take this one day at a time. Someone once told me that when God takes something from your grasp, He's not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better.

I believe it.

I have to.

"If you want to get somewhere, you have to know where you want to go and how to get there. Then never, never, never give up."

-Norman Vincent Peale