Thinking Out Loud

For the last week or so, I've been thinking more & more about skipping the CCS testing this time & simply doing a fresh transfer. I can't believe I even typed those words as I went to CCRM in the first place for their CCS testing. I swore I'd do ANYTHING, anything at all to avoid another miscarriage. Yet, right now, emotionally, I feel more optimistic with a fresh transfer.


Before CCRM, I did five IUIs & one IVF. On the two IUIs that I conceived, I only had two eggs (the other three IUIs that resulted in BFNs, I only had a single egg each time). On my local IVF cycle, I only had two embryos. So despite a grand total of nine eggs and even fewer embryos since they surely didn't all fertilize with my IUIs, I got pregnant three times. No wonder when I headed to Colorado, I fully expected to make a good percentage of blasts. I figured finding a normal might be a needle in a haystack situation. To this day, I still can't quite wrap my head around the fact that I had eight embryos that looked great on day three, but only one survived to blast (three made it to early blast, but were disintegrating). Dr. Surrey is of the opinion that if an embryo doesn't make it to blast in CCRM's lab, it wasn't competent. From what I've read, SIRM, which does their CCS testing on day three, has also found that those embryos that don't make it to blast were almost always chromosomally abnormal. I believe them, but I can't shake this feeling that just maybe my eggs do better inside of me and that my only slim hope is to do a day three transfer.





On the other hand, I do like the idea of having the stim meds out of my system before transfer, especially because of my history of biochemical pregnancies and my fibroid that seems to grow while I'm on stims. I suppose I could have them freeze everything on day three & then return for an FET, but that seems silly since the cost of the CCS testing isn't that much more than an FET. Plus, do I really want to go through all of the trouble of doing an FET if the embryos are abnormal (and may result in another miscarriage)?


Given the quality of my abnormal blast, Dr. Surrey felt like there was a good chance that if I'd done a fresh transfer, it would have implanted & resulted in another loss. He's of the opinion that we should do CCS testing if I'm going to cycle with my OE again. That's probably what I'll do, but I wish I felt certain I was doing the right thing.


In other news, my manager's boss asked her if I'd be interested in a new role she's creating. It's a process change driver role and, apparently, no one else is interested even though it's a promotion. I read the job description and the first qualification listed is 5-10 years with the company. I've only been with the company for six months (we were acquired) and 95% of what I've been doing has been the old company's processes & procedures so how the heck am I the right person to drive all of these changes when I don't have a clue about the current processes? They're obviously desperate. It wouldn't be so daunting expect that this is an unbelievably complicated organization, seriously, I've never seen anything like it & I've worked for really large companies in the past. Anyway, driving process changes isn't really my cup of tea & it's not my strongest skill. If it weren't for the IF stuff, I might suck it up & work a bazillion hours to hopefully win some brownie points since they're desperate, but I just can't deal with that type of stress right now. I may live to regret this decision since I'm not sure how much I'm going to be needed in my current role down the road (although, fortunately, the controller seems to really like me), but worst case I'll get a nice package since they'll recognize my years of service with the previous company. At times it really bothers me that my career has kind of stalled the past few years, but I've had so much support from my manager when it comes to my IF that I haven't wanted to give that up to find something better. Please let all of this be worth it someday.



T.

Warning: Pity Party Ahead

You've been warned. :-)

I've been religiously reading everyone's blogs the past few weeks, but I haven't really felt like blogging. I think I haven't felt comfortable admitting that I'm still so freaking sad about how my cycle turned out. CCRM was my Plan B for a long time & I always believed 100% that they would be able to help me. I've heard this sentiment expressed by others, but failing at CCRM really does hurt a lot more than failing elsewhere. Even though I think I'm going to give it one more shot this fall, I'm definitely grieving the loss of having a child with my own genes because I honestly don't hold out much hope that the next time will be different. Oh sure, I'm taking the CCRM cocktail of supplements twice a day. I've also added royal jelly (I've finally figured out how to down it without gagging). I just don't want to get my hopes up that it will make a difference. I read on one of the message boards about a lady that received her Microarray results within two weeks of her retrieval (supposedly CCRM is no longer sending the biopsies to New Jersey?) and it occurred to me that I couldn't even get a break by getting my crappy news in a timely manner (I waited 6 weeks). Everything about my infertility journey has seemed to go that way. For the first time in almost three years of TTC, I even have moments where I wonder why I'm doing all of this. After all, being a mom is the hardest job in the world, not to mention that I'll be a single mom. Sometimes I wish I could stop wanting to be a mom so badly.

I'm afraid to step on the scale, but I know I put on weight both during my cycle & since I returned from Denver. Today, I decided enough is enough so I started counting W.W. points (it's always the easiest way for me to lose weight). My heart really isn't into losing this weight, but I know it's best in case I ever do conceive. I'll post my progress here as I think it will help to keep me accountable.

T.

P.S. I had the sweetest comment from a reader named Kara's mom. Your blog wasn't accessible for me, but I wanted to thank you for your comment & congratulate you on your twins!