...update...

One of the main points of this blog (to us at least) was to document this so-called journey of ours. So, in that spirit, here's an update.

The last cycle failed in a miscarriage. IM almost had to take some sort of miscarriage inducing drug to...well...what's the word...force a period and hope everything came out on it's own. Otherwise, a surgery (D&C I guess) would have been necessary. Everything, however, went fine and we didn't have to do anything besides let it happen on its own... and we are thankful for small blessings. After the period she went back on b.c.p.'s b/c the Doc wanted to take a look inside her uterus to make sure everything was on the up-and-up. This last Friday, IM had the procedure which is non-trivial to some extent since it requires anesthesia (a lot like an egg retrieval) and they put a scope up through the cervix into the uterus and look for polyps, fibroids, scarring, and anything else. She passed with flying colors! So, that's good....and bad in a way since we have no idea why she miscarried. I guess sometimes shit just happens and there's no explanation. Besides, had something been wrong she would've been looking at another surgery. The one bit of news is she evidently has some sort of polyp in her cervix which can't really be removed without risking real problems and it doesn't really affect anything anyway. What it does do though is it makes it hard to put a catheter up the cervix into the uterus for embryo transfers...which IM has always struggled with. The last couple times it has been a painful and frustrating exercise as the Dr is trying to insert this catheter up there again and again. Then the Dr has had to switch to a harder catheter which, as our luck would have it, has lower success rates...I guess it is more likely to damage the embryo on transfer. Then there is also the issue of IM's pain and cramping as the Dr tries to shove this catheter up her cervix....there is the potential that this cramping hurts the chances of the embryo implanting. Sooooo...because of this surgery, IM's cervix is dilated (from the surgery and will stay that way for a while up to the transfer hopefully) and the Dr mapped out the route through the cervix to the uterus in great detail. Apparently you go straight in and take a sharp 20 degree right turn! Whatever.

Well, with all of that done we have the green light to go ahead with our last embryo which is literally chilling out waiting to be hatched. The transfer is set for Nov 11. I'm trying to be positive and imagine it working but it's very hard since we've had so many repeat failures. The upshot with this whole endeavor is that if this doesn't work we get a boat load of money back since we are on a shared-risk plan (that will soften the disappointment a little bit I suppose). Also, that means the Dr is highly motivated for this to work too :)

...alright...I'm not in the mood for anything more.