3 in the Freezer

We went to the clinic yesterday to check on our 6 embryos and decide whether or not to transfer this month or freeze all due to my higher progesterone number on day of trigger. The night before, B and I had made our decisions based on scenarios of how many we have left. 6 was easy - transfer 2, freeze 4. 4 was easy - freeze all. But 5 was a little less so... transfer none? 1? or 2?

B actually wasn't there yet because his work schedule is such that he can't just leave work at any given time. He's a teacher and finding a sub for just an hour or two of his classes is difficult at his school. He said if we did transfer, he wouldn't be able to be there until just at the time of transfer. They had ME arrive an hour before.

So I went into the prep room with the hospital bed, gown and warm blanket and waited to talk with my RE before I got undressed. She came in with a big smile: 5! and 4 of which were grade A ( yes, they grade them like beef). But then we sat there together in the room trying to think of the best plan.

You see, nothing is really clear cut in this infertility world. Even last night as I looked up studies on pubmed there's conflicting information about serum progesterone levels on day of trigger. Some studies say it predicts lower pregnancy rates and therefore the best course of action is to freeze all and do an FET, others, not so much. But what really helped me to make my decision was not the numbers, but the visual look of my uterine lining.

A little science lesson: Before ovulation and before the uterus is exposed to progesterone, the uterine lining should look something like this (not mine, just a good pic on the in internet):

You can see there, what they call the 'triple stripe. Its the part where the thin white line is surrounded by some darker grey area and the a different white outline of the uterine lining. That's the area that gets shed every month when a woman gets her period. This is what we want the uterus to look like on the day of ovulation (or retrieval in and IVF cycle).

Once the uterus has been exposed to higher levels of progesterone, which in a natural cycle occurs right after ovulation and in an IVF cycle occurs on the day of retrieval when we start progesterone supplements, the lining starts to look more homogeneous, ie, no distinct triple stripe pattern.

My RE said that even though my progesterone numbers were a higher than they would like, she checked the pattern of my lining on the day of retrieval and it still looked 'triple striped.'

As she and I sat in the prep room yesterday trying to make our decision, I went back to these following facts: My body still "looked" receptive and on IVF #1,  I did actually get pregnant, albeit a chemical pregnancy, even though my progesterone was high then too.  As I said in my last post, science is fantastic for helping us make a good decision, but sometimes you just have to throw your hands up and roll the dice.  And with that, we made the decision to freeze the 3 best looking embryos and transfer the remaining 2.  It just felt like the right thing to do.

So here I am, saying hello to the 'two week wait' again.

Now, how do I get through these next few weeks with some sanity???