R.I.F.

Recurrent.
Implantation.
Failure.

That's me... nothing but a big failure...

4 fresh transfers and 1 frozen transfer, of mostly beautiful embryos. We've tried day 5, day 3 and day 2 (age of the embryos)... And all of those transfers have resulting in only 3 chemical pregnancies. (Yes, this last one, was indeed another chemical pregnancy, says my RE)

Over the last 36 hours or so, after receiving the news that my beta was only a 1.0, I have felt very panicky. We're at the end of the line here with our genetics. We've agreed to be done spending 10s of thousands of dollars per year on this basically doing the same thing while still not having any more clear of a path. We still don't have a solid reason.

By that I mean, no one can really agree on why RIF occurs. Or maybe what I mean is that there are too many unproven explanations for RIF. Or MAYBE what I REALLY mean is that the medical community has no "for certain" diagnostic tests and resulting methods of overcoming possible abnormalities in those tests to solve the RIF issue. Come on medical community... GET IT TOGETHER!!!

Aside: This is precisely why infertility needs to be voiced more so that funding can occur to solve these issues, and those of us without insurance coverage can hope to someday have help in paying for this madness.

So where does this leave us? With 3 possible explanations:

1. Poor Egg Quality - My eggs are poor quality, chromosomally abnormal, and therefore our embryos stop developing after a few days in-utero because the pregnancy is not viable. 
• Factors supporting this:
• IVF #3 showed "spongy and grainy eggs" which I guess are a sign of poor quality
• IVF #2 embryos kind of 'pooped' out around day 5
• Premature Lutenization in 3 of my 4 IVF stim cycles is correlated with poorer egg quality
• Treatment: 
• Donor Eggs or Embryo Adoption or Adoption
2. Immune System Malfunction - My eggs are fine but my body won't let the little embryos implant for too long. The process starts, but my immune system is messed up just enough that it attacks the implanting embryo and says, "Stop trying to burrow in!" 
• Factors supporting this: 
• Mild endometriosis found in my laparoscopy last year, which is correlated with implantation failure in some literature
• The immune testing I had done showed that I have some borderline signs of this potential issue. (High NK cells, CD56+, APAs.... I touched on this a bit in this post)
• The feverish feeling I got during my 2ww of the first 3 transfers, before I started taking the prednisone during the 2ww.
• Treatment:
• Use some fairly non proven and potentially unsafe infusions in the blood during our FET that aim to suppress the immune system more so than what I've already been doing with the steroids (I used prednisone with my last two transfers)
• Use a proven gestational surrogate to transfer our embryos to instead of me and hope that at least one sticks in there.
3. Both 1& 2
• Treatment:
• Bang head into wall and hope that when I come to, there's a baby in my lap.

The reason that I lay this out there is that I really need some help in deciding our next steps. I just don't know what to do. We have 3 beautiful grade A day 2 embryos in the freezer and I want to make sure that when I look back on this all, I can say that I left no stone unturned AND we weren't stupid in throwing away this last chance at our genetics. I'm open to everything right now. Really... I just want this to end. I'm tired and weary of this journey and I want to get on with my life. Do we transfer all 3 back to me? Do we find a gestational surrogate? Do we try both? If this doesn't work, is donor eggs the right step? Or am I kidding myself into thinking my body can hold a pregnancy?

Any advice is appreciated.