Monday it is

So this morning when I got up I was so sure that we would be coming home today after completing our final step in this process...the transfer. About half way up to Walter Reed we got a phone call (My heart almost stopped seeing the 301 area code in fear of bad news) the embryologist wanted to tell us that all five of our embryos are doing great. Three of them are excellent grade 2s (1-5 with 1 being the highest) and the other two are grade 3s, which are average. I had said before that if we had two or less on day 3 then I wanted to continue with the day 3 transfer. The embryologist went over that they were recommending pushing to a day 5 transfer. We have a 70% chance of success for my age group transferring on day 5 and it's about 50% on day 3. We explained our fears and were completely torn on the issue.

I honestly cannot remember a time in my life when I was this scared, torn, lost, confused...any other conflicted emotion out there. I wanted so bad to continue with the transfer in fear of losing them all. I needed to know I gave them a chance to survive. We weren't pressured into moving it to day 5 but there are a lot of good reasons to continue. For one, the first 3 days are controlled by the maternal genes and after day 3 the paternal genes take over. So far my genes have done a good job of keeping them healthy. If we had done the transfer today and it did not work we could lose a key piece of information by not seeing if the sperm can do their job and keep the embryos growing past day 3. That is something important to know in case we are still unsuccessful. Another great reason is that on day 5 they embryos will become blastocysts which is the last stage before they implant. This means that once they are transferred back in then they will implant quickly. This is better for the embryo and better for me as it lessens the risk of ectopic. The embryo will be in its natural place for that stage of development. Day 5 transfers have had better success rates than day 3 but this is mostly due to people with high quality embryos being pushed to day 5 and they would have gotten pregnant either way. Rather than the people doing day 3 are likely those with lower grades or few embryos in an attempt to "rescue" the cycle. Most of the time it doesn't work.

In the end we obviously decided to continue. As terrified as I am that I will get a call that they are all gone I knew that it was the right thing to do. I need to have faith in them to show us that they can pull through for us. As much as I am frustrated with one of the doctors on the weekend shifts I knew that I needed to trust in the IVF team that this is our best option for success.

So pray for our little embryos that they can pull through for us. I'll update again on Monday.