A few of my favorite things

Don't lie - the moment something new goes on with you or you hear about some awesome new face cream or some celebrity died or a doctor tells you you have xyz-itis, you Google it.  Even though you know you could get a lot more crap coming back in those search results than is worth digging through.

Well, I do the same thing.

So as soon as we started thinking about heading down this IVF road, I was Googling for info and yet also trying to absorb everything I was reading with a grain of salt.  But not everything out there is junk.  Along the way I've found some blogs, videos or articles that seem pretty legit or make a lot of sense or have been very helpful to me.

Maybe you'd like to see them too?  (I'll come back and add to this list periodically):

Blogs:

• Best Friend's Guide to IVF - I like this list she came up with, tho from my experience, the side effects and "pains" she's listed are far from reality.  But could likely be due to a difference in our medications.
• 12 Tips for IVF - This is another cute and somewhat helpful list.  I haven't found that I need to work from home or am even too tired to cook dinner, but everyone will react differently.  (I'm also not on progesterone yet since we're just banking embryos now and will do the transfer later on.)
• Fun with IVF - I actually found myself laughing out loud at some of her entries.  She has a lot of humor in her writing (which is what I think we all need to keep us a little grounded through this fun time).  Plus - she has a happy ending!

Videos:

• Today Show Couple - this segment was SO timely.  I saw it live as I was getting ready for work one morning, literally the same week Dr. A suggested we think about doing IVF.  It's a great (albeit slightly dumbed-down) summary of the IVF process. Note both videos in this article are worth watching!
• Mixing Follistim and Menopur - Dr. A sent this to me, but it's really the best video out there showing how to mix those specific meds that I happen to be taking.  It's really not rocket science and for the most part, as long as you get everything mixed together into 1 syringe and then injected into your belly - you're golden.
• Injections - I really like this nurse-lady from the Sher Fertility Institute.  I have a feeling she'd call me "Hon" if I was spending time with her in person.  She's in a lot of their videos and they're all very helpful.
• Various Videos from Sher Fertility Institute - the same nurse-lady does lots of helpful instructional videos depending on what you're looking for.  Mixing specific medicines, giving different types of injections, even a discussion on genetic testing.

Informative Pages:

• Day 3 FSH and Ovarian Reserve - Our specific infertility issues stem from my elevated FSH levels (we've seen anywhere from ~8.9-12.2 mIU/ml) so finding this page (and LOTS of other pages at Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago) has been helpful reading.
• Female Hormone Levels - I'm a numbers person, so it was nice to read through the information on where I should expect to see certain hormone levels (estrogen and progesterone) on specific days during and even before my IVF cycle.  Maybe we shouldn't do this but we all want to check if we're "normal", right?
• The Significance of Monitoring Infertility Treatments - Came across this page when I was looking for information on what tells the doctor to stop Stimulation and trigger for retrieval, but it has great information about what doctors are looking for all along the way.
• Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) Fertilization - Pronounced "ick-see".  This is the process of injecting a single sperm into an egg in order to fertilize it.  As opposed to placing sperm and egg into the same dish and hoping to see fertilization that way.  It's typically been used in situations with severe male infertility, but can also be helpful in cases with high FSH (me!) where the eggs might be "harder".  Additionally, ICSI is recommended when doing PGS.  Sometimes additional sperm remain stuck to the embryo, so if the biopsy gets part of the sperm in addition to the embryo cells, it could generate false results.
• Understanding Cleavage Stage Embryo Grading (up to ~Day 3) - After your retrieval you'll start getting information about your embryos and this page will help to understand what is being evaluated.  However, note that by ~Day 5 the grading (for us) changed to the Gardner blastocyst grading system, below.
• Assisted Hatching - The embryologist thins the thick protein shell around the embryo to help it hatch.  This has been found to help in implantation but can also increase the chance of identical twins.  For us, it's automatically done as part of the PGS process since they have to get at 1-2 cells from the blastocyst in order to biopsy it.
• Gardner Blastocyst Grading System (~Day 5-6) - Embryos become blastocysts around Day 5-6 and our grading changed to the Gardner system (a number + 2 letters, ie: "5BB") at this point.
• Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS) - The process by which cells are taken from a blastocyst and evaluated to test for chromosomal defects and abnormalities.  Frequently abbreviated to PGS and what I refer to in this blog, as genetic testing.  (PGD is slightly different - D stands for Diagnosis.  This is the same idea but only looking for a specific genetic disorder carried by the parents and not an overall chromosomal screening).  PGS will help us to ensure any embryos we select for transfer are chromosomally normal.  This new capability has increased IVF success from ~30% to ~70% in recent years and in some cases reduced the "risk" of multiples.
• Causes of IVF Failures - a sad part of the IVF process is that it does have failures and it's important to be aware of what could cause a failure.  IVF isn't a sure-fire solution and everyone should definitely be aware of that.