And then there was one

One.

One normal blastocyst.

BUT, one is so many hundreds and thousands, of times better than none!  One is the difference between being parents and NOT being parents.  So we are happy.  And this one normal blastocyst is of good quality with a 75% chance of pregnancy.  Dr. A is very positive and confident that we'll get a pregnancy out of it.  But it also means if we want more than 1 child, we're sticking needles in my tummy again within just a few days here.

Sorry it's taken me so long to pick up where I left off.  I wasn't under a rock mourning our losses or anything since we've been very mentally prepared for whatever comes our way along this journey.  However there is a little something that got in the way of my posting prior to today: THE HOLIDAYS!  Sheesh...such a busy time.  But with our second round of stimulation and retrieval just a few days away, I'm somewhat astonished at how my body has been totally and perfectly navigating around all the important holiday milestones - our Thanksgiving travel, expensive tickets to a Broadway show we purchased MONTHS ago, multiple holiday parties and events, Christmas day AND New Years!  Essentially we got the month of December off while still avoiding Thanksgiving (retrieval was 2 days prior to it) and New Years (stimulation should begin a few days after it).  Thank you for that, Body.

Now let me get back to the info on our 2 embryos and how/why we went from 2 highly graded embryos - to only 1:

We met with Dr. A a few weeks ago and she gave us the news that our best looking embryo (the 4AA) was chromosomally abnormal.  It had a Trisomy 22 abnormality which meant there were 3 copies of chromosome 22 rather than a pair, as there should be.  Embryos with this abnormality would usually not even result in a pregnancy, however because ours was such a high graded embryo (AA is THE BEST) it likely would have for us and ultimately resulted in a miscarriage.  (On the odd chance that a person should be born with a genetic disorder associated with Trisomy 22, they would be greatly disabled mentally, physically or both.)  So while that was not what we wanted to hear, we were glad to be able to rule that embryo out and not waste time, money, physical energy and emotional turmoil going into a situation where I could become pregnant with a chomosomally abnormal fetus.

On the other hand - our 2nd best looking embryo, which was our only other embryo, (the 5BB) was chromosomally normal!!  This was wonderful news of course.  I can't imagine how devastating it'd be to go through this whole IVF process only to end up with nothing at the end.  So we celebrate our successes along the way - and this is certainly a success to celebrate!

oh, and Happy New Year too!

Dr. A also sent us out of her office with a paper which told us the genders of both embryos (the normal and the abnormal).  She gave us the info since it's ours to have, but suggested we not look at it, and I think I understand why.  I would guess it's less of an issue about knowing the gender of the normal embryo and more about knowing the gender of the abnormal one.  I think it feels like more of a loss when you know the gender.  But I repeat - it's not an embryo we want, so it never really felt like a loss to us.  As I've mentioned before, Hubby and I are planners and very practical people and knowing the gender of our embryos makes logical sense to us, so we did open the paper once we got home.  I won't be sharing the genders here, nor do we plan to share the genders with our family and friends (the few who know we're doing IVF).  It's something we want to keep to ourselves as we continue to plan our family.  But I will tell you that the gender of our normal embryo is a gender one of us has very much been hoping for.  You're right, that basically gives nothing away!  *evil laugh*

"muahahahahahahaha!!!!....."

Dr. A suggested we take a cycle off in between IVF stimulations which is why December was our month to relax and enjoy before January starts us over again.  But we're starting again with a lot of great information under our belt - and with a hearty, frozen embryo just a few miles from our house.  That's right - have I mentioned how close the infertility facility that houses our frozen embryo(s) is?  We drive by it all the time and sometimes we wave at our "kid".  :)  It IS truly incredible though, to think that someday that little embryo which is frozen and stored inside this medical building, could be walking around in the world and calling us Mom & Dad.

How are you kicking off 2014?  We're kicking it off with IVF Round #2...  In T-minus about 5 days.  2014 is going to be a great year for us, I can feel it.  If you'd like to keep following along with me - stay tuned!