Today Scott and I met with Dr. Foulk, our fertility specialist, to talk about what went wrong with the most recent IVF treatment.
Dr. Foulk explained that he likes to determine what went wrong based off of three things...and here's what he thinks:
1. Embryos: the embryos looked great when they were thawed, so that likely wasn't the problem.
2. Uterus: the uterus looked good, so that likely wasn't the problem either, especially since we waited a month after the egg retrieval to let my body calm down from the hyper-stimulation.
3. Luck: we just had bad luck this round.
We could go through everything again, just the same, but Dr. Foulk wants to do everything he can to improve our chances. This time he is going to give me a medication that will increase the receptors in my uterus for he embryo(s) to attach.
Dr. Foulk used this analogy to help us understand how the receptors and embryos work together -- the receptors are like fibers on a carpet with round velcro circles on a carpet, and the embryos are like tennis balls bouncing around until they get caught on a velcro circle. This last time, it's possible my uterus didn't have enough receptors for the embryo to latch onto in time. This is hard to analyze or test before a transfer without a biopsy or removing parts of my tissue (which would cost more time and money).
To improve the chances for the next transfer to work, Dr. Foulk will inject, into my uterus, a growth hormone to increase the number of receptors (or strengthen the receptors, I can't remember) in my uterus and then increase the chances for the embryo to latch on to the uterine wall. The research is based off the same idea when one is given growth hormone to increase their white blood cells when fighting infection.
Here are a couple links if you feel like reading more about the research Dr. Foulk has done:
This next time, with the increased receptors, we are hoping we will have increased/better luck and the embryos will both stick. One embryo has a 55% chance of taking. If we add two embryos then that increases the chances of at least one embryo taking from 55% to 75% chance. With increased chances of having more than one embryo plus the increased receptors, Dr. Foulk and we are very hopeful this next FET (frozen embryo transfer) will be successful.
Now for maybe a bit "TMI", but it decides the timing for the next transfer: depending on when my period starts, it will determine when we do the transfer. If it starts on the 1st-3rd of December, we'll do the transfer on December 23rd. If it starts on December 4th or later, we'll do the transfer in January. The period cycle indicates when I have to start taking all the preparatory medications/shots to prepare my body for the transfer and there's supposed to be close to two weeks from the start of my cycle to the day of the FET.
We love you all and can't express how much we appreciate your love and support.
xoxo
