Best & Worst Case Scenarios

Hey! I know it has been awhile but nothing exciting has happened in the fertility world for a few weeks for Justin and I until now!  I had a great recovery from egg retrieval and I'm feeling back to normal.  I even went to the gym today!  Can you believe it?!  It has been at least 6 months.  I am motivated to get some muscle strength back before I feel crummy from pregnancy and I don't want to do anything.  I have also heard from multiple people these days about how they have compared their pregnancies before and after exercise and how much easier everything was once you were active!  I have heard this before but I guess since I don't have anyone nagging me that I should be going to the gym, I am finally motivated to go! haha  I'm so weird- when people tell me I should do something, I tend to not want to do it until I decide for myself that it's a good idea.  I also will be attending a few Barre Forte classes in the upcoming weeks because I'm craving some structure with my exercise where I can get strength and be girly and I am so over Zumba and the elliptical.  Should be fun to be a ballerina for an hour!  I hope I like it so I have something to look forward to during the week. :) 

So how has my diabetes been doing?  Great!!  I don't know what's up and what has changed but my blood sugars are SO much better!  Sure, I have been following the guidelines from that book I posted about earlier, but I have also lost some weight, been eating better, and I also wonder if my body feels better with my hormones somewhat regulated the last few months.  Here's a current screenshot from my Dexcom today.  It show's my estimated a1c is 5.5% which equals an average blood sugar of 112 over the past 2 weeks.  I'm sure it will be higher than that when I actually get my blood drawn because there's always a big error margin with the continuous glucose meter readings vs. actual blood sugar readings.  And I have to stay this way until my next check in August!  I hope I do!  I even had a diabetes doctor appointment recently and she didn't make any changes and said I was doing great.

So the most exciting thing I have to update is about our fertility appointment we had today!  I found out some great things!  First, we went over our embryo results and Dr. Christman confirmed that we had 4 good and 4 fair embryos and the last embryo died once it multiplied to 5 cells.  Here's a picture of a blastocyst and what I expected my 8 embryos to look like.  I find it so neat to understand the anatomy of it.  The Trophectoderm is the outer layer of cells which forms the placenta! The blastocoel is just a fluid filled cavity.  But the inner cell mass is the little baby! 

A normal blastocyst on Day 5 of life but not mine

I was picturing the above picture in my head but I was in for a surprise when Dr. Christman said all of my embryos were hatching already when they froze them!  How cool is that?!  Here's a picture of the progression of an embryo on day 1-6 of life.  Normally it starts hatching on day 6 but they froze all of mine on day 5 and they were already starting to break out of their shell.  I asked Dr. Christman if that was bad to be early and he said no it's a good sign! This is the last stage before implanting.  They must just be ready to get in me!!  This is great news because now we won't have to pay the extra $475 to have the lab hatch them themselves. 

The last picture is of a hatching blastocyst- I have 8 of these!

Of course I wanted to know the specifics about Justin's sperm count at egg retrieval and I saw that he had 2 million total sperm with 64% motility which is a huge increase from the 10-50% motile he typically has.  It said 0% total normal on the paper so I'm assuming that means all of them were slow or shaped weird.  But Dr. Christman says it doesn't matter because we have perfect little babies growing.  Justin is enjoying having his beer again and knowing he can be a "normal person" from now on as long as one of these embryos work out! 

Now I have saved the best for last!  I asked Dr. Christman what would happen if it took forever for my next period to come.  I had my withdrawal bleed 6 days after egg retrieval (June 8th) but they are waiting for my period to come on its own to start meds again.  He said that he would give it 35 days and if it didn't come, I could start progesterone to make my period come and then start the frozen cycle right away!!  That guarantees that I'll be able to start my frozen cycle before the clinic shuts down for inspections and I'll be able to transfer the babies in September!  

So of course I'm a planner and I calculated the best and worst case scenario according to the clinics schedule they gave me.  

Here's the best case:

I start my period on my own 30 days later (the soonest I have ever started) on July 8th.  I start my meds 3 days later on July 11th and then I already know the exact date that an embryo would be transferred into me would be September 5th.  That's equal to a baby due date of May 24th!

Here's the worst case:

I counted 35 days from June 8th and that's July 13th!  So I would call the clinic that day and be like "yo, I didn't start my period!" and they would say "ok, here's some progesterone."  Last time I had to take it for 10 days and I didn't have a period until 3 days later.  So I'm expecting a period around July 26th- right before my 30th birthday on the 29th!  (Didn't I say that's all I wanted haha).  So that means the transfer dates of my embryo would be September 19th or 26th depending on which week they start my estrogen patches. Which is equal to a due date of June 7th or June 14th! 

It helps a lot to know that I only have 3 weeks before I start this process again.  The best part about it is that I will only have to come to the office for 4 visits this time!  One day is a med teach, baseline labs and ultrasound, & mock transfer to measure me again, 2 more days of estrogen levels and ultrasounds, and then my transfer date!  Let's get this show on the road!!!

Prayers:  I'd love to know that my body is functioning normally on its own and have the best case scenario.  Continued good blood sugars.  

Praises: We received a $2270 credit from not doing a full cycle so we will only owe $1743 to do the frozen transfer.  But if this doesn't work out, the next frozen embryo transfer will be about $5000.  Hopefully we won't need to go there! I am enjoying my coffees, sandwiches, and getting stuff done around the house.  We re-planted some of our plants since they were dying and not spaced out enough before the rain came and I love checking every morning to see how many flowers or new leaves I have.  I finally found curtains that I like and hung them up!  Now on to finish painting the house.  Until next time!