How Many to Transfer?

Throughout this process a super common question that both Josh and I have been asked is

"How many are you going to transfer?!"

I thought I'd do a quick post to address this as there are so many misconceptions about how the entire IVF process works and how transfer works. After we tell friends that we have 9 frozen embryos we have to giggle because it is surprising the number of people who think that they get transferred all at the same time! They ask us if we will end up like Octomom or something! I am relieved to say that it is pretty rare to transfer more than 2, SOMETIMES 3 embryos at a time.

Each of the embryos are frozen separately and therefore they are able to be thawed individually. The goal of my RE, and most REs out there, is to give the patient the best chance of a live birth with few to no complications. With that being said, most women have the best chance with only transferring one, sometimes 2 depending on the reason for the infertility.

In our case, it was recommended for us to only transfer one embryo unless we were dead set on two. Josh and I both thought about doing two, and we thought about the possibility of twins. It could be a lot of fun, and you get two for the price of one! BUT we decided that we wanted to do what our RE said was going to give us the best chance at a successful transfer and pregnancy. So far all of the steps that we have taken to get where we are have went according to plan and so hopefully one will do it!

I have learned that just because you transfer multiple embryos it does NOT increase the success rate of the transfer, instead it just increases the chance of multiples. Furthermore the more embryos that you transfer the greater the chance of complications throughout your pregnancy if they all implant successfully.

The thought of carrying twins scares me, especially because of my health history. I don't really want to carry two babies in my belly at one time anyway! Ha! And the thought of actually raising twins in the beginning is also really scary... first time parents responsible for TWO lives. You also have double the cost of everything all at one time and that within itself is intimidating!

So with all of that being said, we decided to only transfer one embryo. If, for some reason, this little embaby doesn't make it, it may be recommended to transfer two, but we will always go with the doctors recommendation of what will be best for us! If we are ever blessed with twins, we would be scared but absolutely overjoyed at the opportunity!

Our little Embryos

Life since egg retrieval has been much better than expected! It has definitely been filled with a lot of suspense as we have waited for each call, but recovery wise it has been so good!

I have heard horror stories of recovery post retrieval so I tried to expect and prepare for the worse. The day of the retrieval I had some cramping and discomfort but I didn't have to take any medication for it other than what they gave me at the hospital before I was discharged. I woke up Saturday feeling pretty well and we drove the 4 hours home. By the time I got home I was fairly uncomfortable from the bumps and sitting up for so long. Sunday I took it fairly easy and by Monday I returned to work. I was probably feeling about 90% on Monday and by Tuesday I was feeling 100%!

Saturday I woke up so early and couldn't go back to sleep. I'm sure a lot of that was in anticipation of the phone call from the clinic telling us how many of my eggs were mature and how many fertilized. She called close to 11:00 and told us that out of the 13 eggs that were retrieved, 12 were mature, and 11 (!!!) fertilized!! Both Josh and I were so happy. That is such a great number to start with and gives us really good odds for having enough embryos to work with at the end!

She told me that they would call back on day 5 to let us know how many embryos made it to the blastocyst stage to be able to be frozen for a transfer later on.

Today is Wednesday and I got the call! We have at least EIGHT little 5-day embabies in the freezer waiting for us! 8 is an incredible number and so many more than I could have asked for and more than I dreamed of having. I am over the moon happy and excited! We have 3 embryos that they put back in the incubator for one more day. They have a 50/50 chance to make it to freeze, so we could potentially have as many as 11 embryos waiting for us.... Tomorrow will tell!