Yesterday’s aspiration yielded eight (8) eggs. 

Today, L received a phone call from the fertility clinic indicating how we’ve done thus far. Of the eight (8) collected, seven (7) eggs were mature. That’s pretty good.

Now for the bad news: only two (2) were successfully fertilized.

They’re not what caused the poor performance. L’s eggs looked good and were in the desired quantity. Likewise, my sperm “cleared” yesterday in terms of having sufficient quantity and quality. What is more, ICSI, which we opted for due to my “borderline normal” semenalysis results, should have resulted in a higher success rate… but, needless to say, something didn’t quite go as expected.

Given these results, we’re now queued up for a Day 3 transfer on Friday. My hope is that the two good embryos continue as such until Friday. If so, and they’re of top quality, the odds of success are still fairly high (perhaps 35-40% for a live birth per embryo).

Bottom line: these odds are still infinitely better than with L’s blocked tubes (the primary source of our difficulties). And, I’ve always stressed that we should think of Cycle #1 as a “trial run.” 

Nonetheless, you’re always hopeful that you’ll get lucky (which we still might) and thus are disappointed when obstacles (whether real or imagined) appear. Putting this cycle’s eventual outcome aside, we’re mostly fearful of what (if anything) this portends for the future. That is to say, is something else “wrong” with one of us?

Tags: In Vitro Fertilization