Home at last

Well we arrived home from Sydney 6 days ago, I've been putting off the next post because it just seemed too daunting.

As you see, Sir Salvador Sturgeonduck had a great time!

My E2 levels rose VERY nicely - 173, 1547, 4000, 11000! At our last scan, they thought we'd still need to stim a few days, but once they got the oestradiol numbers back - Hell no, you're going to retrieval on monday and we're dropping your dose of meds right down. By the way, we're worried about OHSS, so drink 3 litres of water each day too. Basically my FSH dose got progressively lower for the final 5 days of stims, and considering it was only 10 days of stimming in total - that's pretty darned good for me!

We also had an appointment with the specialist to discuss K's pathology resuts, and he thought it was worth doing a testicular biopsy to try and find us some sperm. Wow. Obviously no guarantees on embryo quality, but considering this was potentially one of our last cycles, we figured we'd pull out all the stops. The donor sperm was there as backup in case they couldn't get sperm on the day.

We retrieved 27 eggs.

Of those, 19 were mature and suitable for ICSI, and they found 19 sperm suitable to fertilise!

10 fertilised normally, and on day 5, we had two perfect AA blasts, and one AB (the inner cell mass that becomes the baby was graded A, the trophoderm that becomes the placenta was graded B). We transferred one AA, and froze the other two.

Kieran was feeling a little better by day5 - still pretty sore, but rather proud of himself and his embies! I found ER really easy, despite having produced a veritable truckload of eggs, recovered well, no signs of OHSS.

Beta is now only 2 days away, and its 14dpo. So I'm debating testing at home early - I have symptoms just like last time, but that ended as a chemical, so I'm scared to see two lines and have that dashed in 48h. At the same time, I'll be at work all day Wednesday, so its going to be torture! If I get lines, I can justify doing the test tomorrow!

All in all, Sydney was a fruitful experience - we would never have gotten results like this with our old clinic, and never with Kieran's sperm. It was a big decision to go ahead with that rather than the donor. There were all the questions on whether a baby might have the same kind of problems as Kieran has had, and even though medicine has advanced considerably, its still a lot to go through, when it might not be necessary. But we felt we needed to tick all the boxes - the ability to give a child the certainty of where they came from was something we weighed against the possible health risks. It made for an interesting few days.

And we managed some sight seeing in Sydney. Sir Salvador had great fun visiting the Chinese Gardens at Darling Harbour, Centrepoint, the french patisserie around the corner from the hotel we stayed at, Hyde park, St Mary's. He's clocking up some frequent flyer points!

The sun shines down....

Indeed, someone is smiling on us from above today.

Kieran got the pathology results from his TESE back today - he does not, I repeat, not, have Sertoli-cell only syndrome. There are good numbers of primary spermatocytes (baby baby sperm), progressing through to rare mature spermatids (almost grown up sperm). My, this is unexpected.

In my hasty research this evening, it looks like it could be hypospermatogenesis - so there are mature forms there, but they're rare as hen's teeth. Or, spermatogenic arrest, but that could still be managable, maybe just maybe.

So, with our donor sperm safely in Sydney, it may end up relegated to "understudy". My word, the thought of actually being able to have my husband's baby is just weird now. Perfectly, beautifully, gloriously weird. I'm excited, but still a little scared, in case IVF specialist says that our chances are still slim. Right now though, I've never been so happy another doctor was wrong.

The lotus I planted way back when seems to have introduced some lovely fertile vibes to our home. The fish are flourishing, and from 2 females, we've gone to dozens of small fry, since both were pregnant. Now I have to work out how to stop them from breeding. I'm hoping those baby vibes will rub off onto me and Kieran.

Oh, and Kieran is adjusting to his new life as a non-smoker now that "the boys" are probably going to be put to work. And the catheter came out today with no problems, but he's a little sore and sorry.

Its so nice to have something good to report.