It was a dark and stormy night ... part deux ... (He Said)

We didn't think too much about it, but if for some reason people outside of our immediate family happen accross this little space on the "interweb" ... some background might be in order.

Nancy and I were married nearly five years ago down in at the Ocean Cliff hotel in Newport, Rhode Island. Since that time, we've continued our careers here in Boston with Nancy at Partners Healthcare and myself at Monster.com.

As far as IVF goes, we've been through it 4 times before our current cycle. Twice at Brigham and Women's Hospital and twice at the Fertility Center of New England. Unfortunately, none of those cycles resulted in a pregancy carried to term.

Our first bite at the apple did result in a pregnancy, but around week 10 or 11 the fates decided it wasn't our time. With our other cycles, things just didn't work out, so we decided it was time to give Donor Egg a shot. After having gone through cycles at 2 different facilities, I do have to say that returning to BWH was an easy decision although the folks at FCNE were great.

We did some investigation and found a local attorney (Robert Nichols) specializing in this sort of thing and so we went for a meeting. We felt very comfortable and decided not to look any further.

After that, it was actually quite some time before we found a donor. A little over a year I think. At some point a few months ago, Nancy found a donor she liked on Nichols' Web site, and we decided it was time to take the plunge.

That was nearly 3 months ago, and now we are most certainly in the thick of it. As mentioned before, our donor provided plenty of eggs, we've already gone through a transfer, and we've got embryos left for a few more cycles.

At some point, Nancy will come on and describe the protocol she's been on for any IVF heads out there (and initiate the "She Said" side of this blog!), but right now we're just at 1ml of Progesterone every night for 12 weeks. While I'm sure Nancy has it the worst in that one, I still get nervous every time I prepare the needle. Anyway, that's a blog for a different day ...

... and did I mention we have photos of the embryos? I'll have to get those posted. I'll bet that none of the other kids at school will have baby pictures taken as early as these puppies!

That's what he said anyway ...

It was a dark and stormy night ... tap, tap, tap ... is this thing on???? (He Said)

Well, here we we are!

Nancy and I thought it might be fun to blog our adventures with IVF. Well, maybe fun is the wrong word, how about interesting :). In any case, this will serve as our little electronic diary of the events leading up to and (hopefully) including the birth of our first child.

As far as the events leading up to now ...

On March 16th, our sweetheart of a donor (that's what all of the nurses call her) did us a serious solid, providing 44 eggs (41 mature) for our cycle!

31 of those eggs fertilized, and 15 were immediately frozen per the protocol we're using at Brigham and Women's.

On March 19th, two eggs were transferred. We were thinking it might be three, but the embryos were of really good quality (8:1 and 8:0, where the first number is the cell count and the second number is a fragmentation score; 0-4, where 0 is the best or no fragmentation).

AND ... as it turns out, they also were able to freeze 9 of the remaining Day 3 embryos! So, regardless of what happens, we have 24 embryos in stasis for another round.

And that brings us up to date!

That's what he said anyway ...