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Today is trigger day! Woohoo! This morning I kissed the hubby goodbye on my way out the door to my monitoring appointment and asked him to say a little prayer that we were good to go, and it must have worked because Dr. J announced that everything looked great and we’re ready to do the trigger! I have 6 follicles measuring between 19 to 21 mm and a few stragglers that will hopefully catch up by Monday. We’ll see what we actually get at the retrieval, but 6 is still a pretty good number since we already have the 5 frozen fertilized eggs from our retrieval in September. Praying it will be enough to get us to 5-day blast and have at least one healthy embryo after PGD!

I’m so relieved we’re ready to trigger. Aside from the obvious relief of moving forward to the next step, I’m beyond ready to be done with the injections. I did the usual Lupron shot this morning and then 1 last vial of Menopur and 200 units of Follistim at the clinic to give my follicles that extra boost for final maturation, and then at exactly 8:15 this evening we’ll do the trigger shot, Ovidrel, and then we’re done with this phase!

The Next Steps

Our egg retrieval is set for 7:15 on Monday morning. If all goes well and we fertilize enough eggs, then we’ll thaw the 5 fertilized eggs we already have and grow the first round embryos and embryos from this round to 5-day blast. I’m afraid to pray for too much, so just hoping that a good amount of embryos survive to 5-day blast for PGD and that we have at least one healthy embryo after PGD to transfer. Please, please, please!

If all these steps go well, then we’ll freeze the healthy embyo(s) and wait a couple of cycles to transfer. I’m hoping to transfer the next cycle, but I think with the Holidays, I’ll end up being postponed until January. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I can relax during Christmas and New Years, without worrying about having a successful transfer, and the dreaded two week wait, but on the other hand, I really just want to move forward right away! As mentioned in a previous post, Dr. J doesn’t recommend transferring right away. He has been finding that the success rate of direct transfer of a fresh embryo on day 6 has a lower success rate of implantation even when the embryos are found to have normal chromosomes after PGD because the survival rate of the embryo diminishes greatly after 5-day blast in the lab. There are too many cells at that point and the embryo needs more support than the lab can offer, so their survival rate isn’t as high when they continue to grow in the lab after day 5, and the earliest we can transfer after PGD is day 6. Also, the hormones we are given to have a strong ovulation can make the uterus inhospitable for implantation. So these are two major problems that can cause an unsuccessful transfer. After everything, I would be devastated to have a healthy embryo after PGD, and then not get pregnant because of one of the reasons above. So for now, we’re just praying for a healthy embryo. We’ll see what happens in the New Year.