WTF

a.k.a "What?  They're Forty?"

Yup I have the eggs of a forty year old according to my RE.   They had darker centers.  There were a lot of empty follicles.  They died before they made it to blasts.    These are things commonly found in older women.

Sweet.

Oh, yeah...DH's sperm had lots of white blood cells we hadn't seen before.  

Sweeter.

As I was hearing this, basically being told this is even more of an uphill battle than we previously thought...it hit me that I was in the exact same office, the exact same chair, looking out the exact same window that I was when we first heard we probably needed IVF.

I cried both times.  But now I cried as an IVF veteran.  One of "those women".  The failures. 

Needless to say I stress ate like a mo-fo last night.

We have a plan.  DH will get  more tests.  I will get more tests.  When we do IVF again it will be without Lupron....maybe it's the lupron making my eggs so shitty.

I also learned some interesting things.  Of the 12 mature eggs we had 8(!) matured in the lab.  Perhaps we triggered too early?

I was told there were 7 fertilized.  Well another 4 fertilized later.

I was told we had 5 eggs on day 3.  We actually had more.  

Everything looked great, the stims, the follicle growth, the E2 levels, the retrival.  There was no way to know how f-ed up we are.

I also learned my early bleeding could have been a VERY early miscarriage/chemical pregnancy.  And that the blast they transferred was a Grade C.

I'm glad it was a Grade C.  It takes a way a little of the guilt I have that if I didn't rush off to a plane...if I didn't pick up their dog....if I wasn't so stressed....maybe that egg would have stuck around.  But there is still some guilt there.

I know this will eventually work.  But it is going to take a long time and a lot of money.

I don't know how much of either I can spend.  It isn't limitless.  

I need a break.  Fortunately we are in one.