I’ve been posting a lot of doom and gloom lately so I thought I’d give y’all a break. Break’s over.

My donor only produced 12 eggs. And while 12 isn’t awful, it isn’t great, especially with a young donor. And certainly it was lower than my expectations. Especially since the girls on my board were coming back with numbers like 21 and 25. But, ok, it’s not quantity it’s quality right? And donors have good quality eggs, that’s why we choose them. And a good way to assess quality is fertilization rate with ICSI (according to many papers in different journals). Average fertilization rate with ICSI is 70-80%. Anything below 50% seems to be an indicator of poor egg quality. In fact, I found a study by Rinaudo et al., 2010 (Fertilization rate is an independent predictor of implantation rate)  that shows that fertilization rate is a robust indictor of implantation potential. If less than 50% of your eggs fertilize (using ICSI) there is a 65% decrease in the chances of implantation.

6 eggs fertilized. 6 out of 12. That would be 50%.

For fun, lets continue our little math tutorial. If we assume I originally had a 50% of conceiving during this cycle but that the fertilization rate indicates sub-par egg quality and thus my odds are decreased by a further 65% that gives me a 17.5% chance of pregnancy. That’s about $2000 per percent, in case you’re keeping track. However, not only are the eggs (apparently) not of the highest quality, there aren’t that many of them, which further decreases the odds of a positive outcome. Grrrrrrrr…..

I’m holding on to the hope that the embryologist can answer some of my questions (he’s supposed to call today), because they didn’t tell me how many eggs were mature, which makes a difference. For example, if only 8 of the 12 were mature, and if 6 of those 8 fertilized there may not be a quality problem. That would be more of a protocol issue – why weren’t there more mature eggs? Which means there would be much more hope for the few we have left.

In any case, they’ve scheduled me for 2 transfers – one for tomorrow at 12:30 and one for Sunday at 10:30, because, why the hell not make things even MORE complicated!? If they don’t call it means I have to report tomorrow, which means most of the embryos didn’t progress and they are afraid to wait to put the other/s back in (make the patient feel like they get their money’s worth, I guess). If they do call that means all of them are progressing and we’ll wait to do a 5dt.

I’ll keep you updated.

**A sincere thank you to everyone who has been commenting on my blog lately. Your humor, understanding and support have been truly incredible and I am humbled and grateful.**