What’s Next?

Thank you all for the love on my last post! I didn’t realize you were all waiting to hear what was going on with me. I tried writing that post so many times, but I just wasn’t ready mentally. But I’m so glad I finally did because you make a girl feel so loved!

So once I made the decision that I wanted to give it a go with my mosaic embryo, I had to go about the business of actually moving the frozen embryo from my one clinic to the new clinic.

I was very thankful for my old doctor, who when she told me it was it mosaic and they wouldn’t transfer it, that I needed to call the lab ASAP to make sure they didn’t destroy the embryo. I did that the SAME day, and thankfully the lab didn’t do anything with it until I gave them further instructions.

The process of moving a microscopic thing is not a simple thing. There are a lot of forms to fill out and authorizations and doing this all during a global pandemic doesn’t make it any easier.

My old clinic is connected to a hospital, so it shut everything done, fertility treatment-wise, once the shutdown started. I think some people who were in the middle of doing the stimming meds were allowed to do their retrieval, but no new ones and everything was put on hold. So they weren’t even really open.

It was a lot of back and forth between the lab lady at the old clinic and the lab guy at the new clinic. It was like playing a game of telephone. But finally at the beginning of May, I was able to move the embryo.

There were some other ridiculous costs associated with this. Namely, renting the tank to transport it. I could have had a company do it, but it would have been close to $1,000. Or I could do it myself for $100.

Clearly I decided to do it myself.

I rented a car because I wasn’t about to transport this giant tank across the city via Uber or public transit.

(I was very thankful for this small, not insanely heavy tank, because in my head, it was 10 times the size of this and I was going to need a dolly to move it myself.)

Because my old clinic wasn’t really up and running, I had to pick up the tank at 8 and return it by 10. So I was there as soon as possible to pick it up. There were more forms, and verifying my identity, and then I was off. I strapped the tank in and we were ready to drive across the City.

We got to the clinic and I felt like I was on a game show as I was waiting for them to process everything and worrying about getting back by 10 AM. But I didn’t have to worry. Everything was done quickly and I got the tank back and got my $500 deposit back.

Once they had the embryo, I reached out to the doctor about getting ready to transfer the embryo now into my uterus. There were a lot more hoops to jump through. I had to sign a lot of paperwork acknowledging I was transferring this mosaic embryo at my own risk. I had to have a call with a genetic counselor to discuss my embryo.

(Just a side note on all this: I have done A LOT of research on mosaic embryos. I’m in several FB groups, I’ve spent months Googling chromosomes and issues and all of this. I know there is a low chance of this embryo actually resulting in a live birth. But the odds are not ZERO, so there is a chance. And there is a lot of recent studies, and plenty of women in these FB groups, who have had a live birth with a perfectly healthy baby. So while I understand why they want me to do all this counseling, I also didn’t make this decision lightly.)

So that’s where we are at this moment. I went in on Tuesday for blood work to get some updated labs done (I had done a lot of them over a year ago and they needed to be current), and it was also to test my progesterone to make sure I had ovulated and was ready to start. I had, so we’re on our way!

Next steps are to wait for my period. Then I’ll go in for a baseline ultrasound. Then once my period is over, we’ll go about building up my uterine lining, with lots of estrogen. Once it gets to optimal thickness, we’ll mimic ovulation and then drop that embryo in my cushy uterus.

And I can’t wait to show him our first photo together.