Life of the Book Hacker

Well here we are. In short? I had some bad eggs.  So, I am once again dealing with the guilt of my body being to blame.  (I'll say, it's getting harder and harder to love my body when it keeps screwing things up.) BUT. Yes, dear reader, there is a but. Poor egg quality is treatable.  "You're born with all the eggs you'll ever have. How can you improve quality?" Welllll...... It's possible to beef up the eggs (😂😂😂😂) My RE (reproductive endocrinologist aka fertility doctor aka baby dust queen) said that she didn't expect poor quality eggs from me.  I'm 31.  Prime egg years, apparently.  She didn't think this would be an issue for me, or else we would have started with this protocol. Prescription:  600mg CoQ10 daily (6 pills) 25mcg DHEA 3x/daily (3 pills) 4mg Folate daily (4 pills) This combo has been shown to act like super-soldier serum  when taken for at least three months. Yes, I just comp...

I'm a failure. You had one job, eggs.  Stupid, stupid eggs. If had just gotten knocked up in high school, I might know what it's like to hold my own baby in my arms.  Maybe God doesn't want me to become a mother.  What if I'm never going to hold my own baby in my arms? What if nobody ever loves me like that? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was a rough *ROUGH* day.  I woke up so excited and anxious.  I have 1st period conference and some of my seniors have that class period off, so they'll come to my room as sort of a study-hall. A student I'll call Suzy was using my classroom for this purpose at the time. I sat at my desk, typing away at lesson plans and grades.  Then my phone rang. I was so thrilled.  In my mind, there was a 100% chance this was going to be the greatest phone call of my life. All of the anguish was almost over. The emotional and physical pain will all h...

  So egg retrieval sucks. The experience really wasn't bad. Recovery's been a pain. Folks want me to get down to the egg-y details, or the "yolk" if you will.  The Yolk They harvested 12 eggs, 9 of which were mature and were able to be fertilized.  A lot of people have asked me about this part. Do they just put the eggs in a petri dish and then put Paul's sperm in and swirl them around and hope for the best?  Sometimes that's the case, but we're doing what's called ICSI (i ntracytoplasmic sperm injection). ICSI means my doctor injects a sperm into each egg to fertilize it. That happens on day one, right after egg retrieval.  https://www.utahfertility.com/understanding-embryo-grading/ Ideally, development goes as follows: Day 1- Fertilization Day 1- 2 cells Day 2- 4 cells Day 3- 8 cells Day 4- 16 cells/morula) Day 5- Blastocyst https://www.drmalpani.com/blogs/blastocystimages Then a couple cells will be t...