IVF Surgery Results

After the surgery, the doctor told us that he was able to retrieve 6 eggs.  After he left, I started crying.  Only 6??  ALL that pain, work, effort for just 6 eggs?  I had had 10 follicles going into surgery.

Previously, they had told us the attrition rate is high.  Not every follicle has an egg.  Not every egg will be a mature egg.  And not every egg will fertilize.  So even if you start with a high number of eggs, you still end up with a lower number of embryos.  And we were already starting with a low number.

Our hope was that after going through this IVF cycle of retrieving and freezing my eggs, that we would have enough to try it a couple of times.  They will implant the equivalent of 2 good embryos.  (They rate the eggs according to quality.)  So it might be 2 good quality embryos or 1 good, 2 poor quality embryos that get implanted.  And we had hoped that worst case scenario, if they implanted the first batch, and I didn't get pregnant, that we could try again the next month.   Or best case scenario, even if I DID get pregnant the first round, then we could freeze the remaining eggs and try again for another baby in 2 years.

So, we were really disappointed to hear that our starting number was 6.  (and who knows how many eggs would actually become embryos.)

That was Saturday.  That night was my husband's turn to pray.  He prayed that if possible 5 of the 6 would fertilize and become embryos.  

On Sunday before church, I got a phone call from the embryologist, and miraculously all 6 embryos had fertilized.  So that was our first miracle.   The doctor said that was very rare, and hardly ever happened.   

It got me thinking about prayer.  I know praying is not supposed to be a shopping list... not a wish list.   What I believe is that:

Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings.

So I was trying to figure out what that means for us.  Because I also know that when we pray sometimes the answer is yes.  But sometimes the answer is no.  Or not yet.  So for whatever reason... maybe just to buoy us up during this hard time... Heavenly Father answered our prayers and all 6 embryos fertilized.