Embryo transfer and freezing

Embryo transfer was set for Friday morning. My acupuncturist recommended at least 1 treatment that day so I ended up taking the whole day off work. I know from IUIs and the mock transfer that I can have pretty bad cramping after intrauterine procedures, and would end up being at work for just over 4 hours (over lunch so even less work time) so it just made sense to take the day off so I could relax at home.

My husband also took the day off so we put on our matching-ish Game of Thrones t-shirts to go for the embryo transfer. I had to drink 2-3 cups of water 1 hour prior to transfer, and I actually measured it out to make sure I had enough, but not too much so I wouldn’t have to pee too badly.

Once we got to the clinic it was back into the nightgown, shoe covers and hair cap for me, and the shoe covers, gown, hair cap and mask for my husband. The transfer was performed in the same room (and even same position on the table) as the retrieval. No meds for the transfer. The embryologist came in first to talk to us about the embryo. We had one day excellent looking 5 day blastocyst that was already hatching to transfer. The embryologist said that four of our blasts looked great and would be frozen that day. The other two needed another day of growing before they could be ready for freezing. The embryologist was sure at least one would be ready to freeze but she wasn’t sure about the second one.

The RE came in once the nurses and embryologist had everything ready. One nurse worked the abdominal ultrasound to visualize my uterus while the embryo was placed and the other nurse assisted the RE. The RE inserted a speculum and then cleaned my cervix to make sure no bacteria were transferred into my uterus. Then he treaded in the catheter and once it was in position the embryologist brought in the embryo. We could sort of see it get placed in my uterus. The embryologist checked that the embryo had been transferred before the RE removed the speculum.

We got a picture of the embryo and a picture of my uterus with the air bubbles around the embryo visible, which is pretty freaking cool.

The day after the embryo transfer we got the call from the lab that both embryos were ready to freeze which means that we have 6 embryos in the freezer, and that all 7 of our embryos made it!

Acupuncture

When you are struggling to conceive you start to try every single crazy thing that could help you get pregnant – green tea to increase your fertile cervical mucus, red raspberry leaf tea for increase your uterine lining – pomegranate juice, more vitamins, more supplements, eating special food, avoiding certain things, changing your personal care items, changing your cleaning supplies and food storage containers – pretty much, you name it, someone struggling to conceive has tried it. One thing that comes up frequently is acupuncture for infertility. If you look it up on Google you will find testimonials from people that claim that they got pregnant shortly after starting acupuncture, so I decided to look in to it.

First, I was very practical and looked up how much an acupuncture session would cost and if this would be covered by either mine or my husband’s insurance. Acupuncture sessions vary in cost from $60-$150+, so it’s not cheap. My insurance will cover $500 of acupuncture, at 80% per visit and my husband’s will cover 20 sessions at 80%, so it won’t cost me too much to try acupuncture.

I then started researching if it’s actually going to improve my chances of getting pregnant with IVF. I’m not a fan of needles so the idea of paying someone to stick needles into me when it isn’t medically necessary wasn’t appealing.

There were a lot of papers on PubMed discussing acupuncture and IVF. I decided to just focus on review articles because I’m very busy being a post-doc and didn’t have time to go through each study individually. I was actually surprised by the research that I found. While the results are inconsistent, the overall conclusion is that acupuncture has no positive or negative impact on IVF success rates up to acupuncture in combination with Traditional Chinese Medicine having a 2-fold or more increase in IVF success rates. Based on this alone, I was sold. If we’re already paying $10,000+ for IVF, we might as well take advantage of our insurance coverage and pay about $15/week to try to increase the odds of success.

I found an acupuncture clinic that specializes in infertility and has hours and a location that are convenient for me and booked an appointment. I’ve had 2 sessions so far and I’m really not sure what to think. I do not enjoy getting the needles stuck in me, and I have a hard time believing that it’s actually going to help get me pregnant, but I have had minimal bleeding during my luteal phase this cycle, so it seems like acupuncture is doing something.