Frequently asked questions

I thought I would take a post to answer a few of the questions that have appeared recently by email or as a comment here. Have a burning question? Ask away. Chances are someone else is wanting to know, too. I'll try to answer as soon as I can.

1. Could we put up a pregnancy ticker to make things easier for you guys to follow along? I actually have two pregnancy tickers tucked down at the bottom of the blog page. I suppose I could put another one much higher up (gulp). How about this - I will think about it. Does the placement make a big difference to you? (Oh wait, I'm supposed to answer questions here, not ask! But let me know, anyway).

2. Are we still considering using a surrogate - not as a back-up plan but as a way to add to our family in addition to the baby we are already carrying? Good question. The answer is no, not right now. We hope to be very lucky and maybe have our hands full come this fall with this little one (fingers crossed). The embryos we have remaining are not very good quality anyway (although they are chromosomally normal). I don't have high hopes that they could make a baby. But if things turn out ok with me this pregnancy, I would imagine that I will try to carry any pregnancy that could potentially result from them.

3. Did the technician doing the nuchal give us a guess on the baby's gender? Nope. We didn't ask and she didn't offer. I think it's early to see the gender at this point by ultrasound. Will and I are thinking it might be a girl. But we shall see...

4. What is our guess on why we transferred three chromosomally normal blasts but only got pregnant with one, particularly since this time we have the immune issues taken care of?  Ooh. Another good question. Your guess is as good as mine, but here's my guess anyway. I think it takes a lot more than normal chromosomes to make a baby. And given our track record (110 eggs retrieved through all our IVFs....and this is the farthest along we've gotten...), I'm betting we have some other issues that make our embryos less likely to grow into living children. Like maybe mitochondria or other non-genetic but still lethal problems when the cells try to divide and replicate. It's also possible that even with the immune treatments, my uterus is still not the easiest place to implant. It would be interesting to get Dr. Schl.'s thoughts, but this is my best guess.

Ok, that's it for now. I'm tired, and I'm also out of time. More to come, soon. Thank you guys for all of your thoughts and encouragement - you have no idea how helpful you are.

Mo

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