inseminate them, and at the same time, thaw the frozen eggs, inseminate them too.
âWhy not just use the frozen?
âYou get more with both.
âIâve already got five frozen so why do I need more?
âUp to you.
âIs there a difference between fresh and frozen?
âThere are no second-class children.
âI mean, is one more viable than the other?
âNot much difference.
âOK, Iâll just do frozen.
âWhatever you want. Thatâs reasonable.
Up to you. Pick your own misadventure.
Coffee. At the orientation the dietary advice I received from the clinic was to moderate my coffee and alcohol intake and take folic acid, 500 mcg daily. I asked what was âmoderateâ and was told one cup a day would be fine. A million websites and bulletin boards advised no coffee. They also advised countless other things. Stay alkaline. Wear a lead-lined apron on airplanes. Avoid bananas. I decided to cut out coffee completely. After three months of IVF failure I reverted back to one cup a day. I trawled the Internet and found the study about caffeine . . . it concluded that five cups a day was to be discouraged. Sometimes I felt guilty when I had my morning coffee: what if this coffee was the one thing between me and pregnancy? Most times I thought if one coffee a day kills my chance that dear embryo-darling wasnât strong enough to last the nine months anyway. I oscillated between guilt and pragmatism, and that movement, that kinetic energy, helped drive the little engine of endurance.
I saw Paul at the pool. Vampire! Monster! I swam as if I were drowning, thrashing the water, wild-armed, wrenching my head from side to side. I moved fast. No chance to ruminate. At the end of each lap I paused to catch my breath. Exhausted.
The month after the second failed IUI I readied for a frozen egg cycle at an out-of-pocket cost of AU$2,705 (US$2,597). Again I was monitored closely so that we could time the transfer of the embryo to be in sync with my natural cycle. The frozen eggs would be thawed and artificially inseminated the day I naturally ovulated. I was told that three out of five eggs had survived the thaw and they had been injected with sperm selected under digital high-magnification by a scientist, a procedure called intracytoplasmic sperm injection or ICSI. Actually I always did ICSIâthe doctors never recommended straight IVF, which is where the sperm fight it out in the Petri dish en route to the egg. ICSI cost an additional $730 (US$701) which in the scheme of things felt nominal (how quickly the scales transmogrify). Later I read a study that questioned why so many doctors always recommended ICSI, speculating there may be some benefit to a stronger, fitter sperm fighting its way to the egg in the Petri dish, just as it did under the auspices of Mother Nature. Overnight one embryo showed developmentâbut it was atypical. âIt contains three pieces of genetic information.â Three pieces of genetic information! The nurse told me that it couldnât be transferred. My sister and I joked about dirty pipettes but in fact my egg haddivided abnormally and carried an extra set of chromosomes. The nurse had further bad news: my remaining two embryos had shown no development. They would be kept another night and checked in the morning to see if there were any changes: I was warned this was unlikely but not impossible. I had been out on a boat that day, up and down, up and down, rolling on the heavy swell, and come evening I had full-blown vertigo. If I dipped my chin an inch to look at a screen I felt as if I were about to pitch face-first off a cliff. The next morning, in my vertiginous state, I got the polite, carefully delivered news that there were no signs of improvement. All five embryos were to be âdiscarded.â All fiveâgone, tossed away, discarded . For a long moment I was silent and then I quietly asked the lab assistant, âYou definitely destroy
âWhy not just use the frozen?
âYou get more with both.
âIâve already got five frozen so why do I need more?
âUp to you.
âIs there a difference between fresh and frozen?
âThere are no second-class children.
âI mean, is one more viable than the other?
âNot much difference.
âOK, Iâll just do frozen.
âWhatever you want. Thatâs reasonable.
Up to you. Pick your own misadventure.
Coffee. At the orientation the dietary advice I received from the clinic was to moderate my coffee and alcohol intake and take folic acid, 500 mcg daily. I asked what was âmoderateâ and was told one cup a day would be fine. A million websites and bulletin boards advised no coffee. They also advised countless other things. Stay alkaline. Wear a lead-lined apron on airplanes. Avoid bananas. I decided to cut out coffee completely. After three months of IVF failure I reverted back to one cup a day. I trawled the Internet and found the study about caffeine . . . it concluded that five cups a day was to be discouraged. Sometimes I felt guilty when I had my morning coffee: what if this coffee was the one thing between me and pregnancy? Most times I thought if one coffee a day kills my chance that dear embryo-darling wasnât strong enough to last the nine months anyway. I oscillated between guilt and pragmatism, and that movement, that kinetic energy, helped drive the little engine of endurance.
I saw Paul at the pool. Vampire! Monster! I swam as if I were drowning, thrashing the water, wild-armed, wrenching my head from side to side. I moved fast. No chance to ruminate. At the end of each lap I paused to catch my breath. Exhausted.
The month after the second failed IUI I readied for a frozen egg cycle at an out-of-pocket cost of AU$2,705 (US$2,597). Again I was monitored closely so that we could time the transfer of the embryo to be in sync with my natural cycle. The frozen eggs would be thawed and artificially inseminated the day I naturally ovulated. I was told that three out of five eggs had survived the thaw and they had been injected with sperm selected under digital high-magnification by a scientist, a procedure called intracytoplasmic sperm injection or ICSI. Actually I always did ICSIâthe doctors never recommended straight IVF, which is where the sperm fight it out in the Petri dish en route to the egg. ICSI cost an additional $730 (US$701) which in the scheme of things felt nominal (how quickly the scales transmogrify). Later I read a study that questioned why so many doctors always recommended ICSI, speculating there may be some benefit to a stronger, fitter sperm fighting its way to the egg in the Petri dish, just as it did under the auspices of Mother Nature. Overnight one embryo showed developmentâbut it was atypical. âIt contains three pieces of genetic information.â Three pieces of genetic information! The nurse told me that it couldnât be transferred. My sister and I joked about dirty pipettes but in fact my egg haddivided abnormally and carried an extra set of chromosomes. The nurse had further bad news: my remaining two embryos had shown no development. They would be kept another night and checked in the morning to see if there were any changes: I was warned this was unlikely but not impossible. I had been out on a boat that day, up and down, up and down, rolling on the heavy swell, and come evening I had full-blown vertigo. If I dipped my chin an inch to look at a screen I felt as if I were about to pitch face-first off a cliff. The next morning, in my vertiginous state, I got the polite, carefully delivered news that there were no signs of improvement. All five embryos were to be âdiscarded.â All fiveâgone, tossed away, discarded . For a long moment I was silent and then I quietly asked the lab assistant, âYou definitely destroy
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