IVF = In Vitro Fears

Today is not a productive day. I keep getting distracted every 5 minutes, googling up things like "IVF blogs" and "IVF success rates." It's day 4 since my IVF cycle officially started, and I'm getting a little antsy. I keep counting in my head when the potential transfer day may be... I don't know yet. That's the problem with fertility treatments - you honestly don't know when and how things happen, even in a completely planned process like IVF. I don't know how some couples manage to do this given a crazy schedule; I am very thankful for a fairly flexible schedule in academia that allows me to do this. So we take one day at a time and we simply go with the flow.

But I digress. As the title of this blog post goes, I started imagining some of the things that could go wrong in this process. Seems to be my go-to defense mechanism. So here are my top ten IVFs (witty comment included):

1. "maybe I won't have any follicles and/or eggs by the time of retrieval" (unlikely, but as Justin Bieber says, never say never)

2. having a needle probe vaginally and then having my eggs sucked out in a needle (**major IVF)

3. "what if they poked them too hard and my best egg breaks?"(I didn't say this was a rational list)

4. "what if there were NO good eggs?" (10% of women don't produce mature enough eggs, and I seem to always be in the statistic of being 10% of everything)

5. "what if none of the eggs decide to fertilize?" (all I can say is DH's boys better bring their A game that day and my girls practice their Malaysian hospitality)

6. and the flip side: "what if ALL of the eggs decide to fertilize and they're ALL good eggs? Who gets to be picked or who doesn't?"

So we only get to transfer two; the rest can be cryopreserved, donated to another couple, donated to science, or unfortunately, discarded. It seems like a moral issue to us but at the same time, we're both realists. So even after multiple discussions, we honestly don't know what we are going to do about this yet.

7. "what if we have multiples?" 
We'd love to have twins, but triplets or more could be a real issue for us. The risk of multiples go up in IVFs. Check out this couple. I wish we are just 1/4 as lucky as this couple... we only need one!

8. "what if it doesn't stick?" 
Our fertility clinic publishes these summary reports to determine the success rates of IVF. As you can see, the percentage for live births for women under 35 is 65%, which is phenomenal. So I know we are in good hands. But, what if it doesn't stick?

9. "If I do get pregnant, what if there are complications with the pregnancy?" (I guess this question goes with any pregnancy, IVF or not)

10. "What if this cycle fails and I have to do this all over again?" (Honestly, this may be my biggest fear).

So I guess it's true to say that we hope for the best but best prepare for the worst.