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February - a month of rest

After the egg retrieval surgery happened and my embryos got frozen, February was my month of resting. I went back to my normal life with no restrictions, I started yoga and went back to swimming. My work life also came to a stable ground with me not taking too much sick time off. There was nothing to do related to the IVF process, and my body got time to heal.

Here's where I will discuss the frozen embryo transfer process and compare that with the fresh embryo transfer. There are different medical reasons to choose the frozen process, but from a layman's perspective, and also as one undergoing it, I also prefer the frozen process. 

1. The body gets time to heal. If I had to do a fresh transfer, that would be 3 days after my egg retrieval. That means my ovaries were sore, still healing from the process, and I was still EXTREMELY bloated. I could barely walk to the bathroom. Going through another process at that time, that is so much taxing on the uterus and my general health would not be helpful.

2. Frozen transfer gives enough time for genetic testing. 3 days is not enough for genetic testing, so if I went through a fresh cycle, it could be possible that a better quality but chromosomally abnormal embryo to be transferred. That makes a miscarriage almost a sure event. Or I could end up with and embryo with chromosomal trisomy which causes genetic defects. A frozen transfer gives enough time to rule out the defective ones.

I do believe in quality of life more than just giving birth, so yes, theoretically we are destroying embryos (or giving them up in labs for research), but I have no religious binding so I would much rather focus on quality than quantity. Also, we chose to donate the abnormal embryos and non-formed eggs to labs for future research. Because the *only* way to advance us scientifically is through research. It is because of many people's donated embryos that we have come thus far.

PS: I had a water ultrasound on 02/14 (yes, 14th, and then we went to eat out) to make sure my uterus was as expected. They checked the uterine lining and for abnormalities in the uterus, which I am glad to say I had none of.

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