Dr Odem take 1

Alright, so today did not disappoint!!!  I was hoping to get a lot of information and a lot of questions answered and I feel like both got accomplished.  I will say that for a consultation, I felt like he would have sat with us forever if we had any more questions!!  Never one time did I feel like we were less important then the people that were already going!!  He took his time and kept answering the questions and also making small talk!!  Really liked him to say the least!!!  I did give him the names of everyone that has told me that they used him throughout their journey (all of which were from Nashville) and he joked asking if we all get together for a coffee group and talk about how great he is.....the answer is no but might be a great idea!!  I am all for a fertility support group because I know that I have a lot of information to share and I am sure some of you know more than me...would be great for people just starting this hard journey of infertility...might be on my bucket list now to start one!! 

Ok so as for this journey I got a lot of great information.  I got pretty good detail of what meds will be required of both Kelly and myself and it really wasn't as extensive as I expected.  If Kelly blogs later she might disagree but I did belly shots, butt shots and pills for my babies that I conceived naturally and carried myself, so I wasn't at all intimidated by the meds.  The screenings were much less of a deal then they sound on paper.  The way the dr explained them, they are basically just getting the box checked that you have done them and really not that big of a deal.  Now for the timeline...if everything went perfect and we hustled we could be transferring in April already!!  Craziness!!  My goal is still to be transferring by summer although I am not sure what Kelly's timeline is so that will basically decide it.  Obviously April would be great but I realize that we have to get all the schedules to come together and summer might be more realistic!! 

Ok now for some statistics because I love that stuff!!!  Basically there aren't stats for successful GC cycles but Dr Odem said he can easily say that we have a greater then 50% chance with the transfer of getting pregnant.  That is better than I thought!!!  He also said that there is a 30-40% chance of having twins in general but his results last year were less than that.  And then a less than 1% chance of triplets.  Well those numbers are all better than I thought!!!  The one that shocked me the most is that only about 15-20% of couples have ANY embryos to freeze!!!!  This seriously shocks me when you think that you may start with 20 follicles.  I guess this is how amazing the human body is and makes you realize how amazing God has designed this process because it all has to be meant to be in order to get pregnant....many factors go into it....even more than you learned in science class (unless you went to school with Dr Odem).  I think that number actually relieved me!!  Yes it would be great to have frozen embryos in case this first cycle doesn't work because a frozen cycle is 1/5 the cost of the original cycle.  However, what happens if it does work?  I'm not going to get into a huge debate about this but I believe that at conception those are babies, so if you freeze them and get pregnant what happens to those embryos.....putting them down the drain is basically abortion however it would be a really hard decision to donate those  and basically give them up for adoption.  You would always know that there is a chance that you AND your husband have a biological child out there that you will never know.  Anyway, that was one of the issues that we struggled with thru this and it does make me feel more settled to know that we probably won't have to worry about it and if we do it isn't going to be like octomom where we will have several frozen....if you are lucky you might have enough for one more cycle. 

Dr Odem took some of my blood today to run a test to see if I have enough eggs to make this worth trying, which he is certain will come back fine.  He also suggested I get checked for the CF gene which I was fine with.  Those tests will be back in about a week and Kelly is suppose to call and schedule a time to see Dr Odem.  He said that as soon as he sees Kelly we can get the contracts drawn up and game on.  Then we have to get STD screenings, meet with a social worker, and Kelly will get an u/s to make sure uterus is good, and basically then we will be ready to start meds and get going. 

Thought I would leave the appointment today overwhelmed but that office made this seem so easy!!!  Pretty great if you ask me!!!  They make it so easy that basically you just have to complete their checklist and let's face it...there isn't too many things that I like better then a to do list to check things off of!!!!!