After the retrieval on day zero, Monday, things were completely out of our hands for the next five days. Our only job was to sit by the pool and relax. For the next five days, it was up to our little eggs and the donor semen we chose to fertilize and begin developing into embryos. There are many stages that they will go through and this was perhaps where I felt the most lost when reading along in ivf/fertility forums online. Everyday the name of the entity, the would be baby, was changing based on small little developments. From the follicles the eggs are retrieved. Eleven eggs were retrieved in our case, but it wasn’t until day one, Tuesday, that we would find out that six were mature oocytes (eggs) and at the stage where they could be fertilized. ICSI (Intracytoplasmic sperm injection) was performed on the six oocytes, which means they injected one healthy looking swimmer into each mature egg individually for fertilization. Five of our oocytes became zygotes when the egg and the sperm (gametes) fertilized successfully. Each gamete contains only half of the genetic code for a zygote, and when the egg is successfully fertilized it will contain two cells with complete genetic code, or twenty-six chromosomes. That was the day one report we received by email from Dr. T. We were told on the day of retrieval that they don’t disturb the developing embryos unless necessary, and there would be no day two report.

On Thursday, came the day three report. The zygotes were now developing and dividing further and were now embryos. Five of the original six were developing on day three; one of seven cells, two of eight cells, and two of nine cells. It was also reported that they ranged from five to fifteen percent fragmentation. That means that in the embryo stage the cells were not all exactly the same size, and the lower the fragmentation the better. The jury is still out on what fragmentation is exactly, and what causes it. It’s assumed to be detritus from cells, or perhaps a cell that didn’t develop properly and died. What is clear from the literature is that highly fragmented embryos, >30% have a much lower rate of implantation than lower fragmented ones, and so we were glad to see that they seemed healthy thus far. With the news that five embryos were progressing as planned, we scheduled the transfer date for day five.

The next report would be received immediately prior to the transfer on Saturday, day five. Since A* would have to be fasting from 10PM the night before the transfer, we decided to head for our last night on the town and an early birthday celebration after receiving the day three news. We went to Coco Bongo, a famous night club/show in the Hotel Zone of Cancún. The show was amazing with dancing, comedy, trapeze artists and a little bit of girls gone wild from the spring break crowd. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, but we did sneak out early as we are soon-to-be moms after all. Okay, I’m not fooling anyone – we left at 3AM (hey, it’s technically before they close) and hauled ass to the taco stand before flagging down a cab to whisk us home.