I received an email yesterday from the clinic: the donor has 20 antral follicles!! That's 2 more than she had last month. My understanding is that that the more antral follicles (up to 26) the better the IVF outcome--meaning more usable eggs. Does that mean that we're looking at retrieving around 20 eggs? More? Less? Would anyone out there share her experience on antral follicles and retreival? In any case, we're pretty excited about that number.
And yes, I have gained weight since starting this whole process a year ago. I was blaming myself and the wine I've been drinking until my regular OB suggested that the prednisone I'm taking for 10 days to 2 weeks per month (after ovulation, when we were trying on our own) wasn't helping any. I still think I need to be very careful of everything I eat and also how much I exercise so I won't blow up before we actually get pregnant.
And speaking of weight, I've been really surprised at how fat I've thought I was and how apparently, I'm not nearly as fat as I thought. All the donors we've seen are very, very cute and normal looking in their weight. Even our donor, who I'd say is quite "normal" as far as weight goes has a slightly higher BMI than I do. Actually, I'm not sure that means I'm thinner than she is--I am a tall woman with a tiny frame with tiny bones and this donor is normal height and it looks like she has a wonderful bone structure (it's one of the reasons we picked her---she actually has "cheeks" and a "jawline" unlike my husband and me whose horse faces simply fade into our necks).
There's not a lot to feel positive in the DE process, but finding out I'm not as fat as I thought I was---priceless. Well, that and having more children---winning the lottery.
About Me
- DE Mommy
- Our son was conceived after two months of "trying." Imagine our surprise when the next 8 pregnancies ended in miscarriages (5 chemical pgs and 3 clinical m/cs ranging from 8 weeks to 12 weeks). We've considered adoption but started trying donor eggs first. Our frist DE cycle was with frozen donor eggs. Our 1st fresh cycle was canceled when the donor tested (falsely) positive for HIV. We also think I may have an auto-immune issue. We are pregnant with twins after our 3rd DE cycle, the first one we got to "try" with!
7 comments:
I would say that finding out you are not as fat as you think you are is definatly like winning the lottery!!! Half the time though, as womean we all think we are bigger than we actually are!
I'll leave the antral follicle question up to the experts. To think I did this for like 3 years and I can't remember a damn thing about cycling!!!
Good luck to you!
Danielle
Ha! I felt the same way about my weight until seeing all the donor's profiles! I always thought that I was 5-10 lbs. over weight but then noticed that I was at least 4-5 inches taller than most donors and weighed the same or less! Isn't it a great feeling!? We gotta bask in all the positives we can with this!
Our egg donor had 20 antral follicles and then 15 follicles during the stims. The retrieved 10 eggs and 9 were mature. I'm not sure if that is normal or not but that's how it played out.
HA! very funny...sounds like all is going well with the donor.
My RE told me there isn't a one to one ratio between antral follicles and eggs but generally the more AF, the more eggs. He would also count an ovary with lots of antral follicles as "10" so while he counted 14 AF on our last cycle ("10" on one side and 4 on the other) we actually got 20 eggs.
I can't remember the exact numbers now, but our donor had more eggs than follicles. I remember feeling disappointed when I got the follicle count and then ecstatic when I heard how many eggs.
oops, that last one was me...
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