I am so tired of having bad luck. When am I finally going to get my break 
? It's been 10 years from hell for me (I've been ttc#1 since I was 24) and I feel like I've wasted my youth trying to fight something that is never going to go away .
As some of you know, I am doing IVF DE #3 now. The first two DE cycles were with my sister's eggs, both of which resulted in miscarriages. This time we decided to go with a proven anonymous donor. She has a child of her own and produced two pregnancies at our clinic. Her AFC is over 40 and the two couples before us received over 30 eggs each. They had beautiful blasts and quite a few frozen ones too.
Fast forward to our cycle -- our donor's medications were reduced by half because she overstimmulated the first two times. She was on medications for 14-15 days and gave us 23 eggs, which we thought was great. Out of 23, 21 were mature and 20 fertilized (we've always had a 90-100% fertilization rate with my dh's sperm using ICSI). On day 3, 16 were 8 cells, 1 was a 6-cell, 1 a 5-cell, 1 a 4-cell, and only one didn't grow. We were so relieved and excited!
On day 5, we expected to have around 7-8 blasts to choose from, based on our previous numbers. During IVF DE#1, all of my sister's fertilized eggs made it to blast and during IVF DE#2, 50% of fertilized eggs were blasts and 50% morulas on day 5. Since our donor is only 25, we expected that about half of hers would be blasts too.
When our RE told us that only 3 were blasts, 7 morulas, and the rest were stuck between 8-10 cells, we were really shocked. We transferred 1 4AA (almost as good as it gets at our clinic -- only less than 2% make it to Grade 5AA), 1 4BB, and one morula (it looked better than the third blast). As of this morning, we had only 2 that they were able to freeze -- 1 5AB and 1 4BB.
So basically out of 20 fertilized eggs, only 4 became blasts, which seems very low to me. When I asked our embryologist, he said that sperm is just as important as eggs. Yes, I know that, but what happened with my dh's sperm between our last two cycles (and 5 previous cycles with my eggs) and this one? I think that this cycle was just an off cycle for our donor. What do you think?
Of course, I am hopeful it still worked for us, but I can't help but worry about our donor's egg quality now. The last cycle she did at our clinic was over a year ago...
Thanks for letting me vent!
Kite