IVF consent appointment

Had our IVF consent appointment yesterday. The purpose was to go over the finalized cycle plan and hand over the paperwork in which we consented to the treatments, verified our understanding of the risks and that there are no guarantees, and initialed 5,000 decisions about what happens to any leftover embryos under all manner of life circumstances. (For example, I get them in the divorce. Research gets them if we don't use them within 5 years. I got a laugh from DH about donating them "over my dead body" in the event of our untimely double death. And we chuckled about the option to name a recipient w/mailing address . . . DH played the role of a niece shaking a package delivered to her dorm room in 2013 — and we knew we'd have to include a "greetings from the beyond" audio.)

The appointment got off to a shaky start when a nurse called my name, DH followed me following her, and she said, "You're here for a physical, right?" Wrong. She wanted me to get undressed anyway. No. She checked with the RE, who immediately fetched us. Her records agreed with our reason for being there, but even she was confused because she hadn't seen the notes saying we'd completed everything we'd needed to on our checklist (a requirement for the consent visit). So, that conversation began with her thinking that we were still deciding whether to even do IVF and must be there to talk it through. Got it straightened out to everyone's satisfaction, but it didn't leave us wowed by the clinic's communication system. It is much better than it was at our previous clinic, though.

I have to laugh that I went through the whole process of familiarizing myself (and getting comfortable) with the lower-quantity transfer info. Based on our specifics, the RE thinks the best way to maximize the cycle will be to put back 3 or 4 embryos. None of that single-tx crap for us. Unless that's all we have to work with.

What else . . . I'm doing the aggressive microdose Lupron flare protocol. We'll do Assisted Hatching but not PGD. And it will be ICSI all the way. DH asked the RE to dispel his feelings that doing 100% ICSI subverts Darwinism. She did that and satisfied further questions about determining egg & embryo quality, DNA fragmentation (who knew there were big, beautiful coffee-table books full of egg, sperm, and embryo photos?), and selecting that single sperm to inject.

Near the end, the RE said, "You don't seem all that thrilled with the plan." DH had a different interpretation of what she meant in that moment (but couldn't recall it later as we debriefed!), but I thought she was saying we seemed unhappy with the plan or that we weren't jubilant enough. I didn't take offense with that interp, but I did say, "Oh, we're fine and ready to go. We just wanted to get a more thorough take on how some of the decisions and recommendations will be made along the way. But, no, I wouldn't attach the word 'thrilling' to any part of this stage." She said, "Yeah, I'm sure you wish you didn't have to be here at all." True in a larger sense, but neither of us are living with that feeling day-to-day anymore. That one is so 2005!

No way can I pretend to be all rah-rah-sis-boom-bah. As DH said, maybe we'd have more of that "Go team!" spirit if we had insurance coverage guaranteeing us several tries. But, we are positive about rolling the dice with this step. Otherwise we wouldn't be where we are in the process. I think our mood is good and our expectations realistic. We hope for success, very much want it, and will do whatever we can within the cycle to help things go well.