Potential Setback :( (long)

2MamazInSeattle

So when we had our autopsy for our loss, it was clear the cause of death was an umbilical cord clot, rare and a fluke, it's not likely to happen again and basically is just bad luck.

However - in the midst of that, we also did a karyotype of the baby. He was perfect except there was a small 'find' in terms of a chromosomal deletion on one of his strands of his second chromosome. In other words, one of our donors is essentially a carrier of a small deletion on Chromosome 2. This area impacts kidneys, and causes some pretty gnarly physical and mental conditions that no one would want to sign up for. However, BOTH donors would have to have the EXACT same deletion for any affliction to show up. In the case of our lost baby, he would not have had anything wrong with him - but would have been a carrier of this deletion - which apparently many of us have small deletions like this.

The good news is for both donors to have the exact same deletion is like 1 in a million kind of odds. Lots of people have a small deletion, it's just super rare they happen to mate with someone who has that same deletion.

So last night my RE got around to reading everything now that we finished up my adhesion surgery and I am on track to begin my 'real' FET cycle on the 18th. She called last night and said "Well, I don't think we should call this 'nothing'..." and had a few recommendations for us.

So, first step is testing our egg donor, who happened to be in the clinic for a blood draw for something else earlier this week, and my RE said they took her sample and already sent off a karyotyping request on her (their expense) to see if she is the carrier of this deletion. They also notify CCB so they can reach out and hopefully do the same testing on our sperm donor. Of course we all know sperm donors come and go - so it's not a sure thing they will get that test done/have that result. This is the bummer I guess of using two donors - if it was my egg or known donors, we could just test easily and know.

So - if our egg donor is negative, we basically know that the same thing could happen which we are ok with - our baby could be a carrier of this deletion (25% chance) as the sperm donor would be the one who passed it on. It is also possible that it was just a cosmic thing that happened when that egg met that sperm and would not recur. The bad thing would be if our egg donor is a carrier, then we have the risk that our sperm donor has the same issue - in which case we'd have to look at waiting for his testing to come back, or, PGD our embies which I'm not even sure how to go about since they are already frozen.

The second recommendation was to have my further tested for clotting factors/issues. So I had a blood draw today to get that going. And finally, she said we should talk to their genetic counselor regardless just to understand the whole thing better - esp. if our donor does come back as the carrier.

Oy. Something tells me it will all turn out ok. But it is just stressful to have another potential wrench in our plans, but of course, we don't want to knowingly bring a little life into the world only to suffer. Our MFM didn't seem to think a thing of it; but I suppose our RE thinks differently since they provided the egg donor. They said if our egg donor is the carrier, they won't use her anymore - she's done 5 or 6 cycles and loves doing it, so I hope she's not the problem! She has made many people happy!

Sorry, long ramble for a Friday...