I am reading the full text of this article right now:
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/17/6/1604
There are some very interesting bits to take from it.

* They noted some other reasons this may occur, such as a bad hCG injection or clinic-specific issues. But all 8 patients in this study had multiple IVF cycles in multiple IVF centers – all with the same result.

* It is normal to have a small number of immature oocytes in an IVF cycle. But they noted that when the number of immature oocytes became greater than 25% the IVF outcomes was greatly reduced.

* They don’t know how often this happens.

* There is some evidence (in other mammals) that such problems have a hereditary link. I obviously did not get this from my mom. But will I pass it to my daughter? (One can hope that by then they’ll know what to DO about it.)

* They tried extending the time between hCG and retrieval; increasing the hCG dose; and extended the culture time. All failed to have an impact on the egg maturation. IVM is a suggested possible protocol. Donor eggs are the best option and has very good success rates.

Note that this paper includes only 8 women who have total oocyte immaturity. No good ones like I had. It seems very clear to me that I am incrediby lucky to get one or two mature eggs out of my cycles. This gives us a lot of potential. Even if my next cycle goes exactly how my last one did, that would be GREAT. These are cases where a woman has no mature eggs – not even after several cycles.

This is why I’m so scared. What if it gets worse? What if we get nothing? What if Devin is the only biological child I’ll ever be able to have? In some ways that feels so very much worse than never having any.

I must stop this line of reasoning before I hyperventillate.

I want to find out what stage my oocytes were arrested at. Not that that will really help me much, but… eh. Maybe it will.

I hate that there is no real data. I hope this spurs the doctors to look into this more. I don’t know how much they can do, and I know I can’t lay the responsibility of fixing this huge issue at my clinic’s feet, but I hope they learn something. Maybe I’ll be the breathrough case or something, finding something new that can help others.

::

I’ve been getting worried about how IVF will conflict with my new job. It was never an issue with my current one because it’s so flexible… I can push things off for a day, or plan ahead and take some days off. I can go in “late” (though I’m never really late, because I go in when I decide to go in) with no issues. So this whole having a traditional job with a set start and end time is a little nervewracking for me. I haven’t started training or anything yet, so it’ll be a while before I find out what kind of person my boss is and if there’s any flexibility at all.

Obviously this won’t be an issue during my probation period, because we can’t start IVF until I’ve completed that and get health insurance. But I still fret about it. (Den says, “Just like you, to worry about something that is months away!”)

I dug out the old IVF binder from my clinic and read through to when their monitoring times are. M-F they do monitoring from 7-9. Weekends it’s 7-8. And the work schedule I was given is Thursday start at 10:45, Friday start at 9:45, Saturday start at 8:15. So really the only day that will be an issue is Saturday! What a relief!

Obviously there’s egg retrieval and transfer days, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ll have to figure that one out later.

::

Today I pulled out my old “charting” binder – that at some point became an infertility binder. It has all my notes and doctors visits and other info in it. All my charts, some of my lab results. I hefted it in my hand. “I never thought this would get to be so… big,” I said to Den. “I just thought it would be a cute little keepsake for my child.”

Oh how things turn out not the way you expect them to.