Neural tube closure

Pregnancy via IVF has a number of hurdles.  Have a normally shaped uterus, have good blood circulation, don’t have any fertility-limiting illnesses, respond to the drugs, get enough eggs, have the eggs be mature, get some sperm, have the sperm not suck, get the sperm to fertilize the eggs, get the embryos to grow and hopefully reach blastocyst stage, biopsy them and have them be normal, have them survive the thaw, grow a good enough lining [*], get the embryo to implant [*], have the embryo implant somewhere that it could actually grow (ie not the damn fallopian tube) [*], have the embryo grow (ie no blighted ovum) [*], have the “chromosomally normal” embryo be genetically normal as well [*]… and that just gets you through the first trimester.  Then you’ve got to worry about infections, growth restriction, trauma, cord issues, food poisoning, mosquito bites, plagues, super volcanos, etc.  It’s amazing anyone is walking around on earth at all.

We’ve stumbled on a number of these necessities.  (See stars above.)  Even if I do manage to get pregnant (which I have done most cycles), I have a really hard time getting those pregnancies off of the ground, and I appear to have some non-chromosomal genetic issues.  The most devastating of which, of course, was my anencephaly pregnancy.  

I’m already doing everything I can to avoid a repeat of an anencephaly pregnancy.  (5mg folic acid, inositol supplementation.)  But, even if I am lucky enough to get to implantation and what appears to be normal growth, I am going to be on pins and needles until an ultrasound tech tells me sometime around 12 weeks during a level 2 ultrasound that we’re in the clear and that our baby does not have some kind of catastrophic disorder that is incompatible with life.

The neural tube closes between 3-4 weeks after conception, or when a woman is “six weeks” pregnant.  (So that’s 21-28dpo, or 16-23dp6dt for me.)  I have marked that critical week on my calendar.  If I so much as hear someone sneeze around that time, I’m going to put on one of those surgical facemasks.  I’m going to take a nap every day.  I’m going to avoid sugar and caffeine (not that I ever have caffeine).  I’m going to avoid stress and travel and exertion and baths and long showers.  I’m going to only eat organic fruit and drink purified water blessed by mountain-dwelling monks while chanting “neural tube close, neural tube close.” 

Anything else I should be thinking about?

Oh, and I should mention—second HCG was good (1159 at 18dpo—almost exactly doubled in two days, as it should).  Next stop, neural tube closure!