Partial DQ Alpha Match

Last Wednesday started as a great day, the grandmas’ and I got to see the little bubble dance all around and even got a very cool video of it to show Blue when he got home.  I also got to stop the PIO shots, progesterone suppositories and start weaning the dex.  It was also the day I was supposed to be released from Dr. Sher until we went back for a sibling.

It all went well until I got the call from Dr. Sher’s nurse.  I was expecting the “congratulations you’re no longer our patient” call, but unfortunately I got the “we received your test results call.” 

As I’m sure you’ve picked up on by now if they test me for it I’ll have it…. So, as expected, they tested Blue and I for alloimmune matching and we are a partial match. 

Instead of hysterically crying, like I did when they told me I have a blood clotting disorder, I laughed.  What else can I do at this point?  I rushed to the hospital for another intralipid infusion and instead of wondering if God was telling me I should never have gotten pregnant, I thanked him because clearly with everything working against me I had some intervention from him!

My quick description of alloimmune implantation disfunction is this:  It is important for us to have differing immune systems and so our bodies have evolutionarily developed ways to create babies with complex immune systems.  One such way is for us to be less attracted to the smell of a person with a similar immune system to our own (for the record I think Blue smells great.)  Implantation of an embryo is a lot like a tissue transplant except that with a tissue transplant you want an almost identical immune system, with embryo implantation you want a completely different immune system.  If the embryo attempting to implant has similar immune components to the mother, the mother’s system will fight back by creating natural killer cells against the embryo and choking off implantation, or eventually causing an early miscarriage. 

What this means for Blue and me?

1. Since Blue and I have a partial match it means that (statistically) 50% of our embryos will be unable to implant in my uterus. 
2. Because we’ve made it this far in this pregnancy Dr. Sher feels confident that this embryo didn’t match and will stick around for the long haul.
3. From now on we will only transfer 1 embryo at a time, if we were to transfer 2 embryos (and one of them matched me) my body would attack the matching embryo and inadvertently the other non-matching embryo at the same time, thus wasting a viable embryo.
4. For this pregnancy, and in future pregnancies, I will need bi-weekly intralipid infusions until 24 weeks.
5. Most importantly, we’re really lucky that we were able to get pregnant the first time around, especially with 2 embryos transferred.