Knocked up day

Monday, we never got our update from the doctor’s office on how our embryos were progressing, so I called them for the update.  Turns out they’d been waiting to hear back from the doctor on when transfer time would be.  The embryologist said that all 15 of our embryos were progressing well; they want to see 6-8 cells by day three, and all fifteen of ours were at that point. Such great news! They didn’t have a transfer time for me yet, and said they’d call on Tuesday with an arrival time.  Tuesday’s phone call revealed an 11 am transfer time, 10:30 arrival with a full bladder.  I was excited the rest of the day.

Knocked-up Day has finally arrived!! Spencer and I took Zoey to the park in the morning so that she’d be more worn out the rest of the day and not bother me as much. I changed when we got home into clothes that family members had given me.  I had a skirt that Cheryl gave me and a shirt Curtis gave me so that side of my family was represented.  I also wore the “cancer sucks” socks that Paula gave me when David was going through his treatment, so I felt like both of them were with me (I also wore these at retrieval); and to top it off was a sweater Lynnette gave me last Christmas.  I felt like wearing this stuff made the experience a little luckier; Spencer said I looked like Amy Farrah Fowler. 

 

We headed to the doctor’s office.  We got there a little early and checked in.  I was supposed to take two Valium pills when we got there as well as drink lots of water.  Man that stuff kicks in fast! I was so loopy from it.  They took us back and showed up pictures of all of our little embryos.  We have 9 that are excellent right now, so they picked one of those to transfer and the other 8 will be frozen.  Of the other six, three probably won’t really make it to freeze and they will be discarded.  They are going to watch the other three to see if they don’t catch up enough to freeze on day 6. They said because our embryos look so great, they advise against transferring two; that it’s not really necessary and only ups the chances for twins.  Overall, we were very pleased with how many we get to keep and try to build a family with.  Then the doctor came over to talk to us.  He said that because we used the Lupron trigger instead of the hCG trigger (which we did to avoid getting over-stimulated and the complications that come from that), my lining may not be as receptive to the embryo at this time and we could wait and do a frozen transfer for no extra charge (except more meds).  We decided to risk it, mainly because we were so excited for this and didn’t want to wait any longer. We kind of felt like if this were really such a big issue, then the doctor would have put his foot down and said let’s wait or brought it up sooner in the process besides 10 minutes before transfer. Plus we will have 8 frozen embryos we can use in the future if this doesn’t work.  Some further research on Google (I know I shouldn’t!) seems to suggest that Lupron prevents my body from making enough estrogen and progesterone after retrieval, so I have to supplement that with the patches and shots.  While they haven’t done another blood test since right before retrieval, my levels were in the good category then, so I’m hoping that we are doing everything necessary to make this little embryo stick.

Once we decided to go ahead with the transfer, the doctor sent us into the exam room and had me undress from the waist down (nothing new).  Spencer stood next to me to hold my hand and get a better view of the ultrasound screen. The nurse came in to check the bladder fullness; it was great.  The doctor came in a got everything set up.  The speculum was cold (why can’t they warm that thing up?!) and a tad uncomfortable. The nurse used the ultrasound to help the doctor find his way to where he needed to be in my uterus.  Then they called out to the embryologist that they were ready and about 30 seconds later, she came walking through the door with the catheter. She called out my name and birth date to confirm the correct patient, then handed the catheter to the doctor.  He inserted it, released the embryo into its new home, and pulled everything out. Then they tilted back the chair I was in and told me to rest for 10 minutes.  During this time, they came in for me to sign a form saying my name and date of birth were correct when the embryologist called it out.  That was it! I am now considered pregnant until proven otherwise.  Spencer took a few pictures. We asked the nurse to draw some circles on my backside for where the progesterone shots are supposed to go to make sure we were doing it right (and we had gotten pretty close, so yay for us).  I got dressed, went to the restroom, and we schedule our pregnancy test.  We headed home for lunch and an afternoon of binge watching Netflix.  I’m not on strict bed rest, but I’ve been lounging most of the day and plan to go into work late on Thursday, just to give our Baby Wolf time to settle in.  According to the progression charts I’ve seen online, it won’t really implant until Friday/Saturday/Sunday so until then, I’m just going to do my best to encourage it and send it warm, loving thoughts. So excited and nervous at the same time. These next two weeks are going to be so hard to get through.

Update October 8-

Got another call today saying they could freeze two more embryos.  One was AA and one was BC, which is fair/good.  So we had a total of 11 embryos make it to transfer or freezing! Way more than 50% with is what they say is average.  We actually could have us a little football team if they all work out.