Transfer Day! Take 2...

The time has come again to transfer another one of our little embabies!  I feel like it has taken forever to get back to this point, but here we are.

Again, I kind of feel like it's just another day.  I don't feel especially nervous, but I guess I already know what's going to happen so there's really no need for nerves.  I worked a shift at Starbucks this morning, how fitting.  It's like I wanted to tell everyone that in a few hours I was going to get impregnated and how cool is that?!  But then I also wasn't going to tell anyone, especially work, quite yet.  It's weird to have such exciting news that you can't really tell people about.

I may have filled my bladder a little too full, too early, so I had to go to the bathroom when we got there.  It's not easy to only empty your bladder partially, but I did it!  And then I kept on chugging more.

We only transferred one embryo again.  If this one doesn't work I'm pretty set on transferring two the next time, but we will keep our fingers crossed.

This time I felt everything went a lot smoother.  The first time they had a hard time seeing everything and honestly, I think the ultrasound tech was new because she had such a difficult time and the girl this time found what she needed right away!  Everything went much quicker and it was less uncomfortable.

After the procedure, we went home and I took a nice long nap, like I love.  I'll take any excuse to nap that I can get!

Transfer Day!

Today was transfer day!  I spent the morning working around the house and getting things cleaned up.    Then I went to lunch at Steak 'n' Shake with a bunch of the young women from my church as an end of summer party.

We arrived at the clinic 30 minutes before transfer.  I had to come with a full bladder, which is not fun.  But I did pretty well not going overboard!

Thankfully they don't put you out for this procedure, but I did take my first valium!  I actually don't know exactly what it did for me...but I guess that's a good thing!

Nate was able to come into the OR for the transfer so he got to wear this cute bunny/ Baymax suit.

Potential last picture as a family of two??

It's a pretty special experience to see your embryos on this giant screen and then watch on ultrasound while it's inserted.  It's the miracle of life right in front of your face!  I mean, how many people can see their kids when they are literally five days old.  They are just a cluster of cells with the potential of turning into a living, breathing human being.  It's crazy and overwhelming when you really think about it.  The procedure takes maybe 20 minutes.  I can't say it was the most comfortable, but it wasn't painful.

After the procedure...do I have a glow to me yet??

Here is embryo #1!  I really thought I'd have this feeling when I saw the picture and know if it was a boy or girl...but I got nothing.  The blurrier looking cells in the center are what will develop into the baby and the less blurry ones will be the placenta.  The doctor said that big cell on the lower right is some extra cell thing (I don't really know) that isn't anything bad but isn't a part of the baby.

First family picture??

After the transfer we went to our friends, the Bolin's house.  I was super tired so I took a nice 2 hour nap on their couch while Teresa worked and Nate and Matthew ran to our house to grab me my medicine.  We decided to go out to Olive Garden for dinner since we hadn't been there in probably a year and a half or more.  I just always get the soup because it's unlimited refills and super delicious!

The Longest Week

The egg retrieval doesn't end your worrying because we got 26 eggs...it's only the beginning! 

Eggs have to be at the perfect maturity in order to fertilize.  Of the 26 eggs that were collected, only 19 of them were at the right stage to fertilize.

We had a procedure done called ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection).  In traditional IVF, they put the best sperm in a petri dish with the eggs and let them naturally fertilize.  With ICSI, they individually take a sperm and inject it into an egg.  HOW DO THEY DO THIS?!  It seriously blows my mind.  They literally have a little glass pipette that picks up a single sperm and injects it into an egg.  How do they have pipettes that small??  I really wish I could get a tour of an IVF lab!

Not our egg...just a picture of what it would look like.

So when you leave the clinic after your retrieval you know how many eggs they retrieved.  Your first update phone call comes the next morning when they tell you how many of your eggs are fertilized.  As I said, 19 were at the right stage to fertilize and of those 19, 12 of them took to fertilization.  We were a little disappointed by this.  It seemed like such a big drop to go from 26 to 12 overnight!  And fertilization seems like the easy part to me because how could the egg not fertilize when it's injected with a sperm?!  I don't really know.

The next day you don't get an update.  Ahhhhh the wait!

On day three they called to let us know that of the 12 fertilized eggs, 11 of them were still growing.  The embryologist at the lab rattled off a bunch of numbers of how many cells each one of the eggs had because they were all at different stages but I didn't understand most of what she said.  At the end I just said "so how many of those are good?"  haha  That's when I realized despite all of the mumbo jumbo she said, 11 were still good and growing.  This was definitely more hopeful for me!

Day 4-- no update.

The clinic had been calling with updates around 8-9 am on update days but day 5 I didn't get a call like I expected.  Not a huge deal except we were at the lake and going to go out on the boat for the day.  When we got to the boat I had a missed call from the clinic even though my phone never rang!  I had the ringer turned all the way up and held it in my hand the entire time because I didn't want to miss it.  I thought they would leave a voicemail but no such luck.

I was really confused by this because I gave them explicit permission to leave me voicemails.  Then I realized maybe my mailbox was full.  My phone has a bad habit of not notifying me when the voicemail was full so I was super bummed!  Since it was a Saturday there was no way for me to call them back.  Day 5 is an important update too because they will freeze eggs that make it to day 5.  So these were the final numbers of how many eggs we will have to work with!

We had a fun day on the lake and got home late in the afternoon.  A couple hours after we got home I had a voicemail come through!  Why it took sooooo long, I do not know.

They said that 4 of the embryos were far enough along to freeze and that they were going to continue watching another 4 that were slower growing but still growing.

Day 6- Our final update!  The embryologist said 3 more had reached the stage where they could freeze them so we have 7 total to freeze!!  This is really the best scenario I could have hoped for!  I feel so happy having seven.  It feels like the perfect number.  It's more than just getting one try, but the likelyhood that all seven will result in a pregnancy is small so even if half of them took, we can still have multiple children!  It just gives me so much hope for the future.