Embies on Board!

Today was our FET!

Since my darling 3rd graders have FCAT testing this week, I went in to work this morning to administer the test. I left immediately after, and Mr. Bossy & I drove to the clinic.

There are 4 REs at the clinic, and they all have an assigned IVF day. My RE is not the IVF doctor on Wednesday, but the clinic's founding doctor is. He's old enough to my grandfather and super nice. He actually did the transfer for our fresh cycle last fall.

To make a long story short, I guzzled water all the way to the clinic so that I would have a full bladder for the ultrasound, and they sent me straight into the operating room. We transferred two (a 4BB blastocyst and a morula) embryos. The RE called the 4BB a "beauty." The RE was really funny, and he kept the mood light while I had my legs up in the air. I reminded him that he had done my fresh transfer, which was successful (even though it resulted in a miscarriage), so I knew that this transfer would also work. It just had to. He laughed and agreed with me. I was able to watch the spectrum being inserted and saw the embryos release into my uterus. As soon as he released them, he said- "That's it! You're pregnant." That got a good laugh out of me.

Mr. Bossy treated me to Cheesecake Factory for lunch on the way home. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with my couch for the next 5 days. :)

Here are our two little rockstars!! (Please excuse the blue sticky note. I used it to cover up my name)

















Bossy Bud

A good sign (I hope!)

For my chemical pregnancy, I was using the Countdown to Pregnancy site to track my symptoms. You can enter symptoms for each day past ovulation and see how your symptoms compare to those of other women on the same day. You can also track pregnancy test results. It was fun until I found out I was having a chemical, and then I was so bummed that I deleted that cycle. Now I kinda wish I hadn't.

The good news is that (A) having been pregnant twice this year and (B) having blogged about some of my symptoms, I know my symptoms pretty well, and lo-and-behold I think I experienced an early symptom last night--the chills. Happened last night about 1:00 am. We had gone to bed about midnight but I was having trouble falling asleep. I was in bed under a warm blanket and I was COLD! The shivers didn't last long (I think I fell asleep) but I now have some hope that my little embies are sticking around. At first I thought--wow, symptoms just 12 hours past transfer??--but then this morning I checked an earlier blog post and found that I'd written that  1dp5dt I'd had the chills. Given the fact that one of my little embies had fully hatched, perhaps it wasn't too soon for one of them to start to implant?

Or I could be completely hallucinating. My next symptoms should be losing my high notes when singing and some dull AF-type cramps. Oh yeah, and a positive HPT.

So while I wait for more symptoms, I thought I'd introduce you to my embies, Trouble and Scooter, named for their unwillingness to get into the catheter before the transfer. Trouble is first one, the fully hatched blastocyst. I wish I'd asked the embryologist what quality they are. I tried comparing them to the pictures on this site but can't really grade them myself.

Well, that's about it for now. I'm going to go relax and wait for some more symptoms!

Embryo transfer complete!

Today I am 2dp5dt. (In English, 2 days past my 5 day transfer).

A 5 day transfer is done 5 days after the egg retrieval (as opposed to a 3dt, which is 3 days past the ER). 5 day transfers are usually done when you have a lot of high quality embryos and they want to see which ones are the best on day 5. I am lucky to have had 6 perfect ones on day 3 so they waited until day 5 to do my transfer.

The ET itself was quick and easy. They let Mr. Sassy Bud come in with me and we got to watch on a TV screen as the embryologist scooped the embryos up in the catheter and brought them into our room. Then we got to watch them being inserted on the ultrasound machine.

I can't remember the specific grading of the embryos, but they were great! Here's a picture of them:

At this stage they are called blastocysts. The mass is where the baby will form.

They also gave us a picture of where the embryos were placed:

The plus marks are where the embryos are. Not many people get an ultrasound this early, so I guess that is a benefit of IVF! Haha. I had a progesterone draw today. I will have my beta pregnancy blood draw one week from today. I'm not sure if I can keep from POAS until then, but I will probably have Mr. Sassy Bud hide all my tests so I don't test too early.

I should be happier...

My embryo transfer was yesterday and I now commence what I call the "5 day wait." That's because I will start peeing on a stick (POAS) in 5 days. I don't get all the angst about not POASing before beta (blood pregnancy test). I've had enough painful phone calls in my IF journey. If I'm going to get a BFN, I want to find out before the phone rings.

Yesterday's ET was flawless, the best of the four I've had. I had been hoping and praying that my favorite doctor (not my usual RE) would do the procedure, and sure enough, he was there. Talk about fate--he said he wasn't originally scheduled to work yesterday. I'd only met him once before, during my second IVF, and he'd shown amazing compassion. He was no different yesterday. He knew about my loss and about my difficult transfer last time. He also asked how I felt about transferring a single embryo. I wasn't expecting to be asked - it was good to talk it through with him and although I qualify for transferring 2, in the end, we agreed on one.

Somehow all the stars aligned yesterday--we had a perfect, highest-grade blast, the transfer took all of about 5 minutes, and my bladder was tolerable (usually the most painful part of the transfer process). My secret fear about my cervix being blocked by scar tissue did not materialize.

So why am I not ecstatic? Because we only ended up with 5 embryos to freeze. Yes, 5 is way better than 0, but for a record cycle for our donor with 38 eggs, we also had a record low number of frosties. This is the second donor cycle where our donor had her worst performance ever.

I expect to POAS this Friday. I know it's early--5dp5dt--but I got my positive in my last cycle at 8dp3dt, and I'd always wondered if I would have gotten a positive the day before. (In case you were wondering, 5dp5dt=10dpo, and 8dp3dt=11dpo.) The blood test will be 10/20 at 8:45am, which is 15dpo.

In other news, Mr. GB's parents are coming to town on Thursday. They are living proof of what happens when you have a child in your forties:  they are nearly old enough to be his grandparents. That's going to be us someday, for better or worse.

Til Friday,
Golden Bud