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!

Am I a fetus?

Ah, the questions I'm sure smudge is asking right now.

Depending on the website, smudge may not be an embryo anymore. The information is fairly evenly divided as to when an embryo is considered a fetus. Merck says 8 weeks, IVF.ca says 8 weeks and medline says 8 weeks. So we're saying 8 weeks.

And in that case... meet my fetus:














-----------Smudge 8w via Dr L ---------------------------Smudge 8w1d via Dr Z-------

At 8 weeks, we had our first appointment with Dr L, my new OB. Her partner (Dr M) is my Gyn, and I and thrilled that i'm able to stay with the same practice.

Dr L is exactly the kind of doctor I need. She's going to be a weight nazi, and has me already counting calories and calcium content and focusing on low-glycemic carbohydrates. I need that. After losing 60 pounds, and keeping it off for more than 2 years, I'm actually terrified of gaining too much weight. Not because I don't want to - i'll PROUDLY wear my baby belly, but that's all I want it to be. I'm still a good 45 pounds overweight, and I really want to keep it to the minimum. Hopefully she'll be able to help me do that so I can also try to avoid complications like gestational diabetes.

Another thing I like about her is that she isn't all about medication. THRILLED because neither are we. She asked me about constipation, which you all know I know well at this point. She had me add 500mg of magnesium to my vitamin regimen taken at night before bed. It's working so far. YAY for no more prunes. But I love how she went to the magnesium, and NOT the colace or the metamucil. This is definitely the doc for me.

I was a little concerned about her being a single doctor OB practice, but she was able to set our minds at ease. She schedules her vacations in advance, and if she has plans or makes plans for the window around your due date, they tell you at the time of your first appointment, so you can decide if you want to stay with the practice, knowing she might not be able to deliver you. For me, the worst case scenario would be if Smudge comes on thanksgiving, because she'll be 6 hours away with family, but other than that, we're good to go. I'm not worried.

The next day was my last appointment with Dr Z. It was so bittersweet. It was awesome that smudge is doing SO great (1 day ahead in growth and a perfect heartbeat). He was happy to tell me that our miscarriage rate is now less than 5%, having hit the 8 week mark. We saw little flippers on the u/s and a brain cavity! And I really love seeing the little flicker of the heartbeat.

Dr Z hugged me before we left. He said that if I ever want to come back for an appointment with him, all I have to do is call and that he WANTS to see me; they don't get to see many pregnant bellies at his office. He gave me his personal email address to send him pictures and updates. And best of all, he reminded me that he was ALSO board certified in ObGyn, so if I ever had any questions about something I was being advised to do, I could just call him and get his opinion.

Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE Dr Z? I'm going to miss him and his staff. We're sending them an edible arrangement to thank them for getting us this far, and for being so awesome.

So, for now, I have to try to get used to being a normal pregnant lady (albeit, one who is advanced maternal age). It's going to be difficult to switch to monthly visits rather than weekly. I'm used to all of this medical attention. So weird now.

So, our upcoming schedule:
10w: Next Dr L appointment
12w2d: NT scan
14w: Dr L
18w: Dr L
20w1d: Anatomy Scan

You know i'm going to have to finagle something for 16 weeks. There's NO way i'll be able to go a FULL month with NOTHING.

Oh jeez - i can totally see me buying one of those dopplers now, for in between appointment use. Hey - at least I'm trained to use it.

Fert Report In

I'm a bad blogger for not reporting about my egg retrieval yesterday. If you're interested in the whole kit-n-kaboodle, you can read about it here on The Nest.

The important news is, Dr Z was able to retrieve 6 eggs. 5 of which fertilized normally, and 3 of which are still dividing and looking healthy today!!

This is what our embryos should look like today:

photo credit

We have 3 rockstar embryos!

Embryo Transfer will be tuesday. Dr Z may advise us to transfer all 3. He'll talk to us more about it tomorrow. I think he'll say that if the 3rd doesn't look like it will survive freezing and thawing, it might give us a better chance to put all three back in.

Shockingly, DH is on board with that... i guess we'll see what Dr Z has to say tomorrow.

3 embryos. I hope one of them is our baby. This is the closest we've ever been.

Please keep us in your T&P!