Details, Details! Embabies on Board!

Transfer day is complete! It's unbelievable! When I left the RE, I told Mr. Later Than Most that all of this IVF stuff is actually easier than I thought it would be. I mean, IVF is the big time. It's controversial. But truly, it's manageable. I do have a slight advantage though. . . insurance. It makes me sick to think there are so many girls going through this and they have money to worry about on top of everything else. This shows you that there is something wrong with our system. We have laws for people to give-up their babies, but not enough to protect those who can't have babies. Anyway- onto today's details! I know I have some blog "stalkers" who are dying for the deets!

First of all, can I just say that I can get used to this bed rest? I mean, I ate lunch in bed, took a nap, and have been on the Internet the rest of the day! LOL- I'm sure that will be a different story at this time tomorrow! So, my appointment was at 9:15 this morning. On my way to the office, I started thinking like an infertile. I imagined embryology not having good news for me and anything else that could possibly go wrong. I had to turn the radio off and clear my thoughts. As my yoga instructor would say, "center" myself. Mr. Later Than Most arrived at the RE (from work) at the same time as me. We sat in the office a bit, and then they called my name. EEEEEK! Bring on the babies!

They led us into the same little room we were in for retrieval. It has a recliner and a chair. The nures told me to get back into my gown, and gave Mr. Later Than Most a gown. Uh, come again? When she left, he either understood the look on my face or felt the same way, because he goes, "Did you know I get to go in there?" Uh, no buddy. I didn't! Oh well, the more the merrier. Now, I know some women would love this. I have friends who are like Siamese twins with their husbands (I probably shouldn't say that!). Anyway, of course I wanted him in there. Actually, I think I freaked him out this morning because I told him that I would tell embryology to transfer more than two embryos if he was late to our appointment! Ha Ha! That's probably why he seemed eager to get in there!

After changing, embryology was knocking at the door. No literally, they wanted to come in our room. My husband was surprised when the embryologist came in and referred to me as "friend" with a huge smile on her face! She and I bonded at retrieval because we have the same birthday. After our moment, she told me about the two embryos they were transferring. Embryo ne was a grade 3AA. The number reflects the size. At a stage 5, the embryo will shed its outer shell to implant. The AA refers to two categories of quality. One is for cell mass quality, and the other is similar to cell mass sizing. Being a teacher, I was very excited that my embie was already getting two A's before even being in elementary school! Now, embie number two did not get graded. This was surprising to me. All that damn Googling had me thinking that I would get two embryo grades. Well, at my office they apparently only grade embryos when they reach a certain size. So embie number two was still growing (so cute!).

After embie discussion, they led us to the transfer room. It was small and dimly lit (which I appreciated)! She gave MH a stool and had me lay in a fancy recliner. This bad boy had all kinds of controls. I'm not even being funny when I say it was like a ride. The minute I sat down she had it going up, back, then forward, and finally tilting me backwards. It was a little weird. Then, she left and embryology came in to confirm who I was. They do this like three times. Then I laid in that weird position for like 10 minutes. Mr. Later Than Most was either incredibly excited or a ball of nerves, because he was cracking jokes left and right. I was laughing so hard that I was actually worried about my insides ( I know, it's weird). I can't even remember the jokes, but one was something about wanting to ask the doctor if MH could put his hand on the doctor's hand during the procedure so MH could say that he actually got me pregnant himself. Ha! I thought that was a good one!

So, my fab doctor finally showed up. The transfer room was a full house. Doc was there, along with the ultrasound tech, the girl from embryology, and a nurse. These are all people I had seen plenty of times, so I felt very comfortable. The procedure for transfer is actually very simple for a patient. The doctor washes everything out (not the tools, your actual self), then he inserts a small, flexible catheter through the cervix. I did not feel one thing at all. During that time, the ultrasound tech did an external ultrasound (Yay! My first external!) so the doctor can see what he's doing in there. I would say it was less than 5 minutes before the doctor told embryology he was ready. At this point, the ultrasound tech moved the screen so MH and I could see it. I think Mr. Later Than Most was a doctor in his last life, because he was thrilled to see all the "action" on the big screen. The next thing we knew, the tech told us to watch the screen. We could see a little white spot flow slowly into my body. We later learned that that was not the actual embryos, but an air bubble showing where they were. After they "landed", the doctor goes, "Ohhhh yeah! Perfect. Just perfect!" That guy cracks me up. He's like his own little cheerleader. After this, embryology took the catheter back into the lab to make sure that it was, in fact, empty. They gave the okay, and that was it. The doc gave me and MH a pep talk about how we had a perfect stimulation, retrieval was great, and that transfer was excellent. He literally said, "You know, my favorite football team's motto is 'We Expect Victory'. Well, I Expect Pregnancy here, kids." LOL- He calls us kids all time. Hello! I'm 32! Heheehehehehe. I wanted to tell him that he shouldn't be TOO positive with people, but I thought that maybe it was my IF acting-up again, so I didn't say anything. With that, off my doc went, and I was told to lay there for about 15 minutes (still in that random gravity chair thingy). During that time, MH and I talked all about the procedure so we could remember it in detail.

At discharge, they gave me a list of dos and don'ts. Nothing too fancy. They advise two days of bed rest, and I'm doing that. Also, no lifting or swimming for two weeks. I'll go in for my actual beta blood test (pregnancy test) on July 29th. That's 10 days from now! If I wanted to, I could test out my trigger shot. I could take a home test every day, wait for it to go negative (proving the HCG injection is out of my system), and then I could see if I get a positive test after that negative. It sounds great, but they advised me not to do it because there are so many false positives and negatives for IVF. So, looks like it'll be July 29th!

Oh yeah, and I'm already "That mom." When I left today, I called MH and told him that I had forgot to ask for the pictures of the embryos. I was really looking forward to this, but I forgot all about it. So, I drove back to the office (don't worry, I wasn't home yet) and asked if I could pretty-please have my embie pictures. The nurse was there in three minutes with one all ready for me! I'm so excited to have it!