Pretty!

My mommy just sent me the yummiest flowers! I wish you could smell them. The roses really smell like roses. And never knew the popcorn ball flowers had a fragrance at all! The whole room is brighter now!

Thank you Mom!

The Importance of Stillness

I am so just lying here being a very good girl. I'm not moving or dancing or wiggling at all.

Three embryos were transfered on Monday morning and since then I have done my very best to be still. I never realized what a wiggle-worm I am.

Monday and Tuesday were easy because one of my best friends drove 8 hrs to come and stay with me. Alan had to go out of town on business. Does this mean that if an embryo implants that Kiwi is actually the co-parent instead of Alan? After all, she's the one who made me really good meatloaf and picked up chicken fried steak and got me drinks whenever I needed one so that I didn't have to move from my reclined position?

Today it's a little more difficult, but so not impossible to continue to be still. I think with a little practice I could be a sloth for a living.

My embryos will implant between today and Thursday this week. I go in for a pregnancy test 10/3.

Ups and Downs

Egg retrieval went really well. Thursday Lucy, the Embryologist, called to let me know all seven eggs retrieved fertilized.


Not my egg, but the picture above is what my egg looked like after one night fertilized.

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Friday Lucy called and told me that of the seven eggs fertilized, five were doing very well. On a scale of 1 - 5, two of the eggs were a grade 1 and three were a grade 2. She said she was planning on a 5-day transfer instead of the expected 3-day transfer due to the great quality of my eggs. Yay!

Above is an example of what a 4-cell embryo looks like.

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Saturday Lucy called and didn't have quite the optimistic news as yesterday. Only three embryos divided to the 8-cell stage. Two of the embryos divided into five cells. Five is no good. Five isn't even a proper stage name. There is no stage five! The 5-celled ones must have had my math genes.


Above is an example of an 8-cell embryo. Three of my embryos currently look like that picture.

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I asked Lucy if we should transfer today (Saturday) or if we can move the transfer up a day to Sunday, which is tomorrow. Lucy said tomorrow is a bad idea because of the extreme growth in the next 24 hours. The cells divide so fast and the embryo is rather unstable.

She didn't recommend transfer for today because she wants to wait and make sure the two embryos to be transfered are the most viable choices. She won't know which embryos those are until tomorrow or Monday. She's trying to weed out my math genes.

My mom and I were shopping when Lucy called. After I hung up, all I wanted to do was get back in the car and go back to bed. I didn't even call Alan and tell him.

Hopefully, while Lucy is making sure the embryos that will be transfered are proper mathematicians, she can weed out my propensity for worrying. And while she's pcking and choosing, I think I'll suggest she picks out a couple of embryos that have Alan's hair gene. Great, now I'm picturing dividing eggs with curly hair.

Here's a picture of what we are hoping to transfer two of on Monday. Pretty, aren't they?


I did finally tell Alan. He's optimistic and thinks everything will be okay. He's so good for my nerves.

hCG injection

Big needle. Big! Other than that, I think the hCG shot went okay. My poker-partner came over Monday, 9/17 at 9:30pm since my shot was to commence sharply (haha) at 10:00pm.

My poking-partner and I have since reunited. She is more comfortable with the needle stick now that she's gotten used to the initial poking. She said she just finally got over the idea that poking a person is anything like poking an orange. I didn't argue with her logic. I need someone to needle my backside for many more weeks!

Anyway, back to the big night. This night is the start to the finish of this whole protocol. It's a very important night. 36 hours after the shot, I go to egg retrieval. 3- 5 days after that, it's off to have those little eggs popped back into my person. Sounds so simple. *sigh* That has been my mistaken assumption through out this whole process.

So, my lovely assistant arrived at the scheduled time to find me staring at two vials and a really flipping big needle! We decide to finally watch the video detailing how to give the shots as we neither one can remember where in my hip that BIG needle is supposed to go ,or how, exactly, the liquidy stuff and the powder were be to mixed. Maybe things that should have been thought of yesterday.

We pop the movie into my Mac and... nothing. I hit keys and look like I know what I'm doing and... still nothing.

Okay, we're not giving up. Into the DVD player the disc goes. By now it's 10 till 10. Yeah, this stupid disk only works on my husbands PC. Of course he doesn't have speakers - which I'm usually quite pleased about because he plays this shoot people game that I imagine is loud and annoying.

I digress...

It's now 9:58 and we still haven't watched the video.

Being free spirits and not very good time managers, we wing it. That's right. The most important shot and we wing it.

I didn't bleed. None of the drug landed on the floor. And according to the pregnancy test I took the next morning that my husband was sent out to get that night (just to make sure we didn't completely botch the job) we managed to do the shot perfectly. And it ended with a Hello Kitty band-aid. Everything ends well with Hello Kitty.

Did I mention my husbands headphones only work out of one side? It wasn't pertinent to the story, but it did give me a good Christmas present idea.

Crazy Meds

Crazy Meds. That's what they should call this stuff. Lupron and Follistim are horrible, horrible crazy lady making medicines.

1. I'm now 10 lbs heavier.

2. I can't seem to keep a single thought or idea in my head long enough to act on it.

3. I cry with minimal provocation. Gilmore Girls finale reaired and I sobbed like I lost my best friend. Granted, I sobbed the first time without all of the extra hormones, but the 2nd viewing shouldn't have been so traumatic!

4. I'm about to cry again just thinking about crying during the finale. I can't believe we have said our last goodbye to the town of Stars Hollow. No more Sean Gunn and his odd little concave chest. No more Babbette and her gnomes. Love him or hate him, there is no more Luke.

5. My tummy is bruised in allllll these little circles.

6. These stupid drugs have my emotions so out of wack that I'm missing the friendship of someone who I really cared about and who hurt my feelings this year. Someone I've decided to have minimal contact with due to the unkind, unfeeling words that were spoken in such an offhanded manner by the offender. Why, you ask, would I want to put myself in a position to be hurt again by this past friend? Only thing I can come up with is that I'm reaching for the feelings of a simpler, less stressful time. Or, I'm an idiot. You pick. I vote the latter.

7. Did I say emotions? Well it goes both ways. It's like a roller coaster in my head. If I'm not crying, I'm giggling like a fiend.

Hopefully tomorrow I will find out how much longer this will go on. Fingers crossed. Besides, this is all worth it in the end. And I do love all of the scientificness of this process. Mr. Shivley would be so proud of this instilled curiosity! He's my 7th grade science teacher. Now I'm to google him to see what he's up to. I got to meet his daughter once many years later.

I better get this posted before I wander off - again.

Needles aren't for everyone

The friend giving me my shots seemed a little anxious after the first couple of days. I asked her if she was a bit freaked out and she said she was. That she had even been talking to her husband about how giving someone else a shot is very personal and feels somewhat invasive.

Funnily enough, I don't feel the same way at all. She's just popping a needle in and that's that! No big deal, right? Wrong. I'm doing it myself now.

Poked with needles

"So what's it like to to go through that artificial baby making, uhhhh, stuff...?"

That's one of my favorite questions so far in this process. I'm currently in the middle of my 1st round of IVF. Oh, and my answer would be that it's like a whirlwind that no one told me was coming.

Did you know it's like wringing a noodles neck to find any info online about what to expect? Who would have thought it? Crazy! A hundred gabillion people have or are going through this right now but a person has to wade through piles of nonsense to find any answers to simple questions.

That's why I've decided to start this blog. I need a place to list the answers I find, and also catalog my experiences to see if my reality is in sinc with, well, real reality.