Greetings from bed rest.  This is much harder with a toddler in the house – man alive Matthew is requiring lots of attention and it’s hard not being able to give it to him.

Our transfer was scheduled for 2:00, which meant that Matthew had to be at the sitter’s at 1:40 – which was only 1.5 hours into his (wonderfully long) nap.  We woke him up at 1:30 to take him to the neighbor’s (his best friends V & W) so that their mom could watch him while we did the transfer.  (V & W are IVF twins so their mom knows the drill and has been so very helpful to us this cycle!  We trade babysitting services and it’s wonderful!)  It was actually fun to wake him up together – we went in and slowly turned his light on, which didn’t wake him up at all (poor tired boy) so we went and stood by the crib as I talked softly to him and B rubbed his back.  He woke up happy, even if it was 1.5 hours too early.  He was pretty excited to see us both and was even more excited to see his friends.  W was the only one up from his nap and greeted us at the door.  We kissed Matthew goodbye, told him to go show W his cup, and off he went.  As did we.

We arrived right on time (my offline friends are reading this now, shocked that we weren’t late) and S, my favorite nurse, took us back to get changed.  I was ready to ask some questions.

Me:  How many do we have?

S:  Two.

Me:  How many did we need to thaw to get them?

S:  Just the two.

Me:  Seriously?

S:  Yep!  You still have five left.

So there it is.  We are still holding strong at our 100% thaw rate.  YES!  If this works, that means we’re going back for Baby #3 in a couple of years.  More importantly, if this does not work, we have 5 left to use.  I wasn’t really that surprised, because the first time we did this (July 2010), the two they used survived the thaw with no problem.  But it’s always nice to hear it.  For it to be real!

I took a note from Belle and Shannon and wore special socks for the transfer.  The procedure room is so cold, and I usually just wear the booties they give you but I thought some special socks were in order.  I hate being cold AND just in case this works, I can tell this baby that, “I wore these specific socks when you were put in my uterus” (at which point the child would respond with, “what’s a uterus and why didn’t I get there the normal way?”).  I don’t believe in hocus pocus but I wanted to do something different, and FUN for this transfer.

I got the photo of my embryos and immediately I could decipher how they were doing.

The top right one is hatching (that’s the bubble on the right) and the lower left one had not yet expanded fully.  I didn’t say anything because this is an FET and that’s why they don’t usually give you photos (because they don’t usually look like fresh embryos due to re-expansion).  Often times, the blasts re-expand once they’re transferred and all is well.  I know this.  I kept my mouth shut knowing that they did me the favor of printing the photo  🙂

Dr. Y came in and greeted us, cheery as always.  He made small talk with us before discussing the embryos with K.  K said that the first one was terrific and was already hatching (HA!) and took off immediately in the dish.  The other one was, “not doing anything,” but afterwards, they explained that they can take a while to “take off.”  He made it sound like the expansion and hatching of the other one was a quick and unusual, and he sounded happy about that.

I have high hopes for that top right one.  😉

It was time to transfer and, as anyone who’s done this before knows, it’s no big deal and it’s over before you know it.  They inserted the catheter, transferred them under ultrasound guidance, and then verified that they were all in there.  This time – they were not all in there.  “The big one,” as K stated it, was still in the catheter so they had to reload it and transfer again.  No biggie.  I did say, “well that’s the one we want!”  At that point, they said that the other one has good potential too.  After the second transfer, K gave them the “all clear” and we were left to rest for 30 minutes.

No biggie at all.

Here’s a photo of the embryos in my uterus.  They placed them right next to each other (they pick the specific spot at an earlier appointment during the mock transfer, so they worked to get #2 right next to #1 since they didn’t go in together).  The bright spot in the middle of the orange circle is the embryos huddled together:

During our 30 minute rest, K (the embryologist) came in and gave us the straws the embryos had been stored in.  We’ve never gotten those before!  He said that he could tell that we were the type of people (or that I’m the type of person) who would want those for memories’ sake.  YES PLEASE!  It was neat to see them and hold them.  They were labeled with our names, date of freezing (10/12/10 for one and 10/13/10 for the other), and “1xBlast” each (meaning there was only one blast in each – they usually store two in each if possible).

Our 30 minutes were up and it was time to go.  They scheduled my beta for 10/23.  They scheduled it a day early (11 days versus 12 days) and I didn’t say anything because HELL YES I’ll take that beta a day early (I do not believe this was a favor – I think it was a mis-calculation on their part which is just fine)!  It’s also good because we’ll be in KC (hello, Steph and JJ!) on the 25th which would have made beta #2 hard to get done if we did the first one on the 24th.  This way, we’ll do beta #1 on 10/23 and then beta #2 (if this works) on 10/25 before we leave town.  PERFECT!

Now we’re all in the basement and we’ve just eaten dinner.  B is taking good care of us both!  Matthew is super tired with only 1.5 hours of naps under him, so I expect him to go to sleep easily tonight.  I’m sad that I won’t see how easily he goes down – I’m not allowed to rock him since it will take more than 10 minutes and he climbs on me like a jungle gym.  B gets the honor tonight and tomorrow night… but come Sunday, I’m taking that job back!

(Actually, I’m updating to say that I did get to rock Matthew to sleep today and I absorbed every moment of it.  I breathed him in!)

Oh – and the 2 hour massage was unreal!  I am adding that to my IVF/FET protocols in the future.  I have never been so relaxed.  I am prescribing it to anyone else who does IVF/FET in the future as well!