I had no idea what to wear that Saturday morning. What does one wear when one meets his/her child for the first time? I suppose the impression you want to give of your identity would play a factor. If I dressed business-casual, does that make people think I’m professional and responsible? Maybe a little cold and unmotherly. If I dressed athletically, do I appear sloppy? I didn’t think I wanted to wear anything trendy, or anything remotely uncomfortable or restrictive. So I opted for a loose red hooded tunic (sort of my signature color now) and black cotton drawstring yoga pants. It’s sort of a homemaker, casual look. Maybe something that says “I’m ready to roll up my sleeves, jump into the midst of the action with both feet, and be mom.” Plus it’s roomy for optimal comfort.

The lobby at the Redondo Beach branch, the place my kids have called home for the past 5 days, was empty when we walked in before 11am. I was eventually called into the back into the same room I was in the last time I saw my doctor. He had agreed to come back for this procedure, but was coming from his office in Beverly Hills. A nurse walked me through some consent forms, then handed me a Valium pill. “I didn’t take this when I did the trial transfer,” I said. I don’t like being drugged up.
“No, you wouldn’t have. This is to relax you, and it also relaxes your muscles. Since your uterus is a large muscle, this will keep it from cramping while we’re doing the transfer.” Oh, it’s for the kid. Okay, then. I popped the pill and swigged the water. Then I changed into the provided gown and when I reopened the door to let the nurse know I was changed, I felt the panning delay of my eyes, like I was getting a little loopy.
“I can feel it working already,” I said. She looked surprised, as it had only been about 5 minutes. I explained it’d been hours since breakfast (I probably slept 2 hours the night before, and it was an odd insomnia as I was not nervous, I just wasn’t sleepy) so the medication hit me fast. She told me to climb into bed and that she’d check on my doctor to see where he was. Turned out he was just leaving the other office. He arrived only 15 minutes later than the planned time (although the nurses and embryologists jokingly gave him a hard time about it), which meant it had been about half an hour since I took Valium, but it had worn off. I wasn’t dizzy or spacy or anything anymore. That’s some powerful liver I’ve got there. I tried my best to relax my muscles on my own as the doctor played classical music, inserted the cold speculum (“Just a warning, this is going to feel cold,” he said. The nurses all said, “Well, it was WARM when we set her up but it’s cold NOW by the time you got here,” haha) and cleaned what he needed to inside with some cotton swabs. Meanwhile, the embryologist came in from another door wheeling a big clear box that looked about the size of a large treasure chest on legs. I knew what was inside was more valuable to me than any pirate’s booty.
“Is that the embryo?” I asked.
“Yup,” she said. She looked inside the box through a microscope attached to the side wall of the clear box. “Wanna see it?” she asked Mr. W. Of course he wanted to see it!
“That’s a really good-looking embryo we’re putting in you,” the doctor said as Mr. W looked.
I joked, “Oh, I’m sure you say that about all your blastocysts.” Mr. W later told me it looks much like the photo they had taken for us, but less clear. Here’s the photo attached to a report that the nice embryologist had shown me before the doctor got there:

Oh, speaking of this report, the embryologist had also told me that they would be freezing 3 embryos that day; 2 top-notch quality blastocysts (“A”s), 1 mediocre blastocyst (“C”). The C blastocyst has rather thin walls, so it’s likely it would not survive the freezing and thawing process. There are 2 more embryos they’re watching that are growing slowly, and the embryologist is going to give them more time to see if they grow into blastocysts. If they do, they will be frozen with the other ones. So with 1 embryo going in, 3 frozen, 2 being watched, that leaves 5 more that are not accounted for. I assumed those 5 did not survive the 5-day waiting period.
The doctor very, very carefully, using a surface ultrasound on my stomach controlled by a nurse to guide his movements (all my ultrasounds had been vaginal before this point) threaded a thin tube called a catheter through my cervix into my uterus. I didn’t feel a thing, but only knew what he was doing because he explained every step to me as he was performing it. He looked at the ultrasound screen and referenced a white line in the middle of a tight C-shaped dark mass, saying “That’s me.” The catheter. I could SORT OF make out what he called “the white line” but only because he insisted it was there; if I were looking at the screen without direction, it would’ve all just been various shades of gray fading into other shades of gray to me. Mr. W seemed to see better, since he was sitting closer to the screen. The doctor described his actions, how he was going to bring the catheter in a little farther, and said that there was a little polyp he had to go around to get in.
That dropped my jaw. “But they said there were no more polyps, that they were all gone!” He didn’t seem concerned and said it was fine, he just went around it, that’s all. So I guess my body just makes and then gets rid of polyps between cycles? At least the polyps had disappeared in time for me to catch this cycle, even if one came back later. =/ The embryologist then brought the embryo to the doctor. I didn’t see how it was administered, but the doctor told me to expect to see a small white flash at the end of the line, and that would be the embryo in some fluid going into my uterus. I COMPLETELY missed it. I was looking, I just didn’t see anything. But somewhere in there, it hit me the magnitude of what we’re doing and emotions suddenly rose to the surface and choked me. I didn’t make a sound, but I saw the convulsion on my uterus in the ultrasound. I forced myself to calm down and it did not happen again. After the doctor withdrew something, he kept the speculum in me, backed off a bit, and the embryologist quickly rushed back to the big clear box and looked through the microscope again.
“She’s checking to make sure that the embryo’s not still in there,” he explained. In a few percentage of cases, the embryo for whatever reason did not get released with the fluid, and is still stuck in the instrument. Soon, she gave the all-clear. “Okay, the embryo’s not there, which means it’s in YOU,” the doctor said with a smile. He carefully pulled out the speculum and lowered the bed.

They wheeled me to the recovery area where less than a week ago I listened to another patient throw up. The nurse told me to prop my knees up, and tucked me in under the warmed-up blankets. I was directed to lay there for half an hour before they released me. I was kind of surprised they just squirt the embryo in there and it somehow magically sticks. Too bad no one’s come up with some sort of dissolving tape. They can put the embryo up against my uterine wall, slap some tape over it, and let the tape melt away in a week. I guess nature’s more efficient. So as the embryo presumably burrowed itself into all its surrounding nourishment, Mr. W leaned against the railing of the hospital bed I was laying on and looked at me adoringly. We just chatted until the nurse came by and asked me if I had to use the restroom yet. I sure did; in order for the abdominal ultrasound to work well, I had to drink 16oz of water an hour before the procedure and hold it. That fluid was ready to come out now. After I returned to the bed and my doctor popped his head and the arm in the curtain to squeeze my toes “for luck” and to tell me to rest up for the next 48 hours while forbidding me to exercise until they see a heartbeat, I was soon discharged.

I started my bedrest downstairs in front of the TV in the living room. That soon hurt my back. In the evening, I was shooed upstairs for my nighttime Progesterone shot. Luckily, it was a relatively uneventful shot, unlike the night before when Mr. W said “Hmm” after he withdrew the needle. “What?” I’d asked. He said there was blood in the syringe, but he hadn’t noticed blood when he drew back after first stabbing me to check for blood. “Maybe it’s too dark in here, and I’m not wearing my glasses,” he’d said. I demanded to see the syringe. Soon I took a picture of of it and sent it to Bat for a nurse’s opinion.

Bat seemed initially confused that there was blood in the syringe AFTER the injection, but then said if Mr. W truly hit a vein and accidentally gave the shot intravenously, first of all it’d be a miracle, and second, we’d see a lot more blood than that. So I felt a teeny bit better. He said likely we just went through a couple of little capillaries on the way in and out. =P

I bed-rested for a FULL 48 hours. I was bored, I watched way too much wedding-related shows on TLC, and texted photos of my constant companion, Dodo, to people who probably had better things to do, like work.

Mr. W had planned to work out for 4-5 hours on Sunday, the day after the embryo transfer, but after seeing that I’m literally put on “strict bedrest,” meaning NO getting up at all except to use the restroom, he decided to stay home. He stayed downstairs and played computer games, played on his iPad, read outside while sunning in the backyard, but popped in anytime I texted him. I tried to keep the requests to a minimum. I felt guilty being waited on. I texted for water and an orange, asked for vitamins once, and he brought me my meals on trays and ate next to me on the bed before he brought everything back down and disappeared to his own devices again. He’d reappear for shots, and when I texted about how I watched the entire day start, peak, and wane right outside my window and I felt like I’d never even started my day. He slept in the spare room the last 3 nights to allow me to sleep sideways on the bed with the TV on. I guess when I laid like that, there was only room for me and this guy:

If you’re over 6 feet tall, you’re outa luck on this bed. I also joked about wanting a bell.
Somewhere in there, the lab called. An embryologist I was speaking with for the first time explained the following:
18 eggs extracted
12 were mature and fertilized
11 became embryos
4 embryos became blastocysts
3 were “A” quality, 1 was “C” quality
1 “A” was implanted, 2 remaining “A”s and the remaining “C” was frozen on Saturday
The remaining embryos had stopped growing and the cells had stopped dividing, despite the extra day in the lab they gave them to see what would happen. She asked for my permission to dispose of those non-blast embryos; I said of course. And then I asked her: If out of 18 eggs, and 11 embryos, only 4 survived to become blastocysts, that’s only a 22% survival rate. Does this ratio apply/transfer to my eggs if I were going through natural pregnancy? If I released 18 eggs, would only 4 get to this point, meaning chances are it’d take me up to 4-5 months of “trying” before I get pregnant? She said this was not a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, because there are so many factors that went into this; there was all the artificial meddling I’d done to my hormone levels, there’s the fact that ICSI was performed and not natural sperm selection (I guess ICSI is a delicate operation), and, as Mr. W pointed out, the quality of his sperm may have had a lot to do with the fact that some of my embryos met with early cessation. And maybe if these embryos were conceived inside my body, the conditions would’ve been more conducive to their continued growth. There are too many variables to know for sure. “But we put a really pretty blastocyst in you yesterday, so hopefully everything will turn out great,” she said comfortingly. “Good luck!” That’s the second medical professional who has praised the attractiveness of this embryo. Hope it doesn’t get to Riley’s head.

I moved so gingerly after the transfer. Although “bedrest” means I can lay on my side, front, back, however I want as long as I’m horizontal (thank goodness or I would’ve lost my mind), I was paranoid every time I moved and got up to use the restroom. I’d check the toilet immediately after using it to make sure there’s not a little round embryo bobbing on the water surface. I know, I know, I wouldn’t be able to see it. But I didn’t want to see blood, either. About 26 or so hours after the embryo transfer, I suddenly felt like the insecurity was gone. Things sort of just fit into place, not in a tangible physical way, but more as a “feeling” I have that things are right now. Like the kid has burrowed itself into my uterine wall now. Things happen fast, from what I understand; when the embryologist showed me the photo of the blastocyst they were going to transfer, she explained that the actual thing measures bigger than that now. I asked when the photo was taken. She said 9:30. “This morning?!” “Yeah, they grow fast.”

Mr. W came up and curled up behind me at around 11:45 a.m. this morning. “Harro!” I said.
“I came up to join you for the countdown,” he said. “Fifteen minutes!” Finally?! The first thing I did off bedrest was take a shower. Then I carefully peeled and stuck my first two estrogen patches on my lower abdomen (thank goodness SOME of these meds are in the form of pills and patches; one shot in the heiny a day is quite enough). And then, the three of us (including my girlie stepkidlet) went to The Counter and had a burger. Yum.

It’s been a tough 48 hours without being able to reach a computer. =P