cindy's world

This is an update to the last post.

When I got home yesterday and had my key in the door, I knew my emotions could not take it if the house were in the exact mess it was when we left for work in the morning. I hoped so badly that the stepkidlet took the note of demands posted by her dad on her bedroom door (like Martin Luther, except with things like “cleanliness is next to godliness” and “you are not representing your religion in a very good light if you don’t respect the public areas of the house and come home at a decent hour,” paraphrasing). I hoped that this would spark Daughter’s own religious “reformation.” If the house was still a mess and she was just going to resist anything said by non-church members, I would be at a complete loss. I NEEDED things to be okay in the house again. (Damn synthetic hormones.)

So I peered around the door pensively at the living room. SPOTLESS except for her purse on the table. YES! I entered and went around the hall to her bedroom. Her carpet was mostly visible again, about half the clothes were no longer piled around, and there was a pile of comforters and sheets in one corner that she expects to launder or do something with, and a large pile of clothes on her bed. She was sitting on the floor, sorting through small items, throwing lots of them away. I was so relieved! We chit-chatted awhile, and she explained her piles and said she’s on spring break now so it should be taken care of pretty soon, and I said, “This is pretty good, if you just do like 3 loads a day, you’d be done in less than a week.” Hoping that puts a plan into her head that doesn’t seem overwhelming. She agreed.
When her dad came in, I prepped him, saying, “HALF her stuff is gone in her room! She did good!” He was so happy he went in there and joked with her a bit, then suggested we all go out for dinner to “give her a break” from all the laundry and cleaning she’d apparently been doing. I popped my head in to her room and suggested it, asking if she had plans that night. She said she had her “small group” for church (a young women’s workshop that’s a spinoff from the main church — the reputable large church, not the little side group that’s been meeting every night into the wee hours; this large church is the church that the smaller side group accuses of “sugar-coating Jesus”) at 7:30p and is free for dinner. Soon, when Daughter decided she had reached a good breaking point in The Great Room Cleanup of 2011, we went to a local family-owned Greek restaurant.

Conversations went well; Daughter disclosed that she was out until 3:30am the night before because after the smaller religious group had broke for the evening, she hung out with one of the guys in the group that she’s now dating, and fell asleep at his house watching TV. She said she’d intended to leave at 1am. Mr. W told her that I’m having a hard time falling back to sleep, possibly due to the hormone injections, when she comes back late. I explained that I haven’t slept well in the past month that she’s been coming home this late (she explained it was because she and this boy find it hard to leave each other after the religious group’s events, so they hang out and talk until 2am or later, although they had previously decided they should stop doing that on weeknights and have a cut-off of midnight; they’d just been unable to stick to this decision). I said I used to just hear her and roll over and go back to sleep, but I’ve not been able to lately. I asked her if she could please, as a favor to me, come home earlier on weeknights because I’m up till close to 5am with insomnia when I hear her come in. She said of course, and said sheepishly that the boy and her just have such a hard time leaving each other. I suggested that since this boy had really wanted to meet and “hang out with” Mr. W and I, and really wants make a good impression, that she explain my little insomnia problem to him, and that way he’d personally feel obligated to get her to come home earlier so as not to make himself look bad. She said he’s totally like that, and that would work. (Apparently she’d told him she wanted to leave earlier the night she fell asleep there, but he convinced her to go in for a movie and she fell asleep there in the midst of it.) She also said that her church Small Group (the women’s group) is planning a weeklong trip in the summer to help “swamp kids” or something in a village in Haiti. I’m not sure if this is strictly missionary work or actual hard labor. It would cost $1800 and she wanted to know what we thought of the trip, if we thought we’d be okay with her leaving, and if we could help her find donors and sponsors for her trip. I personally think it’s a great idea for a privileged OC California girl to see what life is like in a non-cushy environment, and this is the best time to do it, when she’s got no husband or children or jobs to worry about. Also, apparently the boy she’s been dating is being scouted quite madly by local private universities for a basketball scholarship, and each school keeps trying to top the last school’s offer, and the most recent school offered to bring him onboard AND his friend (another basketball talent) onboard, and then asked if he’s seeing anyone. He said he was, and the scout asked about Daughter. Then the scout said that their school has a great music program and offered Daughter an interview, buttering up to the boy. Of course I’m excited at the prospect that a university may pick Daughter up as a transfer student and give her at least a partial scholarship under a program pointed toward her dream career. Hubby brought up some of his concerns about random things, too, including the costs of private universities and her choice of careers, and presented them in a very casual conversational manner. Daughter was open to everything, involved in the conversations, responsive. Daughter also had an ulterior motive — she wants us to meet the boy. He does sound like a good kid, and we weren’t doing anything this weekend, and she bribed us with a promise of a sushi dinner (which I’m sure we’ll be paying for) saying he LOVES sushi, so we agreed.

After we got home, I poked my head in Daughter’s room and said, “Hey, when you talk to him about sushi this weekend, make sure you talk to him about my insomnia so that *I* don’t have to talk to him about it.” She caught the humor in my tone on the threat, and laughed, and promised she would.

Last night, she was home well before 10:30pm.

A bunch of little things (and some not-so-little) are bugging me right now. Like this morning when I saw that some idiot had dumped a 3-volume divorce case on me to process that shouldn’t even be my problem. Or when the courtroom assistant came in at 8:40a and said, “Sorry for being late,” when she’s always in at that time, so did her apology extend to cover every day for the past 2 years? (I didn’t say anything in response cuz I was rather baffled before I was annoyed.) Mr. W said my cloud of negativity started when I read the entire information enclosure that came with the Progesterone vial as he was giving me the shot yesterday (“insomnia OR sleepiness.” “excessive hair growth OR hair loss.” What? Make up your mind!), but I think it’s cumulative.

For example, although my opinions on things haven’t changed, I now FEEL stuff about them. They’re not just intellectual, emotionally-detached opinions anymore. Tears seem to always be in abundance and available JUST underneath the surface. I’ll be channel-surfing and come across some actress crying, and without even knowing the context, I suck up her (fake) emotions and *I* start crying. I get a touching text from someone. I start crying. I was frustrated this morning that I couldn’t just send water and food to the quake/tsunami survivors in Japan and right now charities are just setting up “general funds” for which I can’t even tell where my money would go, I can’t tell if it’d even go to Japan. Tears. Feelings of being personally wronged somehow in this helplessness to change the world.

So yes, I think it’s collective from a month’s worth of injected hormones, and about a month’s worth of sleeplessness. It could be the hormones that keep me wide awake in the middle of the night, but it could also be the fact that the stepkidlet has leapt, no, swan-dived, head-first into a small (approx 30 members) religious group that plans activities EVERY SINGLE DAY and she has not returned home before 1:30am for a month. Last night she came home at 3:30am. She says it’s always a religious or church activity, but if they’re planning events (Bible studies, group sessions, etc) to run into the wee hours of the morning every single evening, they have GOT to know how unrealistic this is to keep up and irresponsible of their participants to attend daily. The group is essentially requiring their members to never have dinners or evening plans with their family or with friends that is separate from that church group. Although she lives with us, we see Daughter maybe twice a week on her way out to another church event after we get home from work, and we hear her come home at 2, 2:30 in the morning, and now I’m totally wide awake and can’t get back to sleep. Mr. W has addressed this with her and told her she needs to cut this church thing because she’s dropped a class saying it was too hard, not cleaned her room for months, or been around, so when does she get time to study? It was a big fight as all she heard was that he was persecuting her for her religion and she yelled that her heart is with Jesus and she will never abandon Him. I can understand her incredulousness that her father would ask her to give up GOD, of all people and things, but that was so not his point. His point was lost somewhere in the screaming and tears that followed. Yesterday, she confided in me that her mom and cousins have also approached her saying she has not had time for her family since she’s giving all her time to her church activities, and she was instantly offended, texting back attacks that her mom abandoned her family for her work, her cousin abandoned his family to his recreational drugs, her brother abandoned his family to his social life and girls, so why don’t they look at themselves before accusing her of something she’s doing that she sees as positive? She again declared that she would never turn her back to Jesus. I gently told her that I don’t think this was her mom’s point, she didn’t attack Daughter’s religion or Jesus, she criticized Daughter’s time management skills. We discussed this a bit, and I also told her that the way Daughter drags in other people as collateral casualties of her fight wasn’t right; it’s something I’ve seen her mom do (I was personally attacked and called “ugly” by her mom in a text argument with Mr. W about money that I was completely not involved in) and that I know her mom’s sister does, because it had recently made a small tiff between two teens bigger and bigger until cousins, mothers, aunts, everyone weren’t talking to each other anymore because they were all dragged in and bad-mouthed in someone else’s argument, and it nearly canceled Christmas dinner for them. I reminded Daughter of this fight and I think she got my point. Nevertheless, she was already engaged in a getting-nastier-by-the-minute text fight with her mom because Daughter refused to have dinner there at a “reasonable” hour, refusing to take time from a church activity in order to attend said dinner earlier than 8pm. I doubt she went to that dinner at all last night, because like I’d already said, she got home at 3:30a so she must’ve been with the insomniac church group.

My supervisor had once had a stern talk with me regarding the time I arrived to work in the mornings. (This was years ago; I’m usually at least 15-30 mins early now, which means I’m 1 hr 15 or 1 hr 30 mins earlier than others with my position.) Later, a co-supervisor approached me and said that he’d had a talk with the first supervisor, saying he disagreed with the first supervisor’s criticism of my arrival time. The second supervisor said that plenty of other employees in my position arrived approximately when I did, but left 1 hr to 1.5 hrs early without permission, and this is well-known. I am not one of the early-leavers and was in fact often one of the late-leavers who didn’t claim overtime. So if the first supervisor was going to criticize me over my arrival time, the second supervisor figured, he should have a talk with all those other employees over their leaving time. I told him earnestly that I was aware of this discrepancy in “work hours” among our building’s work force, and that I agree with him that in a perfect world, everyone would be criticized equally for the same misdeeds. HOWEVER, the fact that others don’t respect their work hours does not take away from the fact that I WAS coming in later than the “supposed” work hours, and so Supervisor #1 was correct and I should make efforts to change my arrival time. The other people are separate issues from my issue, even if the issue is the same issue. I have no sympathy for people who get called out about something they’re doing wrong and their entire defense is, “Well what about so-and-so? Why don’t you talk to HIM? What about how so-and-so do THEIR things? How come they can do that if I can’t do this?” BECAUSE WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS WRONG, REGARDLESS OF WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING! ALL those people who threw rocks at Jesus were wrong; saying “That guy did it first” doesn’t change the fact that you did something you knew was wrong. (Okay, arguably, some of them didn’t know or feel it was wrong.) Just because fires broke out and you saw someone loot a convenience store doesn’t mean that if YOU loot the next convenience store, you aren’t going to get charged with theft just because you say “I saw someone else do it before I did it!” Don’t get me wrong; I was in younger days guilty of using this type of weasel argument when my mom criticized or punished me; the disparity of justice hits me hard. It still does. But now I just believe that although justice should exist, it is a SEPARATE issue from your personal actions, it doesn’t excuse you from your personal wrongdoing. I realize this is a societal flaw that I can’t do much about, but IT BUGS ME. Own up to your errors, people, and learn from them. Stop being weasels. (No offense to the actual weasel species.)

So, also bugging me: Just because everybody else you hang with stay out till 2-3am praising Jesus doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to do it if you can’t find time around these activities to have your room not look like an episode of “Hoarders: Buried Alive.” She has been sleeping in the living room (after swiping bedding from the spare room upstairs) for the past 3 nights because there is too much clothes and crap in her room covering every surface for her to walk into and sleep. Mr. W tried to go in to remove some bowls and dishes to clean, and found discolored furry things growing from now unrecognizable former-food items. He wrote her a very specific note to clean up her bedroom mess and to clean up the living room after herself, and since she’s officially on spring break, she should have no excuse why this can’t be done, right? Oh, except that she’s asleep all day since she doesn’t get home until practically the next morning, and by the time she gets up, it’s late and she needs to get ready and run out for another church-related activity from which she will not return until 2am that night, and when she does, I will hear it at 2am and be unable to fall back to sleep until 5:30 am, when I have to get up at 6:15 am to get to work.

Normally, I’d have the same opinion about all this stuff — Japan donations, people blaming others instead of owning up to their own flaws, people neglecting personal responsibilities to dowhat they want , but I wouldn’t feel personally offended by people doing this stuff. Now I stay up feeling offended, arguments circling in my head that I wish I could throw at them to make them understand where I’m coming from.

Zen! I need zen!

Email from me to my dad, mom’s work, and mom’s home email at 9:30 this morning (since she has very limited access at work):
Subject: First baby picture
Here is your first photo of your grandchild.

Reply email from mom’s work to me:
We can see the baby already? I can’t open it!

Reply email from me to my mom’s work:
awwww, I guess you’ll have to wait until you get home!

Reply email from my dad to me and my mom:
Dear Cindy :
Wow ! look’s just like you ha ha ha

Reply email from me to my dad and mom:
I know! That’s what I look like at night after I take off all my makeup! Mom says she can’t view the picture.

IM from Flip Flop Girl (whom I showed this string to):
hahahahahaha
you and your dad are so mean!!!
but SO funny

IM from me to Flip Flop Girl:
hee hee!
she’s probably called my dad by now and has wailed, “I can’t see it! What does it look like? Can you print it out and fax it to me?”

A coworker recently lost her elderly mother after the mom broke her hip in a fall, then suffered a heart attack after her surgery in the hospital. I wasn’t aware that her mother’s funeral was yesterday after work because I had taken Monday off for bedrest, so it was a surprise to discover we had after-work plans of such a nature. On the drive to the church funeral, Mr. W and I called his mother for her birthday. They (mom- and dad-in-law) were on speaker, and we were on speaker, so it was a 4-way conversation. We exchanged pleasantries, they asked about my shots and pregnancy, we joked around, and they said they were on the way to a steak dinner to celebrate MIL’s birthday. They asked where we were going; we told them to a funeral. =( I said they were the bright spot to the day before we went into something more solemn. In the church, the way the children, grandchildren, a neighbor and friend spoke about the coworker’s mom made me wish I’d known her. Even without ever knowing her, I aspired to be like her, but I’m a long shot off. I thought about how my kid(s) would see me as a person and a mother when I passed, how I wanted them to be able to say honestly, like this woman’s daughter did, “she always tried to do the right thing.” How they trusted her heart and her advice, her nurturing and open arms, and how this was the way she treated everyone from family to friends to strangers. And I thought about being irritated at my mom over an email she’d written me earlier last week, how I’d resolved to not respond because I was so offended, and then having Flip Flop Girl invest solid time over IM in the middle of the day to talk some sense into me. Everything Flip Flop Girl said made sense but I was too mad to budge, until her most effective line: “…but our parents are the only parents we have, and they mean well, you KNOW they do.” It suddenly struck me how hard it had been (somewhat recently) for Flip Flop Girl when she lost her own mother. And I finally took her advice and wrote my mom back a very detailed, patient, explanatory email about what’s going on. She still wrote me back something I found condescending, but maybe she thought the words in Chinese and it just didn’t translate well or something. Like Flip Flop Girl was trying to tell me, take into account the intent and not the delivery.
Toward the end of the coworker’s mother’s service, I had an odd sense of an elderly white-haired woman, face creased with the lines of over eight decades of smiles, coming to each person where we were sitting facing the pulpit. She walked down each aisle, back to the preacher and paying him very little attention, but focusing instead on the friends, family, and strangers, leaning down just a little (because she was small) to be almost level with our faces, her hands over ours, acknowledging each of us, welcoming all of us with complete joy and acceptance. As if she were hosting her own funeral and greeting guests. And then it struck me… “Mabell,” I asked her in my mind, “Would you like to connect with your daughter again?” Her daughter, my coworker, had made an attempt a couple of months ago to set up a private reading with Rebecca, but unexpected expenses came up and she had to defer to a later time. I think it would be a wonderful thing to buy her an hour with Rebecca when Rebecca’s next in town at the end of this month. My coworker was having a very hard time with the thought that her mother, her roommate, her best friend, was no longer physically in the next room. “Would you like that?” I asked the busy image of the older woman in a light-colored cotton nightgown-looking garment. But she had moved on to other guests. I think this will be just for my coworker.

I’m pretty lucky. I told college roommie Diana the other day that I lead a pretty charmed life, and I think I do. After gymming on Monday, Mr. W came home with an armful of two dozen yellow-orange roses (the petals were yellow, my fave, but had swirls and touches of orange, very pretty). “For my future baby’s mama,” he explained. Diana and I had chatted before about her seeing a far-along pregnant woman in a bikini, and how her then-boyfriend had seen nothing wrong with it, and she asked me for Mr. W’s opinion. He saw nothing wrong with it, either, although Diana and I couldn’t imagine ourselves pregnant and strutting in a bikini in public. Mr. W had been talking for months about taking artistic silhouette-y pregnancy photos of me, which I’d always stuck my tongue out about, but he was always starry-eyed about the whole deal, saying how “cute” it would be when my belly got that big and my belly button got pushed out (ew?). I get the sense that Diana’s Eric is of the same mind. I know a lot of women who have been weight-conscious most of their lives don’t see the body changes that come with pregnancy as beautiful; it’s a cliche that women feel “fat” and “ugly” and many are fearful that their husbands would wander toward a, um, less curvy idea of beauty when we are at our “largest.” But I have none of those fears with Mr. W; is he quite irrationally excited about what’s to come. I, of course, am not sure what to expect, and am considering getting a baby book so I can stay on top of doing the right exercises, eating the right things, looking for the right signs of baby’s health.

So far, pregnancy feels similar to any other time of PMS. I’m not overly bloated (I finally weighed myself, 121 lbs, so my maximum weight will be 145, which is still below my lifetime heaviest by a pound) and I’m not as cranky nor do I crave chocolate, but my breasts are tender and I have a few mild cramps a day. Mr. W says this may be the hormone drugs and not pregnancy at all. That’s true… last night’s Progesterone injection didn’t go so well. After he put the shot in, he drew back on the syringe a little to check for blood, as he’d done before. It’s to make sure he didn’t poke into a vein cuz the med is supposed to sit in my muscle, not my bloodstream. I heard him say, “Uh-oh, there’s blood!” I told him matter-of-factly the next steps that the nurse had explained and that I’d read multiple times on the injection instructions.
“Okay, pull it out, and we’ll just find a different spot. Change out the injection needle and screw on a new one. Put a cotton ball on the spot you just came out of, and you’re gonna have to re-swipe the area with alcohol before you inject again.” He couldn’t get a cotton ball on the site before blood was running down, exactly as it had the first day with the Pregnyl shot. The bleeding didn’t stop for awhile, which made me concerned that the first Pregnyl shot, when he’d forgotten to draw back on the plunger to check for blood return, had indeed been an intravenous injection. I hope nothing was affected from that. 🙁
Mr. W removed the needle, but asked what he ought to do with the blood filling up the top of the syringe. “It’s my own blood, just leave it, it’s fine,” I figured.
“But how will I know if I hit blood again? When I pull back I won’t be able to tell if it’s old blood or new blood.” Oh. Good point. While I was still pondering this quandary and trying to call a nurse friend while watching people injure themselves on “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” Mr. W said, “Okay, I got it.” I guess he’d managed to squeeze out most of the blood. He found a new spot and this spot hurt worse than the former spot and I jerked involuntarily. But he reported, “Okay, no blood,” and completed the shot. The first hole was still bleeding, but the second was fine. And today, I feel like there’s a golf ball buried in my right butt muscle. But that was the worst thing that happened in my personal life all day, so yeah, I’m still pretty charmed.

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

Mr. W and I took advantage of Orange County Restaurant Week this year. The first day of this promotional week on Sunday, we hit up one of our favorite healthy eating spots, True Food Kitchen and ordered off their prix fixe menu for half the cost. Heavenly, indulgent flavors for no guilt. Tuesday, the day after my eggs retrieval, we took the day off so I could rest, but did skip off for a lunch treat to Andrei’s Conscious Cuisine. I’d never been there but did hear about it from Ann, who’d gone there soon after it had opened last year. The place was SO chic. We also ordered off their 3-course prix fixe menu and Mr W had a spicy blood orange vodka martini (this place makes their own vodka) since he’s now able to drink after his swimmers were extracted.

The food is WONDERFUL. Like True Food Kitchen, Andrei’s takes its ingredients from wholesome, locally-grown sources, organic when possible, but it’s a notch or two fancier than True Food. Mr. W read some reviews online before we left so he ordered a popular, often-raved-about item: boneless beef spare ribs. I had trout, which was also excellent and certainly better than other trout I’ve had, but I was jealous about his savory, melt-apart beef.

I felt bloated and swollen after that meal and was uncomfortable walking, like I had gas trapped in my stomach cavity all the way up to my diaphragm. (Turned out that it’s not uncommon for gas bubbles to get trapped in your body post-surgery and your body works the bubbles out, or absorbs and diffuses it, which is what happened as the week wore on.)
Wednesday after work, Mr. W arbitrarily drove us to The Counter, a customize-it-yourself burger joint with quality ingredients, again organic is available, and their meat is humanely treated, hormone- and antibiotic-free. I also learned about this place from Ann. Hubby got the Wednesday slider special where they pre-selected the toppings for four distinct flavors of burgers, and it came with a beer pairing. I think his flavors were something like Greek (with feta, olives, cucumbers, tzatziki sauce), Asian (carrot strings, scallions, ginger soy glaze), Italian fresco (fresh mozzarella, cilantro, basil, basil pesto sauce), and Buffalo (blue cheese, fried shoestring onions, some spicy peppers, celery, hot wing sauce). He said all the flavor blends were incredible and delicious.

I just custom-picked a burger on whole-grain bun, with Gruyere cheese, grilled onions, black olives, organic mixed greens, sprouts, and basil pesto sauce. OMG, it was SO GOOD. If I were to ever give a burger a standing ovation, it would be at this place. (We went back today with Daughter for lunch, actually.)
Thursday at lunchtime, Mr. W and I looked for a restaurant commutable for lunch that was participating in OC Restaurant Week with a lunch menu. (Some restaurants only participate for dinner.) We went with Cedar Creek Inn, which is near an old residence of mine and I’d driven past it before but never stopped in. I’d always been curious. It’s not a “healthy” restaurant like the first two, but it seemed to have good quality food so I was sure we could find something healthy. The place looked SO cool inside, like a classy lodge with river rocks, high wood ceilings, giant fireplaces. “This is exactly what I’d expect from a place called ‘Cedar Creek Inn,’ ” Mr. W remarked. We had a little snafu going in; we were seated immediately despite not having reservations (the place was crowded with dressed-up business people on their lunchbreaks as well as some older geriatric-age patrons), but as the menus were placed in front of us, we realized we were not given the OC Restaurant Week Prix Fixe menu. Mr. W watched the same older hostess seat another couple and said that they got some long cards that appeared to be the prix fixe menus. He got up and inquired at the hostess table, and returned with the cards. Apparently she rather snappishly told Mr. W he should’ve asked for those special menus when we checked in at the hostess table. What?! Since when did we have to BEG for featured menus? But everything was great after that. The wait staff was attentive and efficient and food came very quickly, each course following the last as quickly as we were done. They obviously were used to people having limited lunchtimes. Mr. W had cedar plank salmon in a misoyake sauce that was VERY good; I had the beef shortribs. HA! Also amazing, melt-apart. We were unfortunately still a little late back to work. I’d totally forgotten I had a meeting and walked in 5 mins late. I was embarrassed, but others walked in later than I did, so I felt better.
Friday, we wanted something special knowing I’d be on bedrest after Saturday late morning for the next 2 days. He also wanted this to be a place to celebrate our last step in the in vitro process. We chose Splashes Restaurant in the Surf & Sand Resort in Laguna Beach. Grace was supposed to be married at that resort, and her reception was to be catered by the restaurant on-site, so I’m pretty sure it’s Splashes Restaurant. I remember it being shockingly expensive when Grace told me about some of her wedding planning details back in ’03. I had no idea that, just because the reservation had the word “wedding” in it, a restaurant would charge PER PIECE of stuffed mushroom appetizer. She did say the food was amazing, though. “Wait till you try it!” she’d said excitedly about their wedding selections. Of course, I never did eat there for her wedding; a year later when she passed, we (her family and closest friends, us bridesmaids) stopped by the resort and scattered some of her ashes off-shore around a little secluded rocky cliff area. Her wishes. So it means something to eat there now. We got there before the normal dinner crowd (the restaurant was booked solid on reservations already between 5:45p and 8:15p, so I reserved for 5:45) and we selected patio seating under two cozy heat lamps. We were right up against the glass overlooking the beach, and were alone on that patio section our entire dinner. Other diners all chose to eat inside or on the lower level patios.

It was so romantic, watching the sun slowly deepen from golden to rose as it set into its liquid bed.

For almost a full hour as we enjoyed our fancy dinner, a family of dolphins played, jumped, torpedoed right in front of us. I think there must’ve been 7 or 8 of them. In our private enjoyment and conversations, Mr. W called this the perfect date, and kept talking appreciatively about how great his life is, has been. About time he realized it! haha
I told him it feels to me like this perfect evening before my embryo transplant the next day had a little tag underneath it that reads, “Love, Riley.” Just a little gift, a greeting while he can still pull strings as energy from the Other Side. And the dolphin show? Could be Grace saying hello, thanks for thinking of her, and she’s with me. I feel like she kinda knows Riley. That’d be cool.

…I’m just not pregnant yet.

The lab called. Out of the 18 eggs they retrieved from me yesterday, 12 were mature and able to be ICSI‘ed. So they fertilized those 12, and 11 “took” and became embryos. That’s a 91.7% success rate right there! I thought statistically it was more like 50%, but the female embryologist who called from the lab said, “Not for us, we’re more like 80% success rate.” Then she looked over the numbers from everyone they retrieved from and fertilized yesterday. There were two 100%s, and everyone else was in the 90%s (of course I don’t know how many eggs those women had). Given that there are so many viable embryos, the embryologist said she’s going to put me on the lineup for a blastocyst transfer on Saturday. In these 5 days, genetics and the quality of sperm and egg will determine which of the 11 potential kidlets will survive to Saturday, and they’ll take the hardiest of the remaining and implant that one. The implant procedure itself will take 5 mins, altho I’ll have to be on bedrest for 48 hours afterwards.

The pain from yesterday’s procedure has subsided at least 90%, the sun is shining, we just got good news, Mr. W has already started drinking (yesterday), so we’re gonna take advantage of OC Restaurant Week and find a cool new place to have lunch! Yay!