We Got To Transfer!

About 5 minutes before we were scheduled to leave for the hospital this morning, the phone rang. I may or may not have said a bad word very loudly, fearing that this is the call that says “don’t come.” (They warned us one may come. They did not say they could call if all systems were go, hence my fear/anger/profanity.)

It was a nurse I know well, but not mine, letting me know that all systems are go for today. We have two 6 cell embryos and an 8+ cell embryo, both graded “good.” They want them to be between 6 and 8 cells for a 3 day transfer, so all 3 of them were perfectly average. She said that is really unusual for a Rescue ICSI situation, that usually they lag behind and are never quite as strong. She wished us good luck, and hung up.

A minute later, the phone rang again. It was MY nurse, back from vacation, calling to tell us how excited she was for seeing such good quality embryos with Rescue ICSI. We were pretty excited to get positive phone calls, especially to have 2 nurses call because they both wanted to tell us the good news!

Then began the torture part of the morning – drinking a bottle of Gatorade and HOLDING IT IN. Ever since my bladder test a couple years ago, I haven’t had the same holding stamina I used to. It hurts sooner. This was pretty painful. Especially after they started manipulating my body from multiple angles. I did at one point warn the girl with the ultrasound machine that if she didn’t want me to pee on the doctor, she might not want to push so hard. The doctor laughed and said I wouldn’t be the first. J I watched on the ultrasound as they squirted the two embryos in, and then laid still for about a half hour before going home. They even gave me a picture of the moment they went in. They're too small to see, since they're microscopic, but that's just how crazy this whole version of baby making is. A picture of the moment they entered my body. I guess that's our consolation prize for not being in the same room when it happened. ;)

The bed rest after retrieval was to keep me safe while my innerds healed. The bed rest after transfer is to try to keep the embryos where they belong while they start to (hopefully) implant.