We transferred!

Here it is Wednesday and I’m happy to report we were able to transfer on Monday.   I was so worried that our little embryo wouldn’t thaw properly but it turns out I didn’t need to worry.   Originally I was going to take off the entire day off from work but since it’s my easy day at school I went in for the morning.

At noon I came home and picked up my husband.   We drove the hour ride up to the clinic and arrived 15 minutes early.  I expected to have to wait but one of the nurses came a few minutes later to get me.   She had my husband and I change into our “gear” and then the embryologist came in to talk to us.

I know I’ve talked about him before but our embryologist is the best.  He’s been doing this since IVF was just starting.  In fact, he told us when he started the success rate was only 8%.   Can you imagine paying all of this money for an 8% chance??  Anyhow, he came in and told us that the embryo thawed well, bounced back, and was currently an expanding blast.  He did say he was going to do assisted hatching to make sure it could get out.  Then he left and they got us into the room.

I was reminded that this was a blast and that it was a good one.  They told me with had a 50% chance with this one which was what we had with the last one.  I know they were all pulling for us.    So we did everything we needed to do, they got the catheter in me and the embryologist brought in our blast.  A few seconds later I was PUPO!

I was rolled back out into the recovery area and the embryologist came back out.  He was all excited to do a show and tell with us.  It turns out he explained the freezing process in depth and then showed us the actual tube the embryo was frozen in.  It’s CRAZY how small the hole in the tube is that they have to get the embryo in.  He says it’s stressful because they have 90 seconds to get it into the freezing medium then get it into the hole and get it frozen.  The hole is smaller then the eye of a needle and he said that the embryo is about 1/10 of that size.

He then gave us the tube that our embryo was frozen in as well as the tubing that it hangs from in the freezing chamber.   It’s pretty cool having that as a souvenir!   It has my code number on it as well as 2 colors.  The colors are for the stage and the grading of the embryo so it was one color for a blast and one color for “good” quality.

So now we wait.  My beta is December 15 so we are either going to have a miracle at Christmas or a really bad Christmas.  I’m nervous but I’m trying not to think about it.  I’m just taking my estrogen and my husband is giving me my progesterone in olive oil.  I’m trying to be positive but I don’t want to get my hopes up.  I do feel good about this cycle.  I feel like my body is more relaxed and things are going well but I don’t want to jinx anything.  Especially since we’ve done so many transfers before.

So just 8 days until we learn the fate of our first frozen transfer.  It’s funny that we’ve done 3 years of infertility treatments but this is our first time doing a frozen transfer.   I hope this is the end of our journey.  If it’s not then we have one more shot but when it’s the end of that cycle it’s the end of our journey and not in a good way.