Push to Day 5

Oh my word – can someone please tell Mother Nature to turn summer back on?  Cos I’m feeling decidedly like a duck – enough with the rain already… After battling traffic this am (why is it that people see rain and drive like morons?) we finally got to the clinic to have our day 3 embryology feedback with the FS.

We met all the couples who I had ER with in the waiting room this morning and they were all so positive and excited.  And funnily enough so was I.  I always get so emotional to see our embryo’s on the screen, it’s like those little bundles of cells hold so much hope and potential.  Those cells, they could be our children one day.  They might end up with my green eyes and temper and Cliff’s gorgeous legs… gets me everytime!

We were the second couple called back to have the big talk.  All of our embies are still alive and growing.  One is a real limper though, and it broke my heart to know that “he” was probably going to arrest in the next few hours or so.  Our other six are super.  One “excellent” quality 7 cell and 5 “excellent” quality 8 cells. 

Initially our FS wanted us to transfer 3 today and freeze 3.  We then discussed pushing them to day 5.  The FS we sat with said that there was no reason to not grow them onto day 5 and that considering that we’d grown embies to day 5 before that it would be a good option for us to consider.  His exact words were this “you’re not in this to get embryo’s for freezing, you’re in it to get pregnant”.

So a recap for my records, day 3 embies status were as follows:

• 1 x 4 cell (limpy)
• 1 x 7 cell
• 5 x 8 cells

So onto day 5 our precious embryo’s go!  Please join us in prayer that they all continue to grow as they should.

Going strong

Don’t ask me how it happened, but I got busy at work and had forgotten to call the lab to find out how our embies were doing (I know, how crazy am I?)

I’m super chuffed to report that all is still well with our Secret 7, they are all growing as they should and we need to meet up with our FS tomorrow morning at 08h00 to discuss the embryology and whether we proceed with a day 3 or a day 5 transfer.

Cliff and I have discussed this, and if we are fortunate enough to have all 7 still going strong tomorrow and to have all 7 of a similar good quality, then we would like to push them to day 5.  I know that this gives us no chance of having anything to freeze but honestly?  It’s go big or go home time.  For us it’s not about freezing embies this time round, for us it’s about achieving what we’ve not been able to thus far in our journey.  A pregnancy.  And if I stand a better chance of falling pregnant cos we’ve grown them onto day 5 (thereby naturally getting to see those that make it to compacting or blast stage) then so be it.

I’ll update as soon as I can tomorrow.

I’m so excited, I’m so expectant.  I really just want this to be IT.  I believe that it just might be.

Is this really real?

I’m in a complete state of denial.  This whole IVF cycle just really does not seem real.  AT ALL.  Even with the mild OHSS stopping me in my tracks, it’s almost like I’ve stepped into a time warp and have somehow found myself in the middle of a 2ww. 

My whole approach to the treatment this time was to focus on each day as it came and to try not focus too much on the end result.  So I popped clomid daily and just went about my business.  I got up before sparrows fart for scans and injected myself happily taking each day as it came until I was being wheeled into a theatre and put nicely to sleep with the aid of dormican and pethadine and came out with a cool sticker on my hand.  The OHSS struck at the right time I think cos it kept my mind off the fact that I had growing embies in a dish at the lab that needed to be obsessed about.  And we all know the great time I had at transfer right?

So now I am sitting in my office hurridly typing this post before my guests break for tea and I’m feeling… weird.  Disconnected.  Like this is all a dream and that soon I’ll wake up and try to roll over and fall back asleep again.  I must admit that the twinge analysis genes are kicking in but not quite to the extent that I had expected them to at this stage of the game.

Here I sit at 4DP5DT and it really does not feel real.  But that being said it is EARLY days.  Yes, very early days in this this we like to call the 2ww…

Threeeeeee!!!!

Why on earth did I think that anything could be easy?  This morning I woke up elated by the fact that I only had to get up once during the night and hopeful that my gypo guts would control themselves for long enough for me to not make a complete mess of things in the transfer room.

Showered and ready to go, I expect to get into Cliff’s car and it’s locked.  So I ask nicley open please… and he says “it is open.”  I tried three times and it did not open.  Then he walks over thinking his battery in the central locking has gone and opens it up with his key.  Hmmm.  Alarm bell #1 goes off.  “Hon, lets just take my car.”  “No, No, I’ll just jump start it while we’re rolling down the road.”  Double Hmmmm.  Alarm bell # 2 goes off.  “Erm, ok”.  Well suffice it to say that the jump start by rolling backwards downhill in our complex did not get the car started.  So now the car won’t start and our car is in the middle of the road in our complex.  Lurvely.  Cliff gets my car and we try to jump start the car with jumper leads.  Nada nothing it’s bloody dead.  *sigh*  This would not have happened if we had just taken my car!  Then at 06h40 in the morning we had to push his big ass heavy car to the verge and drive to the clinic in my car anyway… (It took tremendous self restraint BUT I held back the I told you so, we’d already had “harsh” words in the above exchange anyway, we really did not need more.)

Get to clinic, rush to loo in case I need to go and nothing.  Yeeha!  Success (yeah right!)  Went into see Stephan and before I can launch into my well prepared case as to why we should transfer 3 if we have 3, He’s like “so what do you think about transferring 3?”.  It seems he also believes with our past history and the fall off rate of this lot of embryo’s that 3 was the way to go.  We still had 5 going today.  Two very slow growing quite sad looking embies, but 3 amazing excellent quality blastocysts! 

Down to the ward to start filling my bladder.  And that is where the wheels started to fall off.  The more water I was drinking to fill my bladder (a much required tool when it comes to ET) the more I felt like my tummy needed to go.  Two false starts later, I finally had to go and lost some of my hard filled urine in the process.  After explaining the delicate situation to the sister she called Stephan who came down to have a look see.  Bladder not nearly full enough to do transfer.  He was concerned that the runny tummy was not good.  Checked me out – pitter pattered on my tummy with his hands (tender over ovaries nothing over stomache) listened to the insides with a stethoscope and said we needed to fill up super quick and do transfer as quickly as possible after I was full.  I had to lie down in the retrieval beds and fill up.  I was terrified that I was going to shart in my dear doctors face.

Finally it was go time and before transfer they checked our little ones again and the embryologist was over the moon with them – in the 3 1/2 hours we were wiating to fill my bladder they had continued to grow and were looking according to her amazing!  Then Stephan had to battle my kinky cervix and my clentched butt cheeks and our beautiful embabies were put back where they belong.

At our clinice we don’t get pics of the embies they transfer but they do give you a pic of the scan as they transfer them and you see the “flash”.  When they handed the print out to me the shape of my ute around the flash of the embies looked just like a baby forming and the flash looked like it’s eye.  Now I’m not normally into looking for signs where there are none but it seems too good a sign to ignore right?  We test on Friday the 13th

We’re optimistic that this might just be it.

Crazy Last Few Days…

I sure fell down from the euphoria of our ER and great fert report with alarming alacrity.  On Thursday evening I woke up to side splitting cramps and probably the most hectic diahrea I have experienced in my adult life.  I was literally rolling on the bathroom floor crying (and we know that I’m the girl who does.not.cry) the cramps were SO SORE.  I am by no means a poop when it comes to pain (I have an extremely high pain threshold) but holy moly.  These reduced me to a quivering mass.

On Friday I had to call in sick again sparking an onslaught from my boss about how I was supposed to be at work that day and I told him the “op” I was going in for was a minor one and that I would be back in the swing of things already (I really expected to be – my last ER was a breeze).  I slept for most of the day and even missed Cliff’s call letting me know that we had lost the 3 possibles overnight but that our 7 were still going strong.  I missed several texts and messages from friends.  When I was not on the loo or the bathroom floor I was in bed sleeping like the dead.  At first I thought CRINONE BE DAMNED cos I saw on the package insert that one of the major side effects is cramping, but there was no mention of runny tummy’s so I had to discount that.  Then I freaked out cos oh my gosh how on earth can I be battling bloody GASTRO right now!  It’s a mere 2 or 3 days before transfer and I CANNOT HAVE AN IMMUNOLOGICAL WAR WAGING IN MY BODY.

I was feeling extremely sorry for myself internets, I’m not going to lie.  I felt like shit all day and could not really take anything but buscopan and panado to help ease the pain.

On Saturday we woke up bright and early and I was still feeling like absolute crap.  On our way to the clinic to chat to our wonderful doc Stephan, he called us to say that we should go for a nice breakfast somewhere and bypass the clinic.  We had 2 x perfect 8 cells and 2 x perfect 6 cells and 1 x good looking 5 – 6 cell and he really felt that in order to “crack this one” we needed to push through to day 5 for transfer.  Thats when I asked him about the gastro and he told me in no uncertain terms that it was my lovely PCOS ovaries getting me back in no uncertain terms for making them work so bloody hard over the last couple of weeks.  *sigh*  I was told to take it REALLY easy – drink loads of water and keep them happy by lying down as much as possible until Monday.

I went for my last chiropractic appointment before transfer and did get some relief from the ovaries from that. And was then the worst company for my two friends M and Shaz at coffee cos I was still feeling so lousy.  (Yes I clearly don’t know what take it REALLY easy means) and then just slept the rest of Saturday away with the odd page of reading thrown in.

Today I was feeling much better (I only got up three times last night for the loo & cramps) and thought I would make it to church but a nice feeling of passing out stopped that idea.  So today I really have taken it SUPER easy and my ovaries they are thanking me for it.  Still battling the odd bout of gypo guts but I think that is to be expected.  Dry toast and water are my new best friends and I’m just praying that we get to transfer some beautiful babies tomorrow morning.

Cliff and I discussed this today and if we have them, we really would like to put 3 back.  Obviously we’ll discuss this with Stephan tomorrow (our clinic does not like tranferring more than 2 for women 30 and younger unless it’s a case of FET or poorer quality embies) BUT with our history of never having achieved a pregnancy before and the fact that *if* we are lucky enough to have all 3 take that we’ll deal with that and be overjoyed at the HUGE blessing we really want to discuss this option to it’s fullest.

So that’s where we’re at.  Transfer tomorrow!  And the start of the dreaded 2ww hopefully with the best news ever.

Thank you for the continued prayers,  good vibes, thumb holding, whatever it is you do.  The support is SO very much appreciated.

Surprise!

Our little popsicles outdid themselves overnight!  We ended up with three (yes 3, drie, tres) to transfer this morning   I was so surprised, I was expecting to only have 2 at most (was worried again that they would not make it overnight – oh me of little faith) and when we had the embryo chat before transfer we were very pleased to hear that we had 3 to transfer…

Popsicle # 1 was pretty sad, even our untrained eyes could see that this little one was not doing so well, and I had a little pang in my heart for that little one who was not going to make it…

Popsicle # 2 decided to grow from 6 cells to 10 cells overnight and was looking really good

Popsicle #’s 3 & 4 were both compacting and we were very happy with that – one step away from blast stage – both of them

All our popsicles were given assisted hatching cos according to Dr J, the frozen ones sometimes have issues hatching out of the walls cos the outer shells get hard from being cryogenically preserved…  Transfer went MUCH better this time round – no pulling my ute out to get the catheter in so I was a happy camper!  Flash!! and in went our three (3, drie, tres!) little popsicles…

So now little popsicles, Mom and Dad are asking you really nicely to decide to stick around for a while!  We would LOVE for you to implant and grow and to make us happy parents… K?  I promise to give you nice ice cream with sugar stars sprinkled on top when you get big enough…

Bring on the 2ww   I’m ready for 08.08.08!!! (Test date y’all…)

Back to the Mothership

We had a 3 day transfer this morning! 

Up early to get to the clinic, it must have been the miff weather, but Cliff and I ended up having a bit of a disagreement on the way there about the speed we needed to drive to get there and be on time… He thought he needed to drive at Grandpa pace and I thought he needed to drive a bit faster than that, so we ended up having a barney.  On the day of our transfer. Nice.  We got to the clinic and talked about our fight, so that we would at least be able to pretend we loved each other in the IVF suite and kissed and made up – sjoe, crisis diverted…

We went into the doctors office to discuss our embies, and my heart was pounding, I could kind of hear a “whooshing” in my ears it was working so darn hard… As you all know out of our 12 eggs, we had 10 that had fertlised and this morning we still had all 10 growing… Embie number 1 was T.E.X.T.B.O.O.K, they had written a huge T next to it on the page.  It was a perfect 8 celled beauty and I could see straight off that it was a goodie.  The next few were not as great, some at 5 cells and some at 4 cells and degenerating etc but then we got to embie number 11 which was also  T.E.X.T.B.O.O.K… At our lab they do not freeze anything that they do not consider even remotely viable, and we were blown away to hear that they thought we had 4 embies good enough to make the freezing grade…  Naturally we elected to freeze them, just in case they are needed for future use. 

Once we had seen all our beautiful embies, we went down the the IVF suite and I got dressed in the delicious theatre gown and got myself ready for operation bladder fill.  Three glasses of water and one big mug of tea later and we were ready for action… into the theatre I walked with Cliff in his pseudo scrubs at my side, hopped onto the bed and got all jellied up – hold the boat, madam, my bladder was this measly little balloon and was not full enough to start the transfer… Ooi wei!  So we ended up chatting to the coolest IVF nurse of the lot for about 25 minutes while we waited for the liquid to fill up my bladder while listening to classical music.  Once the liquid had traveled to the correct destination, we called down the doc and my legs got all happy with the stirrups.  Poor Dr J really battled to get the cathertre through my cervix (which apparently has quite a stubborn kink in it) and ended up having to pull my uterus down with forceps to get it through – one word – OUCH.  He even told me not to worry and that he would not pull my ute out completely… Yowza!  But finally he got it to the magic place and we got to see our beautiful embies “flash” into my uterus.  I leaked a few tears and think I might have broken some bones in Cliff’s hand, but our “babies” are back in the mothership…

I am so excited and am already SO very attached to number 1 and 11.  I pray that God will continue to bless this cycle and breathe the final bit of life into my little ones, and that He will continue to let them grow and develop in my womb. 

My heart is bursting with love and I have this burning desire to see who these perfect embies will become…  The next two weeks will be tough to get through, but the plan is to keep myself as busy as I can, to try not obsess about my embies too much and just to get through each day as it comes.

Testing on 06th June 2008.