Third Time’s the Charm

I hope!

Because for the third time in less than 12 months, I am pregnant until proven otherwise with triplets. That's right. Transfer was yesterday, and again the recommendation was to transfer three of our nine embryos. I was so hoping that they would walk up with a picture of two beautiful embabies. This to me, was a sign that they embies were awesome, and that I might actually, against all odd, have some left to freeze. Alas, this was not to be.

But, the three that we did transfer all look pretty beautiful to me. I will post a picture soon. I got a new scanner for Christmas which I have yet to set up, so I want to use that instead of again taking a photo of a photo.

So, let me tell you a little bit about Violetta Margarita, Luigi Limoncello and Lucia Sangria 3.0. My clinic doesn't give letter or number grades, so it's hard to compare. What they do is rank each embryo with cell number, a fragmentation score (0-4, 0 is best), a symmetry score which I don't fully understand, and one other number which they didn't go into. She had the chart in front of me so briefly, it was impossible to absorb the stats on all of them. But, the embabies that are snuggling in right now were 8-1, considered very good 8-2 and 7-2, (cells, fragmentation only, I don't remember the symmetry numbers, and the doc didn't seem concerned by it). Not too shabby, especially since it's improvement from two 7s and one eight the last time.

We had at least one other 8 that was highly fragmented, and a few 9s as well with the same issue. The sizes ranged from 9 to 3 or 4 I think. In any case, due to small size, or fragmentation, they don't anticipate freezing any, which was the deciding factor in transferring 3. They have this whole flow chart of statistics which tells them how many. I thought for sure, with 9 embies, I'd get only 2, but since it is my third attempt, and there are none to freeze, 3 it was.

But, I'm all about the 3s right now anyway, cause the third time's the charm, right?

The transfer itself went very smoothly, with the exception of running a hour behind. I was beginning to freak out each time I saw the doctor walk by to talk to someone else. Can't you please come tell me about my embies? The suspense is killing me? I'll wait as long as you want if only you will tell me how they are doing?

The other problem was the full bladder. When you time the drinking of a full bottle of water to coincide with a specific time on the clock, and then are made to wait an extra hour...well, let's just say, that's none too pleasant. After we were a half hour late, we signaled the nurse over, and she told me I could go in the bathroom, and pee to the count of ten, and then squeeze really hard to stop the flow if I needed to cut the edge, because it would be another half hour at least. I wasn't sure I could do it, but I took her up on the offer. At first, I thought, no way do I have enough pee for a count of ten. But man, when I got to ten, what a tease!! It was really hard to stop. But I did! When I finally went after resting for ten minutes after transfer, I peed for at least a count of 30.

The last problem with the time delay, was hunger. We were told to report at 12:45, which means we needed to be in transit during my typical noon lunch time. I decided that I was too full and bloated to eat a full early lunch, so I opted for a few pieces of fruit, and we decided that Hubby would make our pasta dinner early when we got home in the afternoon so I didn't have to get up to feed myself when he had to go out later that evening. Well, being an hour behind, meant that we didn't even go in the room until 2:45. We were able to leave the hospital at around 3:15. We were on the 5th floor. We waited about 5 minutes for an elevator which was full when it arrived (there were about 10 floors above us!). Luckily, I remembered another set of elevators around the corner that are key entry only from the lobby, but accessible from upper floors. When we finally got downstairs, we had to wait another 10 minutes to get our car out of the valet. When you add this all together, we were perfectly timed to drive across town at 4:00, just in time to begin rush hour is Boston. I was freaking starving! I had thought I'd be eating by around 3.

When we got home, I went right to the recliner and Hubby got me a glass of cider. He was under strict instructions to then immediately begin boiling water for our pasta. Instead, he went down to the laundry room and started sorting laundry! I was freaking out! I didn't want to complain, because he was doing laundry, which I had asked him to do while I was bed resting. But come on, didn't he realize the dire need of food??

When he finally came up, I next heard him emptying the dish drainer of all the recycling that I had rinsed out. Finally, I yelled, "Is there water boiling yet?!? Can you please start boiling the water before you do anything else?!" I felt so bad, because he was trying so hard to take care of me. He just wasn't doing it in the right order.

I realize that I am totally babbling on by now. I had wanted to write all of this yesterday, but after eating, and attempting to watch a comedy (I streamed The Big Lebowski which I had never seen. It was not as funny as I had hoped, but Net.flix had slim pickins for streaming), I passed out by 6:30 and slept for about 3 solid hours until Hubby came home to give me my PIO shot. I have been ridiculously tired since starting the shots. And super, super warm. A few nights of night sweats, one morning I had a low grade fever, which was still low enough at 99 to not qualify for calling the nurse. Monday and Tuesday nights, I came home, listened to C+B and passed out then as well. It's really pretty incredible. Aside from that, the whopping three shots I've had so far have gone just fine. We've been heating the area first, warming the oil in my bra, and then massaging after. The actually needle stings a bit going in, but doesn't really phase me after all the other shots and blood draws. We'll see how things continue after we run out of fresh spots on my ass to inject. I suppose the fact that I'm feeling so hot and tired makes me feel that the PIO is doing something more than the crinone ever did. Here's hoping that it does something more for the embabies and not just me!

Today, I am off of work to rest. I'm glad tomorrow is Friday, and I only have to make it through one more day at the office before getting more downtime. My creative project for the day, should I be able to stay awake, is starting a blurb book that will be the first 5.5 years of my life with Hubby. The plan then will be to make one album a year after that. But I have a lot of catching up to do first. I also have acupuncture scheduled for 3:30 this afternoon. I figured 3ish was afternoon nap time anyway, right?

So that's that.

And now, we wait.