Boredom

Boredom at work makes for not an easy two week wait. And I still have ten days to go. I hope you will all be entertained as I slowly descend into madness due to anticipation, and that boredom I mentioned. Fridays at work are often quite lonely, as many people in my department, including on of my best friends who sits in my pod, do not work because they are at home with their lovely children.

Please let me join them.

This Friday is even worse because they are moving everyone all around. For the past nine months, I've been sitting on the first floor of our office, with the corporate interiors people, even though I work on university projects with the architects, all of whom sit upstairs. (Why they ever separated interiors from architecture is beyond me. The stupidest decision ever, but my company is known for constantly rethinking their organization). This week, they moved the two girls I can see from my computer, who sit in the next pod over, and one of my two pod mates, back upstairs. They intend to move my Fridays off friend too when a new spot opens up.

This means, the effectively left me in a black hole by taking away all the people I could actually talk to from my chair without raising my voice. Talk about inhumane treatment of prisoners employees.

You can bet, I complained about this. I will not be left behind with only 5 other people in my department, and a bunch of others, who despite sharing a kitchen with for 9 months, I have yet to learn their names, when 75 or so architects and interior designers...including the people I actually work with, sit upstairs! Nope. I won't have it. And they better not mess with me, because they have no idea how hormone crazy I am right now!

See, I told you. Be prepared for rambling posts about who the hell knows what.

At least, if I had a new project, the days would actually pass by at a reasonable rate. But no, I am doing random research projects, drawings/revising typical details that we use on many projects, and even cleaning out my email inbox.

This is just not going to cut it.

I think I need to leave. 7.2 hours is good enough for a Friday, right?

Only problem is, I have to pick Hubby up from work. We rode in together so we could go out to dinner tonight. In Boston, or Somerville, or somewhere other than the town we live in cause I am freaking stir crazy from work boredom and bed rest. And it's gorgeous outside! I have to get out there and enjoy it.

I am suddenly vaguely remembering a book I had as a kid. It was a big book, I think it was something the the muppets maybe? It was sort of like paging through one of their shows, a variety book with lots of little stories. And there was a page where someone was going insane, and the writing starting to circle around the page and spiral into the center. Does anyone remember this book?

The last thing I will leave you with is that Michele was very amused by my yoga pants. But totally, they are black, boot cut, and they look exactly like the Express ponte pants from the late 90s/early 2000s, which with a turtle neck sweater, were literally my work uniform back then. I swear, no one would know. Although, the fact that I never wear pants, just jeans or dresses, might tip them off to something.

Today, I am wearing my second largest jeans. I made it until about 1 hour after lunch until I had to undo the button. I probably should stop drinking ginger ale, but damn the queasy progesterone/anxiety stomach I have!

I wish I could make these words spiral around the edge of the page until the spiraled to the center.

Pictures

As promised, I've got pictures of my second set of triplets. Here they are...Violetta, Luigi and Lucia...again.

This time, they also gave me a photo of the moment my little beauties came home. There is a diagonal line in the lower right, which is the catheter. The dark oval in the center is my uterus, and the two white dots in the middle of that are the bubbles around my babies.

It's so surreal. 

My ovaries are finally not so sore anymore. I'm still really bloated. I wore my new yoga pants to work today. I hope they continue to be a wardrobe staple into the fall. With a nice top, no one would know they were yoga pants! I'm also starting to feel the progesterone fatigue. I might have come home from work and passed out cold for over a half hour before making dinner tonight. I'm also feeling my uterus tightening. I know all of this is just the hormones right now. It's too early for anything else. But, I can't help but notice all the same. 

Before I leave you all tonight, don't forget to enter my giveaway...

Bead Rest and Giveaways

I took today off from work for a little more rest and relaxation. To occupy my time, I decided to break out one of my old hobbies...beads! I have so many beads, I had to carry my bead bin into the living room before transfer because otherwise, I think it might be considered heavy lifting!

Last night, and this afternoon, I set about making a bunch of bracelets. Back in January, there was this "Pay it Forward" thing going on on face.book, which I volunteered to do. Basically, you had to be one of the first five people to comment on someone who was doing it, and then agree to do it yourself. And what is it that I have to do? Make something handmade/homemade for five people sometime in 2011. Well, here it is, almost October, and I really wanted to get this done before holiday madness takes over. It seemed like the perfect bed rest activity. I also had found these cute little tins when we were in P-town, and I thought they would make perfect packaging for the bracelets. 

And, because I had so much fun making bracelets, I decided that it was a good opportunity to have my very first giveaway. 

That's right girls, in addition to the five bracelets I made for my face.book friends, I made one for one of my lucky followers!

This lovely sparkly blue bracelet is the one that's up for grabs!

Here's how to enter: 

1. Be a follower. (because I want to thank my faithful readers)

2. Leave me a comment and tell me what creative things you have done to distract yourself during a two week wait. 

It's that simple. I'll be accepting entries until the end of Tuesday, October 4 (just because that's my half-birthday, and I think half-birthdays are cool!) I'll use Random.org to select the winner, and then I'll be in touch for your contact info so I can send you your prize. 

Embabies on Board

Three to be exact.

Yup, to Hubby's shock yet again, they recommended we transfer three.

All five were still growing when we got there today.

(2) 7 cell
(2) 8 cell
(1) 4 cell

They transfered both 7s and one 8. The second 8 had a poor rating for symmetry. But I was so relieved to know that we actually had a few get to 8 cells. They did not think the 4 cell would make it to freeze. But I wasn't expecting to get that far. I was really just hoping for bigger embies.

They didn't give me specific grades for our three, but they did go over all the various stats, and said all three were quite good. When the doctor who was performing the transfer came over, after the fellow had already explained their recommendation, and looked over the form we had signed agreeing to 3, he gave us a big grin and said we were brave. (This didn't help ease Hubby's nerves at all of course!) I said, well, we had three the last time too. He flipped through the chart and looked back at the last batch, and exclaimed, "Oh, no, these can't even be compared to those!"

So, despite the fact that the still seem to think that transferring 3 is the best chance I have at getting pregnant with one, I am feeling much better about my chances this time. One of the deciding factors was the fact that there were only 5 that fertilized. One more than that, and I think their recommendation would have been two.

I'm babbling on about this a bit. Just trying to process it all I guess. I so hope that this works this time. When I was back from the transfer, reclining behind the curtains, I broke down into tears for the first time since this cycle really got started. It's gone by so fast that I barely absorbed what was happening. And then, it was all done. I have my three babies, and I hope beyond all hope that at least one of them decides to stick around. And it was all just a little overwhelming.

And now, the waiting begins.

I promise a photo and more creativity soon!

Why did I come to work today?

I am completely useless. I don't have any billable work to do, which is how it's been for a lot of this cycle. Which, don't get me wrong, had been quite simply, awesome. But, the filler work is just not holding my attention today. I'm tired, and bloated. And I'd really rather be napping and counting down the minutes until 1:45 tomorrow afternoon when my beautiful embabies will come back to their mommy. 

Instead, I am here, trying to keep my eyes open an counting down the minutes until 5:30 which I'm going to consider close enough to a full day (I'm usually here til 6, but got in 15 minutes early today). It's 3:44 now. 1:46 min to go. I'm taking Wedneday off to rest, and may just make it Thursday as well, since I had planned for and didn't need a third day off for retrieval. 

Nothing profound, but I needed to entertain myself for a few minutes. 

The Report

Just spoke with the doctor. Our of 12 eggs, 8 were mature, and 5 actually fertilized. I was really hoping for more than that with the use of ICSI this time. For the first time, I'm feeling a bit of a kink in my positive outlook. It's only one more than we had the last time. I hope a few of them make it to 8 cells this time. We will have the transfer on Tuesday, a 3 day transfer. My clinic doesn't do 5 days, and has actually even starting doing 2 day transfers when there are very few embryos and they don't actually have a choice of which ones to put back.

OK, so, a few deep breaths, and I'm processing the numbers a little more.

8 mature with 5 fertilized is a fertilization rate of 62%

Last time, I have 13 mature with 4 fertilized, which is a rate of 30%.

If I look at it this way, that's twice a good as last time, right? I'm really hoping these are of a better quality. And like we all often remind ourselves, it only takes one, right? I will get a call tomorrow with a time for Tuesday's transfer. We won't know anymore about quality until we get to transfer.

So until then, distraction is the mission.

Fashion Distraction

I'm pretty sure that the Creativity Distraction Challenge is going to be even more important in the next two weeks than it was leading up to this point. It's a good thing it's one of my favorite times of year...Fashion Show time.

In my industry (interior design) in my town (Boston) those two words mean only one thing. Every year, the IID.A (Inter.national Interior Design Assoc.iation hosts it's annual fundraising event. Which is, if you haven't guessed, a fashion show.

What does fashion have to do with interior design, you might ask? Well, quite a bit when interior designers from firms all over Boston are teamed with up manufacturer's reps and challenged to create a fashion concoction our of industry materials. This means carpets, including backings and yarns, ceramic tile, paint, swatches, wood veneer, drapery and upholstery fabric, even lighting. It's the even of the year here, every October, and we usually start talking about it in June.

My husband hates it! It consumes weeks of my fall, and I always end up being somehow disappointed that our entry didn't go just quite so. But yet, every year, I keep going back for more. (there are awards you see, which I we have yet to win!) I have worked on entries for 7 years and attended the event for 8 of the 13 years it has existed. It has kind of taken the place that theater had in my life in college.

This year, I've lost some of my fashion show mojo, seeing as we started thinking about it in the middle of IVF 1.0. But, now that we're down to 2.5 weeks left, and haven't rallied many troops to our cause, someone has to pick up the pace, and make sure we don't embarrass our sponsors! A group of us stayed one night last week to make some progress.

One of our sponsors this year is a paint manufacturer.
We haven't yet decided how we will be using these paint cans. 

I whipped this brushes into a necklace the other night with some fishing line. 

I can't show you too much until after the show, you know, just in case someone out there is a competitor. But I will show you a few images from past shows so you can get an idea of what a huge deal this event really is. 

Each entry poses behind a scrim before they hit the 60 foot long runway. 

Our entry last year, above, was made from various layers that make carpet, including the yarn, (which we though was so cool to use because we hadn't seen anyone use it before), and small mosaic tile. The theme of the show last year was Revolution. We were going for a Victorian Super Hero/Steam Punk thing. 

And then we saw this entry, by the previous years winners. They worked with carpet materials too. And they knitted! And not only that, they did a steam punk thing too, and actually carried steam! It's hard to see here, but they had 4 models, impecably constructed, and they even made their shoes! (I have to give up on winning this thing and just enjoy the craftiness.) 

Another firm's entry. This blue stuff is actually very stiff and plasticy. The models were getting rashes on their arms from brushing against it. Fashion hurts!

Two years ago, the theme was Fabuless. This was made from plastic bags. 

Our Fabuless entry was titled "More or Less." The idea was that one dress had a whole lot more going on in the front than in the back, and vice versa. 

This was in progress, but then, the dress would unfold and extend down the run way, becoming even "more" than you though. 

Here is is all bustled up. 

Here, you can see the back of the other dress (with more in the front).  

And here's me, with our two models. 

Three years ago, for the tenth anniversary, before the industry crashed and started laying everyone off, the theme was Decadence. This entry won one of the awards. 

One of our models for Decadence, made from leather, wood veneer and fabric.
She's Eve from the Garden of Eden. Hubby was the one who actually found the glittered apple for me, after I dragged him into endless stores looking for one. 

Another of our Decadence entries, a chandelier/Marie Antoinette inspired creation.

One more of our Decadence, the one I worked on most. And clearly struggled to get a good photo of!
It's Russian inspired. 

Anyway, trying to get my fashion show mojo perked back up so I can use it to distract me during the two week wait. Beta is 10/10. Show is 10/13. 

More later, I'm sure, once I get my fert report.