Embryo Transfer

I'm sorry it's been so long since I posted. Getting my thoughts about this whole process into words has been more difficult than I anticipated.

I wanted to share a little bit about what the embryo transfer was like, and what I felt like afterward, particularly the first few days.

Leading up to the transfer, I was extremely bloated. For a while, I thought that was part of the side effects from the progesterone (bloating and constipation are some of the top ones on the list), but after talking to my nurse, I learned that it was more likely mild hyper stimulation. This freaked me out. I was so afraid that it would keep me from having the transfer done on time. My nurse recommend drinking more water (I was already chugging it like crazy) and eating smaller meals to help with the bloating. I had never had bloating like that before. No matter how little I ate, I felt afterward like I had just eaten a three course meal and my gut was about to burst. Apparently this is mainly because of the extra fluid filling my abdomen. I think I was also expecting all of the pain from the retrieval to be gone immediately after the retrieval, but it took several days, basically until the day of the transfer, for me to feel like I could wear normal pants again and actually button them.

My transfer was on a Friday, and I took the day off of work. My husband also happened to be on vacation that week, so he didn't have to take the day off, which was awesome! We had received updates on our six embryos throughout the week and were told in advance that we were probably looking at a five day transfer. We didn't know, however, what time our transfer would be until about an hour and half before we needed to be at the doctor's office. We planned around this though. In order to make sure I was nice and relaxed, I asked my friend Adriano, a massage therapist, to come and give me a relaxing massage before the transfer. He had  been giving me therapeutic deep tissue massages for a weeks before hand, but the morning of the transfer he focused on helping me relax.

Steve and I headed to the clinic, quite excited, and quite nervous. I had to drink a lot of water in order to have a full bladder which would make it easier for the doctor to see for the transfer. This was the worst part. I always tend to over-do it when asked to drink water for an ultrasound, and I could barely walk I had to go so badly.

Like with the egg retrieval, I had to dress in a gown and booties and cap. Steve did too because he was coming back with me for the transfer. The nurse had to check and make sure my bladder was full via ultrasound which was also torture. She was super sympathetic and even told me that the doctor had been peed on before, which was a relief because I was so afraid that would happen.

We decided to have two embryos transferred even though, technically, the doctor was only recommending one. He said our embryos were all really healthy, so because of that and my age, we only needed to do one, though there was nothing wrong with two. He actually used the phrase, "You guys make great babies" when telling us how healthy our embryos were.

The procedure itself was uncomfortable, but not terrible. It was mainly uncomfortable because my bladder was so full and adding more down there (a speculum, saline, catheter, etc.) was torture. It was really difficult to relax enough to keep the procedure from being painful, but not so relaxed that I peed on him.

After they transferred the embryos, I had to remain laying down for ten minutes before I could get up to pee. Steve did his best to distract me with conversation, and we also spent a lot of time looking at the pictures we were given of our embryos. It was a really neat time together, even if Steve did pretend that he was going to make me wait fifteen minutes instead of ten (he had the watch). It was also right around this point when Steve told me I was "kind of glowing." I was just so excited to know that my babies were inside me. In all of our trying, as far as I know, we had never been to the point where there was this much potential of life, so I was just ecstatic. My eyes were leaking a bit too.

We went out to Panera before going home and resting. The other nice thing about having the transfer on a Friday was that I could just rest  the next two days without having to worry about work. I spent those two days watching reruns of The Office, eating good food, and praying.

Our four remaining embryos were all healthy and were all frozen by the end of the day of the transfer. I plan to make a post later on my thoughts on what that means for us and the ethical issues that IVF brings up.

Overall, I'm feeling great, and I'll update soon about our progress since the transfer including the dreaded TWO WEEK WAIT.