All A'board... again

Oh, and happy ICLW! I'm only two days late on that one... oops. Seriously, hi to all of you stopping by through ICLW. In a nutshell, I have PCOS, and ovaries who value quantity over quality. After failing the clo clo challenge, we moved strait to injectables, and had a hard time getting my oves to respond with much of anything there. After two BFN's, we did our first IVF cycle in Nov/Dec. That ended in a BFN, and our FET in Feb ended up in a crappy chemical. You've caught us right at the precipice of our second FET... and had our transfer today!

Dr Boy and I had a pretty fabulous weekend, though it was ridiculously hot and humid here, completely uncharacteristic of the area. Our alma mater had a huge parade/open house/festival type thing and we saw a ton of old friends from undergrad, then on Sunday we took an impromptu trip to Napa. Much needed R&R to relax pre-transfer!

Today didn't really go as well as either of us would have liked. It started off well- finished up some laundry, changed the sheets, cut my pineapple, threw dinner in the crockpot, and headed to pre-transfer acupuncture. I left super relaxed and went to the clinic. Just before we got there, Dr Boy got a call from our RE. The thaw was not going well. 

Our plan was to thaw each embryo individually until we ended up with two high quality ones to transfer. We had three day 6 embies left, 1 day seven frozen alone, and 2 day sevens frozen together. After going through the three day 6's and the 1 day 7, we had one that survived at 80%, two at 60%, and one at 50%. We were going for two 80's. The RE wanted permission to thaw the last two we had, which we agreed to. As that was going on, one of the 60%ers fragmented more and we were down to an 80, a 60, and two 50s. We had, in one transfer, blasted through all six of our remaining embryos from December's IVF. We've got nothing left. If this doesn't work, it's back to the drawing board (and bank account, and ER).

At this point, thoughts of transferring more than two were floating around, risks were being evaluated, tears were flowing, and my adrenaline pretty much killed any buzz I would have gotten from the valium. We hung out for another hour waiting for the last two to thaw, then headed back to the transfer room. 

PDLAMBLATI- Complements of Her Royal Fabulousness

and Cristy's Fertility Sock Exchange!

Finally, we got the good news that one of those last two thawed at 80% (and the other at 65%) so were able to transfer that and the other (which had started hatching while we waited, apparently- sweet!). After transfer, the embryologist checked the catheter to make sure all babies were on board, and low and behold, we had a holdout! 

"I've still got one here!" So, in goes the catheter again, another swoosh and flash shows up on the u/s monitor, and we finally got the all clear that the ute party had started. 

Post-transfer acupuncture helped me calm down, but it was not quite the zen-like magical moment I had hoped for. AND my car** hit 66,666 miles as we drove home. I take this to mean I am carrying Dr Boy's devil spawn. Of course. 

Spawn 1 and Spawn 2 (lefty is the sticky, day 7 embie

and righty is the more easy going hatching day 6-er)

(dark spots are the parts which didn't survive thaw, called fragmentation)

So now we wait... and rest... and bribe these embies with cookies and pineapple and other delights while we pray that someone decides to stick around for the long haul this time. We are super lucky at least... our clinic does the first beta at 13dpo, which for us will be 7dp6dt. Only a one. week. wait.

Beta in 7 days...

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**The car we bought four years ago when we decided to start trying. It was brand new. And had 1,000 miles on it. Yeah. That car. Piece of advice, guys? Don't buy the car until you're effing pregnant and damn near bursting your waters. </end public service announcement/bitter infertile rant>