Beta results

On the up-side, I can:

• resume consumption of vast quantities of proper coffee
• have a guilt-free Diet Coke
• order a beer with my Indian food
• stop eating sardines
• take some drugs to kill the last of The Cold That Would Not Die
• have some drinks during the upcoming Fasnacht festivities (link in Bernese Dialket - it's worth clicking through just to see how different Dialekt can be from German)

On the down-side, well, there's that whole I'm not pregnant thing.

Day 13 and all quiet on the southern front

Blood test tomorrow morning. No blood or spotting or, well, anything so far. Okay, I've got a negative HPT but we all know those things suck, right? Right?

Right?

Hmm

I saw something that looked suspiciously like a wee spot of blood on the Crinone applicator this morning, and then I made myself stop looking and quickly shoved it into a plastic bag and into the trash.

Sigh.

Grasping

I was leafing through some back issues of The Sun magazine looking for prose poems - for I am sure I have read prose poems in The Sun - to read for this week's Poetry Thursday, and I found a poem in the Septmber 2006 issue by Stuart Kestenbaum. It's called Litany, and you can read it here, and it ends like this:

"Bless each cell, which is its own universe, ready to divide, split in two, and make more than enough."

I napped again yesterday, and again today, and I remember that I never had a minute's morning sickness with Small Boy. The only time during that entire pregnancy I threw up was when I came down with stomach flu at 34 weeks and then I threw up so much that it triggered contractions and I spent several days in the hospital hoping not to have a baby just yet. But I did sleep. Lord did I sleep. I slept in bed, I slept on the couch, I fell asleep on the train. I slept so much that one friend of mine actually thought I had spent the month of June in the States. I slept through much of July as well, drifting off in the afternoons with the Tour de France humming in the background, slept while Lance Armstrong brought L'Alpe d'Huez to its knees. I slept through the entire first trimester, slept fourteen, sixteen hours a day.

Three naps in three days is meaningless; I'm napping during the day because I'm not sleeping at night, because Small Boy has been sick and sleeping in our bed or waking early or both, because I'm sick and worn down, because the beans in the coffee machine are decaf and oh! let us bless caffeine. Three naps in three days is meaningless, but let me grasp this straw.

And bless each cell.

Embryo pictures and informationless update

We transfered the embryo on the left. The two cells are well balanced, but you can see some fragmentation (that little cluster of bubbles at the top is something you don't really want to see). The embryo on the right has no fragmentation, but the two cells are rather unbalanced, and Herr G is of the opinion that poor balance is worse than light fragmentation, so we went with the one on the left. Today we learned that the unbalanced embryo - the one we did not transfer - did not continue to develop in the lab, so it was not re-frozen. So Herr G was right.

For those who are counting, this leaves us with one embryo on the playing field and six sitting on the bench.

I wouldn't expect to feel anything 4 days after transfer; and I don't. I did take a nap with Small Boy this afternoon, but extreme tiredness is the status quo around here, so I don't think that means anything either. So I can't even begin to guess what's going on down there. Just taking my meds and crossing my fingers.

Poetry Thursday - changes

I haven't taken part in Poetry Thursday in a few months, but today's theme of change certainly fits in with what's going on in my life today. I've been writing practice poems lately, little three minute three-liners from a Natalie Goldberg exercise, so what follows is anything but perfect and polished. The final image lacks originality, but it is exactly where I find myself today.

Change

One embryo
two cells
poised on the knife-point of change

You can read more changes here.

Back from the transfer

Embryo transfer was this morning. When we arrived in the lab, Herr G, Dr L's lab man, threw us a little complication. They had defrosted two embryos (to transfer one embryo you want to defrost two to make sure at least one of them survives the thaw and looks good). They did this last time, too, and one embryo looked good and one didn't. No problem. This time around, Herr G was quite pleased with both embryos and asked us if we still only wanted to transfer one or if we should transfer both. This should have been a no-brainer - R and I are both fairly terrified at the though of twins on top of the energy of Small Boy, and at 38 and knowing I wouldn't be able to take it very easy (see above, Small Boy) I'm not wildly excited about risking a twin pregnancy. So this should have been a no-brainer, but I'm feeling fairly pessimistic about this cycle - needing to extend the Progynova, being sick, not sleeping well because the Small Boy has a Big Cough, knowing that my body is really run down at the moment. Herr G let R and I talk a few minutes, and in the end we did stick with our decision to just transfer the one, but I don't have 100% confidence in this decision. The success rates on FETs are so low, we probably should have tried to boost the odds a bit. But I'm truly not prepared for twins. In the end we transferred a two-celled embryo with nicely balanced cells and light fragmentation and in two weeks we'll see how it went.

I'm spending the day on the couch catching up on blogs, reading, watching my favorite winter sport and hopefully napping a bit. Small Boy is at The Farm, R is at work, and I'm just going to lie here doing nothing. I've been needing to do this for a long time and am glad the transfer gives me the excuse to sit here and be totally unproductive. Or perhaps reproductive.

Out sick

Sorry for the lack of posting, but everybody is sick over here (even the grandparents!) and I'm just trying to keep my head above water until Thursday when we do transfer. I don't feel particularly good about doing an embryo transfer when my body feels wrung out and run over, but it's not a good reason to cancel. But I have to say, it doesn't fill me with optimism. I'm just hoping that by Thursday the grandparents are well enough to take Small Boy for the day so that I can bed rest after the transfer. And I'm hoping to feel well enough to not mourn the loss of NyQuil.

Random bullets of frozen embryo transfer

• Waiting for my appointment is much more enjoyable - well, less annoying anyway - with an iPod. How I made it through the initial IVF without an MP3 player of any kind is a mystery to me.
• Speaking of waiting, how is it that although I appeared to be the first appointment of the morning - I mean, the lights were not even on in the waiting room yet and both doors to Dr L's inner sanctum were open - I still had to wait?
• But I didn't have to wait long.
• Dr L was efficient as ever.
• No matter how long I live in Switzerland, I will never get used to taking off my pants and delicates in that corner of the room and casually strolling naked from the waist down over to the examination table in this corner of the room. While Dr L waits on his little stool.
• Which reminds me that one day I must blog the culture shock of a Swiss OB/GYN appointment.
• But I must say, trans-vaginal ultrasounds are so not a big deal after the whole giving birth thing.
• Once again Dr L did not tell me what my lining measured at, but I read the monitor clearly this time:7.78 mm
• No, that's not really the kind of number I wanted to see.
• I do, however, have a triple stripe.
• Dr L seemed amused when I asked if I was triple-striped.
• You crazy Americans, he was probably thinking, always wanting all these details.
• But he humoured me and showed me the layers on the ultrasound monitor and explained what was where.
• He also said my uterus was excellently shaped.
• Yeah, that's a direct quote. I have an "excellently shaped" uterus. I think I'll put it on my CV.
• We'll pretend to forget that he was positively delighted with my uterus last time, too.
• Because we all know how that worked out.
• Now since 7.78mm is not really the kind of number we wanted to see, and because 17 days of this are not boring enough, we're sneaking in three extra days of Progynova before transfer to help boost my lining.
• Woo hoo.
• I need more time on the Progynova because my lining isn't as thick as it was at this point in the cycle last time.
• And we all know how how last time worked out.
• Wait.
• I'm supposed to be thinking postive.
• That's all right! That's okay! I'm gonna get knocked up one day!
• Erhum. Yes. Well. Moving on.
• Transfer will be on Feb 8th instead of the 5th.
• (Because my body isn't quite ready yet.)
• On the upside, it means R won't be out of town for the transfer as he might have been on the 5th.
• On the downside, it means I'm not responding all that well to the Progynova.
• I'm thinking I'm going to be on the wrong side of 20%.
• Again.
• You know, it is incredibly difficult to conceal from a two year old boy the fact that you are eating cake. It can be done, but the furtive nature of the enterprise seriously minimizes the pleasure one can derive from the cake.

Caffeine, anyone?

Hmmm. Based on the number of coffee creamers no longer in the fridge, it would seem that R and I consumed 19 cups of coffee between 11am Friday and right now, 11 am on Monday. Gah! It's possible that Small Boy drank a few creamers over the weekend- when he sees us pouring creamers into our coffee he likes to get a creamer in his milk - drawing the total number of cups of coffee down to perhaps 15, but still. Gah!

And I'm supposed to go caffeine-free soon?

Gah!

Booooorrrrrring

Misschrisc is right, FETs are dead boring. Really. I can report that I'm now taking Progynova twice a day, for a total of 4mg, and I have an appointment for an ultrasound to measure my lining on Wednesday. If things look good on Wednesday there will probably be a transfer on Monday (Feb 5). Once again we'll transfer a single frozen embryo because I am not prepared in any way for the possibility of twins. And yes, one can have twins from a single embryo but come on. As long as we're talking about what is theoretically possible, one could also run away with George Clooney. But come on.

So here I am, taking my Progynova and feeling fairly hopeless about it all. Twenty percent chance of success and what. But I'll do what Dr L says, and we'll see in mid- to late-February how this all turns out.

But twenty percent. We're not holding our collective breath over here.

CD3 redux

I popped my first Progynova this morning. Trying another frozen embryo transfer. And after the whole yelling melt down thing, even. Hope is a hardy weed. Or a fool. Either way, it's what I choose to have today.