Transfer Complete

Transfer happened this morning and I could not be more thrilled. It was a little more painful than last time, but still nowhere near as painful as the IUIs I had there - which I think is purely a matter of technique (and my RE is obviously more gifted in that area than the nurses who usually do the IUIs are).

L and I had been discussing all weekend how many to transfer - 1 or 2. We transferred 2 3-day embies last month, and obviously, BFN. So I was very hesitant to transfer only one today, even though it would be a blastocyst. He, on the other hand, got it into his head, that it was an all-or-nothing proposition - that if we transferred two, either both would stick or neither would stick.

I admit I come to reasoning based on some third-hand knowledge. I have two IRL friends who've done IVF and both implanted 2 blasts each and both ended up with singletons. Obviously, that in no way makes it that that will happen to me, but I do know it's not all or nothing. We kind of put it behind us until we saw the quality of the blasts.

I don't know how many we expected today, but we had 8 embies make it to the blast stage and 1 was still a morula. The others had arrested. Still, 9/12 is fantastic considering where we were just a few days ago! We had one absolutely perfect, starting-to-hatch 5AA blastocyst. The others were of decent quality, but nothing great like that. I don't remember exactly, but we had a bunch of 3BC, a 2BA, and a bunch of 1ABs (or something like that). I have now learned that unlike the 3-day grading system, the number score on the 5-day blast doesn't necessarily mean quality, it's the letters that do. The number refers to the stage in development (i.e. 4s and 5s have become an expanded blast).

I told the embryologist straight how I felt. While I would prefer 1 baby over two (in one pregnancy), I would prefer twins rather than nothing. She told me that basically answered how we should proceed, and recommended putting in the next best one as well, which was the 2BA, and NOT the 3BC (due to quality, not stage of development). L seemed to feel (and he's probably right) that the 2BA was sufficiently behind enough that it probably wouldn't make much of a difference so he was ok with that, and it made me feel better to have 2.

The others got cultured to grow further to see if they would make it to freeze and I just got a call saying that 4 of them were frozen today and there are two more that were a little slow but they are going to see how they do overnight and they might freeze them tomorrow. Even with the 4, I am just in awe of where we are today, compared to last week.

I REALLY REALLY hope this means good things for us, but I am trying not to get too excited. After all, I've read plenty of blogs where women have put back TWO 5AA blasts and still got a BFN when all was said and done.

But for now, I'm done, and there's nothing more I can do. My RE doesn't mandate bedrest and they say if you have a sit-down job you can go back to work, so I took the morning off. However, I have to conduct interviews this afternoon so I couldn't take the whole day like I did last cycle. I really hope it's ok. Even conducting interviews is sort of stressful for me (not as much as going on one).