Starting Back at One: Transfer Day

This morning our only frozen embryo, a grade 5BB hatching day-5 blastocyst, was thawed from its lonely chamber of cryopreservation. The thaw process only takes about an hour, a timeframe that is completely amazing to me. At some point during that one hour, our hatching blast became a fully hatched blast! Transfer day at my clinic becomes Day 1 all over again, so a new countdown now begins.

Between the unscented soap and all-natural crystal deodorant I insisted Jake and I wear, we were both completely sans scent. I even had us brush our teeth with plain baking soda this morning because, you know, just in case. I’m a fortunate girl that he didn’t complain about any of my many restrictions. It might have been unnecessary, but I went a step above and wore no makeup or styling products in my hair just to keep out any unnatural chemicals or subtle scents. I have reallllllly curly hair, so I ended up looking like a small porcupine took up residence on my head without my products, but pssssh, whatevs. Totally worth the outcome. I wanted us to smell like nothing, and I got my wish. Always Be Prepared, right? I would’ve made a phenomenal Boy Scout.

Anyway, Jake* and I were scheduled for a 9:15 a.m. transfer. Being overly prepared for a big day like this (see above), we got to the clinic fifteen minutes early. I had the obligatory “uncomfortably full” bladder as per the  clinic’s verbatim instructions, my squeezy stress ball ready for the blood draw (I keep one in my purse to whip out specifically for blood work), plus comfy clothes and a pillow to sit on for the car ride home. All in all, I’d say we were ready.

And once we got to the clinic? We waited. Boy, did we wait! And holy canolis did I have to pee! We waited well over an hour while I squirmed in my seat trying to find a comfortable position before it was finally our turn.

Normally the surgical clinic has extremely short wait times, and I’ve rarely gone in for a procedure and seen anyone else waiting. Not today though: this morning was apparently Day 1 for everyone else in southeastern PA, and the waiting room was packed. It seemed every female patient there had her husband and her mother with her, which opens up a whole other realm of psychological crap on my end that I’ll spare you all the deets on. I just couldn’t help but notice it, cause all these chicks with their mothers’ support  suddenly made me feel very alone, like a spotlight shining down on an always-empty place in my life. It’s moments like this that I feel that void the most. But let’s keep it happy here today. I’ll stop digressing.

I knew in advance that Dr. Goodman would be doing my transfer (f/k/a “Dr. G,” but in keeping in line with pseudonyms I want her to have a more “real” fake name if you follow me). This was totally okay by me because I really love Dr. Goodman. She’s my second-fave RE in the practice and has a warm and genuine and relaxing presence. She’s performed my first h/s and first ET, so she knows my uterus well. I never imagined another woman could know my uterus so well. Or that I’d ever type a sentence like that with a completely straight face.

In a twist of non-ironic irony, it turns out I had too full a bladder for transfer. Dr. Goodman took one look at my bladder on the u/s screen before she had me hop off the table. She handed me a cup and instructed me to fill it three times before coming back to try again. If I hadn’t had to pee so badly I almost would’ve laughed. Almost. But I was too busy running down the hall clutching my pee cup to care.

The actual transfer went off without a hitch. I’m a bit crampy from the procedure and sore from the PIO injections, but otherwise I feel fantastic.

I’ve spent the day hanging in my bedroom with Puppy and our new cat  Rocky f/k/a/ Tugg (I absolutely had to change his name. I felt like an idiot calling, “Here, Tugg!” across the room. Like a five-year-old). It’s election day here in my state, and while walking the two blocks to my polling center doesn’t sound undoable, in the name of cautiousness I’ll be negligent in my patriotic duties today and skip on casting my vote. I don’t want to look back at anything I did or didn’t do today and have a regret. But still, I’m sorta bummed that I’ll miss out on voting.

Overall, I felt much more confident this time around because I knew exactly what to expect. The whole time the intake nurse was reading off instructions to me on how to change into the garb and how the process was going to go down, I gave her my attention in only a cursory polite way. While she spoke I began wondering about many of you fellow bloggers who’ve been down this road many more times than I have. I wondered if eventually the nurses reach a point where they’re like, “Just go ahead in. You know the drill. Let’s save all our time here and just do this thing.” I don’t want to ever find out.

Lastly, I had this really great post in mind that I wanted to do about TWW stuff. I’m so overly prepared for the TWW that it’s kind of frightening. Most likely I’ll still post it later, but not so late that it’s irrelevant.

It’s not even a true TWW. More like a 10-day wait. Totally doable. You’ll be hearing from me between now and then. No doubt about it.

*Since I began this blog I’ve referred to my husband as “DH,” which is the go-to acronym in the land of infertility message boards. But really, it’s just starting to sound so… blah… like he’s just an extra in a movie instead of the leading man. In the interest of preserving privacy because I will continue to blog anonymously for the foreseeable future, it only seemed right to give him a name. Even if it’s a fake one.

Author: Marixsa

Resolving infertility as childless-not-by-choice and encouraging fellow endo warriors along the way. View all posts by Marixsa