Let the waiting begin...

Today was our day 5 embryo transfer. It is amazing how drawn-out, stressful and all-around painful the IVF process is and then, in a matter of mere seconds, the transfer is over. Pretty incredible.

My husband and I have had some pretty sleepless nights leading up to this, always trying to push the worst case scenario out of our minds. What if none fertilize? Yay, five of the six fertilize. Day 3 transfer...what if none of them survived? Yay, five survive and we're scheduled for a day 5 transfer instead. What if none turn into blastocysts? Well, that leads us to today.

Our ET was scheduled for way too late in the morning giving us too much time to sweat it out (thank God I was able to sleep in until almost 8am, unlike 6:30am the past few days). On a side note, they gave me a valium but I think it did nothing to calm the nerves, just made me sleepy once I got home.

The nurse got us all prepared and FINALLY the embryologist came in to give us the news. Ah, the anticipation and sweaty palms. Well, the good news is that 4 of our little guys survived thus far. Two were early blasts and two were still in the day 4 stage of morula, which means they are lagging a little behind but could still turn into strong, healthy blasts.

Two of our little ones won the prize of getting transferred into my anxiously awaiting uterus! And we'll keep our fingers crossed that the other two come along so they can be put on ice for use down the road. Of course I had to ask the embryologist the quality of the little guys and we were thrilled to know that they are USDA certified Grade A! And, as a souvenir, we have pics of the little guys as well as getting to keep their first home, the petri dish (to use as a coaster, perhaps? Hmmm...).



So now we wait and wait and wait. 2 solid weeks. Test on Sunday, July 19th. What to do to pass the time??? Oh, right, I'll turn 30 (July 12) and hopefully my husband will have something fabulous planned. At least that'll break up the monotony. We'll see. And we'll wait.

(Update #1 - note the thick zona, or outer shell, around our blasts. They ended up doing assisted hatching, something I knew nothing about. But hopefully it gives our little ones an easier time breaking loose!)

(Update #2 - just got a call from the RE...only one of the remaining two embies can be frozen. I'm a bit disappointed, though one is better than none...)