Eggs in a Basket

This morning I received a phone call from the Regional Fertility Clinic to let me know that none of our remaining eggs make it to the blastocyst stage. Which means:

All of our eggs are in one basket or in this case my uterus!

Although it wasn't a huge surprise it was devastating to hear. We were really hoping that we would get at least one more fertilized egg that could be frozen.

Of course my biggest fear is that there is something wrong with the eggs that were transferred and that they may have stopped growing and developing.

Unfortunately,  I have absolutely no way of knowing. I won't find out if I am pregnant for another 12 days. If I don't become pregnant I won't know if it was a problem with our eggs or if they were fine, but just didn't implant.

As I've mentioned before the two week wait is the hardest part!

I'm trying to remain positive, but I have to be honest it is really hard.

What's Happening

Now that the egg transfer procedure is done the hardest part of the entire process has begun...

The two week wait!

Up until now I have been busy taking a variety of pills, gels and a nasal spray that had to be administered 5 times a day.

In short, I didn't really have time to obsess... now I am quickly making up for lost time.

For three days before having the transfer we were receiving a daily update on how our eggs were doing. Now I have no idea how they are doing or even if they are still developing.

As it is pretty much all I can think about, I have been researching what should be happening.

As I had a three day transfer our fertilized eggs still need to develop and turn into a blastocyst (what it is called when it is made up of around 150 cells).

By about 4 days after the transfer (Tuesday or Wednesday) the blastocyst will break out of its 'shell' and hopefully implant into my uterus. Some women will experience some cramping and spotting, however, last time I didn't experience anything.

So unfortunately there is no real way of knowing until I have the blood test on March 12 which is...

two very long weeks away!

The Procedure

Chris and I arrived at the Regional Fertility Clinic for 12:00 yesterday.

I was feeling anxious, but Chris did a great job calming me down and even managed to make me laugh. On the drive there he made up a variety of 'imagine if' scenarios and even started chanting "Triplets, Triplets, Triplets!"

It was completely ridiculous, but it worked!

A few minutes after arriving we were called back, asked to verify our names and given gowns and booties to put on... including Chris.

Then we were brought into the procedural room and again were asked to verify our names, as well as identify our names on the petri dish which contained our embryos.

The embryologist who has been monitoring our eggs then informed us of some good news:

One of our 6 celled embryos had become a 7 celled embryo!

This means there is still hope for that little guy. Our doctor then decided to implant just two of the embryos- the one 8 celled and the now 7 celled embryo.

So now we don't have to worry about triplets... not that I was really concerned.

The transfer procedure itself was very similar to an IUI procedure except this time the doctor used an ultrasound to visually place our embryos into my uterus.

Similar to receiving a pap smear, my legs were put into stirrups, a speculum was inserted, and then a catheter was inserted into my uterus. Once she got the catheter into place our embryos were put into a syringe and then released into my uterus. Other than being a little uncomfortable it was completely painless.

The really amazing thing though was that we were able to watch all this take place on the ultrasound monitor. Although the embryos are too small to see, we were able to clearly see the air bubble that they were inside.

They then checked to make sure that the embryos were in the air bubble and not stuck somewhere in the syringe. Once that was verified they left me to relax on the bed for a few minutes.

Before leaving, Chris and I were given a photo of our two embryos. Chris also took a picture of the monitor which showed our embryos (or rather the air bubble) in my uterus.

Imagine how cool it would be if we do become pregnant and these turn out to be our first official baby photos!

It is so surreal to think I have two embryos floating around inside of my uterus. I know that there is a chance that they will not continue to grow or that they don't end up implanting, however, I am trying to remain cautiously optimistic.

*They will continue monitoring our other embryos for four days and if they make it to the blastocyst stage they will freeze them for possible future attempts.