24 hours in

Yesterday at this time I was experiencing a form of bliss.   I was lying down listening to pleasant music out of a dream, all light drums, chimes, and string instruments.   I was warm and comfortable and feeling very light.  I wasn't thinking about being nervous or about all the things that could go wrong - did my morulae stop developing?  The "what if?" questions seemed to slip away and I focused on the positive, I actually felt like everything was going to be alright.   I again decided to have a session of acupuncture right before my transfer.  Of course for every minute we had to sit and wait in the transfer room for the doctor and embryologist, I lost an ounce of relaxation I had gained.  Luckily we didn't have to wait that long :-)

My last post I questioned if this cycle was going to be different.  Well, up until ER, everything was mostly the same, and my outlook was anything but positive.  But, things took a left turn after my retrieval on Sunday.  They retrieved 4 more eggs (27).  Good.   Sunday afternoon & night, very constipated.  Bad.  Monday, a little constipated and quite a bit of discomfort moving and walking.  Not good.  Oh, and PIO shots hurting a lot more.  Bad.  Find that belly button is bruised.  What?  Weird.  Doesn't hurt, so not good or bad, just weird.  And finally the day one embie report: 10 fertilized!  Yeah!  We had 8 last time.  Great!  Then came the day 2 "decision day":  We were going for a 5 day transfer.   Another difference - great!  Oh and one weird report.  Of our 10, the day three report came back with them at 3,4,5,6,7, and 8 celled.  All in order weird huh?

Well, by day four we had 2 morulae and 2 compacting and yesterday we had 3 blasts with 1 morulae and 1 compacting.  We ended up transferring 3 blasts!  I had heard that they don't like to transfer more than two blasts, but since only one of ours was of a 'good-good' quality they decided to increase our chances.  Our clinic uses a good-fair-poor quality scale on first the cells that will make up the fetus, then a second grade for the cells that make up the placenta.  I've read about the other blastocyst grading system using a number then two letters (like 4AA), seems to give a little bit more info, but I guess I'm not sure what I would do with that!  Maybe sometimes less is better?

I found a cool site that gives lots of pictures of eggs and embryos at the different stages.   Of course I spent the morning comparing my pictures with theirs - to be honest, I can't tell what I'm looking at!

It seems like a really good clinic, is there is anyone who has been to this one in Chicago?

  

http://www.advancedfertility.com/blastocystimages.htm

So, here I sit relaxing and waiting on the couch, trying not to analyze every twinge.  TV, reading, video games, some work, and of course blogging...

Oh, the doctor told me what caused my belly button (it sounds so kid-like to call it that, but I have no idea what else to call it) to bruise - during the retrival the needle must have nicked something and some blood moved up the ligaments that attach the belly button to the uterus.   He hasn't seen it often, has this happened to anyone else?