For years I swore I wanted ONE child, and only one child.

Later on down the road I sad one, and MAYBE two.

So when it came down to deciding how many embryos to transfer, I figured the decision would be easy. If I had enough good quality embryos and the doc recommended one, I’d transfer one. If I had some ok quality and he recommended two, I’d transfer two. But the tables kinda turned when I got there and was actually faced with the decision.

So let me start by explaining (and if you’re already familiar with this, please feel free to skip this part) that embryos are “graded” according to quality. My personal clinic tends to recommend 3 day transfers (transfers 3 days after retrieval) when there are fewer embryos and 5 day transfers when there are more to be able to select from. After the embryos are fertilized, they begin to divide into cells – 2, 4, and so on. If they continue to make it until Day 5, they are considered Blastocysts. I’m not sure how embryos are graded at Day 3 in my clinic, and since Day 3 happened to be a Saturday I had no idea how they were progressing until today. So this is what we ended up with:

Of the 21 fertilized embryos, come day 5 we had:

7 Grade 4 AA (the RE explained this to me as an A+)

3 Grade  4AB (“A”)

1 Grade 4BC (“A-“)

2 Morula (which I believe is the stage before blastocyst, though really they should be further along right now – so they are either getting ready to arrest or are just slow growers)

And he said he expects to see 6-8 make it to freeze, but I’ll find that out for sure tomorrow.

So back to the transfer.

While high on Valium (I so get why I couldn’t drive myself – I was practically walking drunk into the clinic), the RE is trying to explain to me the statistics of success. He recommended transferring one due to the potential complications of a twin pregnancy, however the success rate of one was 40-50%, a number that I had expected to be higher. With two, success rate was given as 60%, with a 50% rate of twins (or 30% overall).

I went in there expecting to transfer one, but ultimately decided to transfer two.

I managed to get better at the whole “comfortably full” bladder thing (which, I’m sorry, but “comfortable” and “full” when it comes to my bladder? No.) The transfer itself was super easy, totally painless and the doc said went really smoothly. I then opted to relieve my bladder via bedpan, which, while not one of my finer moments, beat laying there for 25 minutes doing the pee pee dance)

I don’t have pics of the two that were transferred, but I did get a pic of all that has survived.

As far as rest goes, the doc said to basically pretend as though I have a bad head cold. The joke is on him, though, because I pretty much do the same stuff with a head cold as I would normally. (I’m resting I promise!)

Much to my husbands dismay, they were unable to “put the ones back with a pe.nis”, but he suggested we name them and so I’ve decied to call them bubbles and squishy. Both because that’s kinda what they look like and because I really like Finding Nemo (Bubbles, bubbles! I like bubbles! and I will call him my squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my squishy.)

Fingers crossed!