Transfer # 3 and beyond ...

Yet again I have ignored my dear readers.   The last we spoke, it was 1 week prior to transfer.  I guess with 2 failures under my belt, I felt that it was a bit of a let down to get all excited and post everything on here and then be another dud....

Let's start of by saying this :

Okay now that we got that out of the way. ..

Transfer was on a Monday this time so T was unable to go with me.  She had to work :(   DH came instead!! :) We went up on Sunday and got there early so we could relax at the hotel. We got some last minute Christmas shopping done while we were out sans kids so it was a nice getaway!

Transfer morning dawned early. We arrived and for the first time ended up sitting in the waiting room for a little while!  Finally we were taken back to Pod #2.  It amuses me to no end that these tiny changing rooms are called Pods. lol.   One of the embryologists came in to have me sign that we were agreeing to transfer 2 and let me know that the embies were looking great from the thaw! One 5AB & one 5BA.   The great chugging of water had commenced and I was instructed to take my lovely valium.

This transfer went as smooth as silk. We got situated in the transfer bed, said hi to Robert- my favorite ultrasound guy who is always so nice to narrate the video we take of the transfers!  I love the entire team at this clinic! They've all been there thru all three of my surrogacies and are just amazing!  Dr K came in and things got started.  Not a hitch! Everything in the exact right spot on the first try.  I swear we were in and out in 5mins or less. I should have timed it! lol!

Then home again, home again for 48hours of bedrest.  The rest of my week was fairly busy. T got her very first foster placement phone call on the day of transfer (good luck sign!!). The time flew by and before I knew it, it was 4dpt.  Now with the Spanish twins, I started peeing at 4dpt and got a big fat negative. I did look at it the following day and noticed a squinter line. So I figured it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and pee. Up until then I had no hpts in the house so I wouldn't be tempted. Plus I really like First Response but those things get expensive after a while.  So I'd heard good things about Dollar Tree tests and grabbed a few of those.   I peed ... and waited...  I got the slightest slightest hint of a line.. So I did what any normal person would do - I sent DH out at 9pm to grab some First Response!

Do you see that??   A faint line.  I admit, it may have darkened slightly from when I first peed but there was definitely a line there. EEEK.

So again, I did what any normal person would do. I went to bed and tried my hardest not to pee until morning and then did another test..

Yep!  Definitely a darker line!!  AHHH!!  We are soo pregnant this time around!  About time! 5dpt was also the anniversary of the Spanish Twins' transfer - More good luck!

Naturally I peed 2 more times. Day 6 was the digital above.. and Day 7 -

Naturally during this time I had to tell IM.   On Saturday (5dpt) I sent her that very first squinter test (not pictured here) and told her that I needed her peestick eyes to help me .  She finally agreed that she could *maybe* see something, she wasn't sure. So I sent her my First Response and said "How about this one?"

Immediate response was something like No F$&@ing way !!

lol   I love this girl!!  I then sent her the 5dpt test and I'm pretty sure the poor thing was in shock! :) Adorable!

We had our first beta (9dp5dt) on 12/23 (also my oldest DD's birthday -- good luck vibes were covering this transfer!) and we all guessed what we thought the beta might be.  Some how I guessed exactly on target!!   398 !

2nd beta was this past Monday (12/28) 14dp5dt and it was beyond our expectations.  J & I were both guessing in the low 2000's but this little beta decided to outdo us both and was 3215! Doubling time of every 41hours!  EEK!

And that brings us up to date.  Our first ultrasound will be one day shy of 6wks- next Tuesday (1/5).  I'll be back to update once we see how many are cooking and hopefully the heartbeat(s).!






I have no clue why the tickers with the same due date put in are making me 2 different amounts pregnant. lol.. Go figure.

Transfer Story :)

Long story short : Transfer went smoothly, waiting to pee..

Long story long :

So T and I headed up to ChiTown rather late.  Between her kids having activities and then her work (where she accidentally locked her keys and had to wait for someone to come open up the building to let her back in- HA), we left even later than we had planned.  All is good in that we missed rush hour, but we also missed Lou's.  We knew that we most likely wouldn't make it up there before they closed so we stopped at TGIF's where I had never been.

Let's set the mood - the hostess asked us if we wanted dining or bar area? We replied that we wanted a booth and didn't care where it was.  She proceeded to take us to the bar area - which we're thinking, great! We don't have our kids, why have to listen to someone else's? ha!- until we saw the booth.  It was one of those little 2 person booths which means there's barely enough room for you and your purse. LOL.  Sigh.  Oh well.   Then we ordered the endless apps, which is a pretty neat deal but when you have a dollhouse sized table, there's just not much room on it for the endlessness of the apps. Jokes were made that I won't repeat here but we had a good ole time! :)

We arrived in our hotel at around 10pm?! Back in the same hotel we stayed at prior to the twins' transfer! :)  The only thing we learned here was that vending on the hotel map now just means the ice machine and no pop machines, but hey they sell pop at their little 'market' for $2.50 per 20oz bottle. No thanks!  Back into the car to find a gas station, which was actually quite hilarious once we got there the long route only to realize we could have went thru the back parking lot and it was literally right.there.!  Maybe you had to be there but it amused me to no end !

I am not even sure how many times I woke up that night wondering if my alarm hadn't went off. In the end, we were both up and ready to leave 30+mins before it was time to leave. Which is actually pretty ironic since we ended up having traffic issues and were 10mins late. LOL! OOPS!

We got put in this little room (not a pod w/glass doors like before) that was kinda hidden off by itself. It had a real door, u/s machine and everything.  I was texting IM (who didn't come this time around) and she says either we are getting the VIP treatment or they hide the silly people (I'm pretty sure she meant crazies) there. LOL!!

T & I looking stylish before transfer :)

So all went well- I got taken back to the transfer room without flashing anyone - always a plus in my book!  Hopped up on the table and got settled in.  I love that the staff there is so sweet! They had absolutely no problems with us videotaping it :) Of course the size of said video may take me 2 days to upload to share with IM... lol.  

This transfer went smoothly.  No bad feelings, all good. I didn't mention it last time but with the last transfer the RE seemed to have a difficult time getting the catheter where he wanted it and it made me little nervous.  This time it was more of a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am type of thing. Boom little embie was in a nice spot in my uterus.   Ohh, did you notice  I said embie not embies? Yes, we transferred two but you see one decided that it wanted it's own little ride and didn't want to share with a sibling.  So after a transfer the catheter goes back to the embryologist who checks to make sure the embryos are out and yells CLEAR... only this time, we did not get the green light. One little embryo was a good girl and vacated the catheter like she was supposed to, and one little embryo was a bit more stubborn. So we had to do the actual transfer again to get it out. LOL!  So technically that was two transfers instead of one, right? Lol  In the end both are snuggled in and hopefully at least one is going to stay!

The twins' mama says if I pee on day 5 and get a + then it's twins but if I don't get a ++ until day 6 or later than it's just 1. LOL :)

Tomorrow is 4days past transfer.. I'm not sure when I'll start peeing.  They say that you should always do first thing in the morning pee b/c it's the most concentrated. "They" apparently don't realize that even non-pregnant (or 2wk pg) me gets up several times at night to pee. lol. I'll be reporting back soon with some results, fingers crossed for good news!

2nd Transfer tomorrow !!

I know... I know... I have been absolutely Horrid at keeping this updated!

So let's just cut to the chase!  All lining checks went well.  Last count, my lining was 12mm (thickest it's ever been!) and estrogen was 255 .   All good :)

Tomorrow is the big day!  Transfer day!!  I have a good feeling about this one!  This is my fifth ivf cycle!
#1 - resulted in my first surrokid
#2 - cycled but didn't transfer for a dear friend. I actually traveled to Texas only to find out the day of transfer that none of the embies passed the PGD testing :(
#3 - resulted in the surrotwins!
#4 - our first failed cycle  in Aug
#5 - Tomorrow!  It's sooo going to work!! :)

So my IM , after weighing many factors and lots of discussion, decided not to come to transfer. While I would love to have her there, I completely understand and it's all good. Bestie T is coming along, so we've got this :)     Traveling up in the middle of the week ( which I'm super thankful for b/c transfer was supposed to be today but there's no way I could have done that !) seems odd. T's kids have activities after school and so we get to wait until later tonite to leave.  Let's all keep our fingers crossed that means we miss any rush hour traffic !! :) 

Everyone keep your fingers and toes and all other crossables crossed for us tomorrow!  I'll update again when we start peeing :) LOL!

Transfer Post - a little late.. #IVF #GestationalSurrogate

Okay I'm super late with this post but ... better late than never?  I'm blaming my pokey internet which has been doing nothing but being a pain in my hiney!

So let's go back a few days, shall we?

Transfer for journey #3 was on a Sunday!  Did you gasp?  Everyone was pretty amazed that they did transfers on Sunday but I heard of someone doing a transfer on Christmas day back when I transferred the twins so after that, nothing surprises me.

There was some talk of DH coming along with me since he wouldn't have to take time off, but then he realized that he hasn't been to a transfer yet (first transfer was IM & I, 2nd transfer was my bestie (Tooshie) and I b/c IPs were from Spain) and he didn't want to jinx it.  Forgive me if I already told this story b/c with my fickle internet, I'm not going back to look thru the last few posts. LOL.. Also meds make my brains fickle. lol.    So anyhoo Toosh came along with me for the transfer.

We went up Saturday to spend the night for our Sunday morning transfer.  On the way up, we stopped to get pedicures. Now technically we wanted cute turtles painted on our big toes but we didn't realize the place we stopped at didn't do designs.  :(  Bummer..

However we thought the colors of the fake flip flops were pretty significant :

Since we couldn't get our turtles, we decided to have accent  nails of each others colors done. lol. Yes, we are geeky like that.

We got to our hotel, went swimming for a bit and then went out for Lou's pizza. Another pre-transfer tradition!  Yummy, gotta have my Lou's!  Totally forgot pics of the Lou's but mmmmmm...

Last transfer, the agency booked our hotel room and so Toosh & I shared a king size bed.  This time, I booked the hotel so we each had our own queen size bed. lol.  I'm sure the highlight for Toosh was giving me my PIO shot again. That girl gets unbelievable pleasure giving me shots. lol.  Lucky for me, it's only once per surrogacy LOL!!

Finally Sunday morning arrived.  We met my IM there.. Love her :)  She was adorable and brought us both cute little goodie bags! Awww!!  and of course she brought me more meds.. lol.

Although we searched high and low, there were no froggie or elephant socks to be had this time around.  I did manage to find yellow & green socks that we mismatched to look adorable :)

the obligatory sock photo

You can't see our shirts (okay I don't have one on b/c I'm in my hospital gown) but I wore a green shirt & Toosh wore a yellow shirt. lol. We are all about our good luck.

IM, Me, Tooshie

Naturally we took our group shot just before going back so you can't see half our bling. lol.

Toosh made the elephant barrettes (which we all wore under our hairnets) and the turtle pins (which we pinned onto our scrubs). I found the froggie necklace (yay clearance @ Claires LOL!) and the bracelets- one is a turtle, one is elephant.   I think we covered all our bases ;)

 The IVF team is super awesome and I love them all to death.  We had the exact same team that got me pg with the Twins :)

Dr K (love that man) is such a sweet soul. You just can't help but love him to death.

We elected to put in just one embie but it as a great 6BA embie who was already hatching A LOT.

I mean look at this monster!

Transfer is pretty much over and done with quickly.  Tooshie video'd it which was pretty awesome so IM(J) could share it with IF (N).


Last time we got a cute little u/s picture printed out - we didn't get that this time for whatever reason.

So we took our first pregnancy picture just IM & I  :)  

No worries guys, I hope to have some ++ hpts to share soon.. Otherwise Beta is on the 12th !


-side note : I mentioned to IM about blurring out her face because my past 2 couples for various reasons didn't want to be identified.  IM is completely fine with me sharing her photo .  You can't imagine how excited that makes me. lol. It's the little things.

The Transfer Post !!

**  Let me warn you that this post will be heavily laden with pictures!  Since my IPs live so very far away, they were unable to come over for the transfer and I wanted to make sure they were able to experience as much of it as possible. Bonus for you- it's like a mini documentary.. lol.


Transfer was amazing!!  Sorry I'm slow on reporting on it..  Our clinic requires 48hours of "couch potato" rest and while I am perfectly capable of being on the computer while also being a couch potato, my computer is downstairs and I didn't want to run up and down, up and down..  So you all just had to wait on me! :)

Let's start at the beginning..  The husband stayed home to take the kiddos to school and fun things like that, so I took my bestie ( @MsRandom ) with me for the transfer !  Girl trip! WOOHOO!  

We headed up to ChiTown the night before due to a way too early in the morning transfer time.  There were some jokes made about having to share a King size bed and she told pretty much everyone she ran into that she was going to get me preggers.. ha!

Reminder- I did this all before about 10yrs ago. Same RE, same transfer clinic.. It was like deja vu..  And so I thought we needed to make sure that we did many of the same things that I did last time -for luck.. I got pregnant the first try last time and I am bound determined that I will do it again!

Sooo Ms. Random and I went shopping prior to our trip.  A mighty search for good luck fertility charms..  Just when we feared we would find nothing, a seated search thru a huge bin of socks scored us the win!!

Turtles - some cultures believe they are a lucky charm for fertility.. Plus they are GREEN socks (a lucky color!)

Elephants - Feng Shui symbol for protection, good luck, & fertility..  I'll take all those!

My agency had already sent me this-- I love it!  It's an Orgami Owl necklace with the Miracle piece & a December charm.. Love it!  I was so surprised when I got a package in the mail and opened it to find this!  I love presents :)  Yay!!

Naturally, I had to go ahead and start my stockpile of  HPTs (home pregnancy tests).  I am currently 2 days 12 hrs past transfer and I'm dying to pee already.. ha!  Patricia (IM) laughed at me when I sent this picture.  She asked me how many times I needed to pee to know I was pregnant ?? ONE!..  but I like to have lots of practice and lots of proof!


So I had all these goodies but I hadn't found anything frog yet.  Last time I had froggy socks and it was killing me not to have that lucky charm too.   And then I found these :

Adorable frog necklaces (Green!) that were also best friend necklaces.. PERFECT!

Ms. Random (who is super crafty) surprised me with these adorable froggy pins :

 Perfect!  We were set to go!  We were soo psyched for transfer and off to ChiTown we went.  We got to our hotel and then immediately started our search for some Lou's pizza for our supper.. I started that tradition with my first surrogacy and Lou's was a must.

mmmmm.. We ate way too much and then went back to the hotel.  Ms Random had been teasing me for days on how she couldn't wait to give me my PIO shot..  When it came down to it, I think she was more nervous than I was.. ha!  Knowing that we were way too excited to sleep, we stayed up until midnight and finally called it a night.  Ms. Random proceeded to get up 50million times for a bathroom break (which is normally me, but ironically I didn't have to pee once! ha).  Everytime she got up, I'd wake up and freak out that my alarm hadn't went off .  One time I was all prepared to jump up and take a quick shower, only to realize it was only 2:45am.  Oops.   Back to sleep.


Finally time to go to transfer arrived and off we went.

For some reason, I wasn't told where to go for the transfer so when I arrived at the hospital- I went to FCI clinic..  I got inside only to be told that I had to go to the basement for transfers.. Oops.  Back out and off to the elevators we went!   We were highly amused by this sign on the door (our appt was at 6:30am) :

 The waiting room was tranquil and serene.. I'm not sure if bamboo is a fertility symbol or what, but it's all over the walls.

Quite honestly, we barely sat down in the waiting room when I was called back to my little 'pod' to get undressed and sit and wait for my transfer time.  

Pod 1  just tickled me to no end.. ha!

 

Our waiting room/ change our clothes room

We laughed a little that with all of the good luck charms , the only real thing that would show on me was the socks.. ha.  Since I wanted both turtles & elephants, we each wore mismatched socks.. ha.

Aren't we adorable in our scrubs?  All that time doing our hair for nothing.. It looks dang fine under that hair net.

Ms. Random & Me

I'm not sure how long we were in the "Pod".  I had to drink my bottle of water (which we thought was funny that we had to bring our own water bottle.. Hello IVF costs how many THOUSANDS of dollars and you can't provide a bottle of water to fill my bladder?) and wait.. While we waited, Justin the embryologist came in to talk to us.  I asked about embryo quality.  He explained that because they were frozen- after the thaw they only grade them as good or fair - ours were both GOOD!  yay.. He did say that prior to freezing they were graded traditionally.. One embie was a 6BA & the other was a 5BB.. Click here if you want to read more on embryo grading..

Finally it was time to go into the transfer room.. Now let's all take a moment to remember that I have a gown on and no bottoms.  While the gown was tied, we all know how flimsy hospital gowns are.. Ahem.  So while I'm walking out and trying to put my sheet around behind me, I somehow managed to FLASH everyone..  oops..   Our very friendly guy-who-I-have-no-idea-his-job henceforth called me Flasher.   lol.. At least I have a nickname.. 

In transfer room with Dude Who Named me Flasher (on left), me and then Justin the Embryologist (on Right)
I have no idea why there is a light shining on my stomach.. Pretty sure it's the glittering from my awesome uterus. HA!!

The transfer itself was amazing. We had such wonderful people in there.  I didn't get pictures of  my favorite RE (okay, the only RE I've worked with.. lol) or the ultrasound dude who was beyond amazing.   We were able to take so many wonderful pictures (ok- Ms Random took the pictures while I just laid there and looked pretty.. :-)

This is one of the embryos still in the petrie dish.  See the tiny speck in the fluid?  That's the embryo.. Magnified 100 times :

.
And here is the other one..  Oohhh ahhh... 

Now this was what I thought was amazing..  This is one of the embryos magnified 1,000 times..  Isn't science amazing ?? :

Our second embryo was actually hatching !!  Look how cool it is :

We were able to video tape the entire transfer- which I can't share here because they say names ect.. Privacy ,people, privacy..  Let me just say it was amazing (yes I keep using that word!) to be able to watch the embryologist suck the little embies up into a tube and place them into the transfer fluid.  Our ultrasound dude was awesome with the commentary making sure to tell us exactly what was going on and pausing things so that we had good pictures to share!  I Loved him!!

Once the embies were placed via a catheter into my uterus, we got one final picture, our very first pictures of them inside my uterus. 

Okay-- see the green arrow?? and the little white speck below it?  That is the embryos along with the transfer fluid.. Awww :)   Pretty neat huh?

And basically that was it.  It was over and done with in a matter of minutes.  I laid still on the table just while Justin looked at the catheter with a microscope to be certain the embryos were no longer in it and Boom, I was pulled up to sitting and ushered out of the room.  DONE! This place was like a baby making assembly line.  They immediately sent me to the bathroom.  When I was done there and headed back to my little Pod to change (with the sheet firmly around my bum this time), I was paused to wait while the next couple was helped into the transfer room..  I was very thankful that I turned down the valium offer because this lady took it and oohh my was she out of it. 

I quickly changed and Ms Random took our first "pregnant" picture:

And now we are in the dreaded 2ww..  Ours will actually be even longer since I'll be on vacation when I'm due for a beta so I wont get one until I get home (Jan 6)..  Don't you worry though... You say all those hpts above.. I'll be peeing until I see two lines !   I'm officially PUPO (pregnant until proven otherwise) !  lol..