Hurry up and wait...and wait...

Whew, IVF #1 is officially done. 

I thought I would never make it through all of the doctor visits, blood tests SHOTS and procedures.  But I did!  It was such a hard couple of months, physically and emotionally, but I feel much stronger because of it.  I am definitely relieved that that part is over, but now comes the most horrible part of this whole process - the wait before the pregnancy test. 

Although we transferred two very high quality embryos, there's a very real possibility that neither one will implant into my uterine wall.  I think the success rate on the first round is somewhere around 30-40%.  Granted, that's 30-40% higher than we have of getting pregnant on our own, AND my insurance is paying for it...so I'll absolutely take it! 

Lucky for us, our doctor is one of the few around that does 5-day embryo transfers.  You have to have an extremely skilled ARTS department to be able to handle embryos that are over 3 days, and Presby Plano is one of those.  The reason why five-day transfers have a higher success rate is because on day 3 (three days after the egg retrieval), the embryos are only about 6-10 cells big.  But by day five, they have grown from 6-10 cells to 100-200 cells!  The embryologist can take a much closer look at the quality of the pitri babies and grade them on a stricter scale.  By this time, the actual "baby" part of the cell can be distinguished from the rest of the embryo. 

So, our two "grade B" embryos (extremely rare to have a "grade A") were successfully transferred back to me and now a week from today, we will have our first beta number.  By Christmas, we will know for sure if all of the torture was worth it!