Well, that's done.

Accomplished in the past week:

1) Re-elect President Obama;
2) Pass marriage equality legislation in my state;
3) Transfer embryos to uterus.


As you can see, I've been busy.

All kidding aside, it's been an odd few weeks. I've been tied up in knots upon knots about the election. It's not something I like to think about, but for the past 15 (fifteen. FIFTEEN) years we've been coping with the fact that Her Indoors is not an American citizen. We've patched temporary visas together legally so far, but with very little sense of security. If Obama manages to do something about DOMA during his second term, things could change for us in an earth-shattering way. I knew there was a zero percent chance of anything like that happening under a President Romney, so... I was pinning a lot of hope on this election. Not to mention the whole marriage equality thing which was/is incredibly important to me. So between one thing and another, the past few weeks have been a blur of anxiety and hopefulness.

On that subject: I have had major lining-related setbacks in the past, so I was pretty nervous about my lining check on Nov 5. I was delighted when they found my lining to be 8.79mm -- this is not rockstarish (back before Asherman's, I used to produce 11-14mm) but it's comfortably above the 8mm cutoff that my clinic uses. Previous cycles had settled down around 6.5mm. I know there are a couple of others out there struggling with lining issues, so here's a summary of what might have made a difference for me. There are details regarding vaginas below, but I figure anyone grossed out by that probably isn't reading my blog.

What I did

• Delestrogen shots instead of estrogen pills. I think this made a big difference for me. With my last two FETs we piled on the pills in hope of fattening my lining. This gave me a pounding headache, constant nausea, and a skimpy lining, though my E2 was >1000. Delestrogen, on the other hand, has given me physiologically reasonable level of 294, no side effects, and a decent lining. Totes worth the butt-shot every third night.
  
• Viagra. The doctor at Big Shiny Fertility Factory doesn't believe in Viagra to improve lining. I do. Rather than attempting to argue the point, I just quietly procured a passel of off-brand 25mg pills from an obliging Indian pharmacy and tucked one Up There four times a day from the start of estrogen to the first day of progesterone. Since the relevant study was done using suppositories, I first tried an elaborate scheme to construct suppositories with a pill-crusher, microwave, and cocoa butter inserts. This was tremendously messy and tremendously tedious. The next thing I tried was simply stuffing one into the relevant tract. Worked beautifully, with minimal muss or fuss. A tip to anyone trying this at home: it worked even better when I inserted it with 1ml of Preseed, the kind that comes in the tube with the applicator. Most effective method was to draw up 1ml of the Preseed, turn the applicator with the open end facing the ceiling, draw the plunger back a bit more, and balance the pill on top of the lube.
  
  Incidentally, I chose the Preseed not because I was afraid of some other lube damaging embryos or whatever, but because Preseed is pH-neutral, has no glycerin, and (most importantly) had just the right applicator to fit a Viagra pill into. $20 at Target.
  
• Vitamin E. For this I didn't actually follow the study protocol of 600 mg/day; I used Dr. Marsh's protocol of 1000 mg/day. Dr. Marsh is an Asherman's expert who's seen a lot of scrawny linings. I really believe this made a difference for me, maybe as much as the Viagra -- when I had my post-surgery hysteroscopy during an unmedicated cycle I had a pretty great lining (9 mm) and I wasn't taking anything but the Vitamin E then. But I typically do worse on exogenous estrogen, so I am glad I did both the Viagra and Vit E.

What I didn't do

• Acupuncture. I totally believe it can be helpful, but I was so busy that I just didn't get to this time round.
  
• L-arginine. I started out taking 6g a day (12 pills!). After 4 days I had rotten heartburn and decided to just give it up. Plus, its mechanism is basically the same as Viagra's (although it's taken orally), and I was afraid of Overdoing It.

Transfer was smooth. The receptionist said "Good luck, ladies!" as we walked in, which pleased me. We may be lesbians, but we're still ladies, dammit. Gauged the water/bladder fullness pretty well; I was uncomfortable, but not in agony. Was not offered a picture of the embryos, which was a bit disappointing, but which I have to admit is sensible. Blastocysts were fair quality upon thaw; I've not too fazed, though, considering the fact that my only take-home baby has come from the worst-quality embryo I ever transferred. Pretty is as pretty does, you know?

So now... we wait. And I eat pineapple, out of a sense of tradition and ritual. And bathe in the knowledge that, positive or negative, BFN or BFP, come Jan 1 we can get freaking married, and come Jan 20 we'll be watching President Obama up there on the podium. I've gotten two out of my three wishes for November. I'm hoping for a hat-trick, but no matter what happens, it's been a stonking good month.