G'night, Gracie.

It's over. On July 10 we went and signed the papers to destroy the three embryos at Big Shiny Fertility Factory, the last of the Nine.

It was just too much. In the end, my desire for another child was overwhelmed by the sense that the time for that had passed. I'm almost 42. Her Indoors is 50. Small Boy is 6. In the end, I'm unwilling to gamble the time, the money, the sorrow, for an unlikely payoff. I put ten embryos in my uterus. Presumably, if there were a tiny soul that were meant to be part of our family, it would have taken one of the ten fucking chances it had to hop aboard and stay for the ride.

But nope. It's over. It no longer matters how much scar tissue my uterus has. My super-light periods are now nothing but a convenience. Small Boy will never have a full sibling; I feel intensely lucky that we have met some wonderful donor siblings via the Donor Sibling Registry. I will never pee on a stick again, never hold on the end of a phone with blood roaring in my ears waiting to find out a beta number. I will never, ever have another goddamn miscarriage. Sometimes thinking that makes me want to weep with gratitude.

During the last one I held the infinitesimal thing in my hand and thought "welp, this is it, it's over." I then immediately thought "no, no it's not, I'm not at the end, there's still a lot of road left." But my first instinct was correct. Gravida 5 Para 1, that's me, and that's how I shall die. Gravida 6 Para 1 if you count the chemical. Despite a wee Google I can't figure out if you're supposed to count chemicals.

I did not carry these embryos home and burn incense over them. Big Shiny Fertility Factory definitely didn't seem set up for that kind of malarkey. Really, they had a hard time finding someone to witness the forms at all since there was some kind of staff meeting going on; I just wanted to get out of there. Maybe it's because the embryos from Al's were Small Boy's batch. If the embryologist had gone one to the right, one of them would be with us instead of Small Boy.

Or not. Maybe that somewhat crappy-looking embryo, which turned into a perfect little boy, was the only one in the bunch. Maybe it was the only one in both of my ovaries that was fit to make a baby, or whose peculiar chemical balance could overcome whatever clusterfuck is going on in my uterus. Maybe in all worlds it's him or no one.  I can't know.

I had to try, though, didn't I?

the closing of the year

So Al's IVF Shack shut down, or... was shut down, or something. The upshot is that Al's was no longer going to be offering the service of changing the ice packs and playing developmentally-enriching Mozart to my Tiny Frozen Americans. I had to get 'em out, and get 'em out by December 1.

They notified us in November, and it sent me into a bit of a tailspin.I have been moving towards making a decision... very, very slowly. Not with two weeks to decide.

Now here's the point at which this could be a different story. I could say, dear reader, we did a crazy whirlwind cycle, it was all a blur, my lining came up surprisingly well despite the lack of fussing and greymarket drugs, and surprise! I'm pregnant! and I didn't want to tell anyone until I'd seen a heartbeat!

But that's not what happened.

It was unseasonably warm and sunny on November 25. I called the lab and they agreed it was a fine time for me to come over. I went to the lab. I signed papers. They handed me an medical-supply envelope containing five tiny plastic tubes. The tubes were covered in frost when they handed them to me, but by the time I reached my car they were already just cold. I took them upstairs. I sat in Small Boy's room, which I had thought would keep being the nursery, as it's the smallest room in the house. I wanted to sit in the rocking chair but we had already sold it on Craigslist, to a nice couple with three small children who needed it for #4. I sat on the rug instead. I cried. Then I found the pack of wood-resin incense that I burned back when I was pregnant with Small Boy, praying with every cell of my atheist's heart that he would be okay. There was one stick left in the pack. I stuck it in the little bowl incense holder. I snipped open the tubes and emptied them into the bowl. Five straws of embryos made half a teaspoon or so of fluid. I had the urge to swallow it, to at least have it in me that way, but I'd talked about it before with Her Indoors and she reminded me that there are some serious chemicals that go into embryo culture medium, and I agreed that it would be an incredibly fucking stupid way to get sick. I lit the incense, and it burned.

And that was that.

I still have three embryos left at the Big Shiny Fertility Factory, three out of the nine. I'll have to make a decision about them in April or May. Or, more correctly, I'll have to make the decision about them in April or May. The evidence keeps piling up. I know what I have to do.  But oh, do I shrink from doing it.

Taking a break, or, Shore Leave for the Pequod

When Small Boy was born, I went into labor at 6:30 in the morning. I wasn't fully dilated until 2:30 a.m. or so, and that's when I started pushing.

I pushed hard. I pushed really hard. I wanted Small Boy to be born. I wanted to stop laboring. I pushed really hard for more than 2.5 hours. I'm in mediocre shape at best, and by the end I was so tired I could barely breathe, but I knew I couldn't stop. After 2.5 hours Small Boy had progressed downwards not at all. My cervix was good and swollen, but the situation was otherwise unchanged.

Then Small Boy (who had been a trooper the whole time) started having some decels, and the OB called a c-section for fetal distress and failure to descend. He had been monitoring me remotely; when he burst into the room and was like "lady, you are done here" I burst into tears.

I had rather wanted an unmedicated birth. I had badly wanted a vaginal birth. But when I burst into tears, I wasn't upset because I wasn't going to get the birth I wanted. I cried because I was so relieved and grateful. I knew that I could not keep going much longer. I was just too tired.

We later found out that Small Boy's head was severely impacted in my pelvis, and that there was no way he was exiting in any direction other than out of my abdomen. I could have pushed for hours more, I could have been twice as strong and determined, and nothing would have changed.

I'm too tired. I'm putting this down for six months. My plan for spacing my kids is scuppered. My plan for giving birth to both kids before 40 is scuppered. I'm never doing a fresh cycle again. The embryos aren't getting any older. I need to stop for a while. My family needs me to stop for a while. I need to let this white whale go, for a time, at least. Maybe I'll return to it and maybe I won't.

Maybe I'll learn that I can live with this, and that the pain of the missing person grows less over time. Maybe it'll get worse.

In any case: right now, I am putting this down. In six months I'll see where I am.

FET #5, the night before

This cycle has flashed by strangely. I haven't done acupuncture, and my wheatgrass intake has been quite erratic. I still got scanned with the best lining I've had since pre-Small Boy, so that's nice. I think it was the fruity pills.

I feel... quiet. Very quiet. Usually I'm frantically consulting auguries by now, but I haven't looked at a single set of entrails.  This is the last round for a while, at least. If it's not going to work, I don't want to know it quite yet.

Her Indoors can't come with me to the transfer tomorrow, as she'll be trapped at work. I actually feel fine about that. I'm not sentimental about the process at this point.  I'm just going to go in, have a couple of embryos transferred to my uterus, continue with my life. It sort of matches with the quiet I'm feeling now.

This round officially over

Official negative beta. It's not like I didn't know it was coming.

I was -- amused? -- to realized why I was so sure I was pregnant. It's because, prior this, I have had six transfers. For those six transfers, only one of them was an outright negative. One was a chemical, and the other four were positives.

Furthermore, my frank negative cycle was in 2008. So I basically have no idea what the side effects of progesterone are like in the absence of pregnancy. I mean everyone told me that "progesterone makes you feel like you're pregnant", but I rather poo-pooed that -- I mean by now I surely can tell the difference, right? Those heavy cramps and heartburn, that's totally a pregnant thing.

Yeahno. Everyone's right. It's just progesterone. Good thing to remember for the future, I guess.

Not 12 weeks

Today I'm not 12 weeks. 12 weeks, the last week of the first trimester, the time when most people start sharing the news. I'd be scheduling my nuchal screen.

I'll stop this self-pitying countdown eventually, I'm sure. I'll just forget one day, and not remember until Thursday or Friday or something. I'm not trying to be mopey about it. It's just Wednesdays are hard not to count.

My body is apparently remembering by offering a fresh bright red bleed. I guess it's good? I mean, action is good, right? And maybe it'll help my beta come down, in case there's a wee clump of trophoblastic tissue somewhere generating hCG.  My pee sticks aren't notably lighter, which makes me grumpy. Last Friday my beta was 467; recheck in two weeks.

Here is my riddle: how is a BFN different than a chemical pregnancy different from a 6 week miscarriage different from an 8 week miscarriage?  After all, they all end up in the same place: unpregnant.

I am not sentimental about embryos. With eyes focused on the bottom line (i.e. chances of success) I have always pushed for the production and cryopreservation of as many embryos as possible. If we have any left over, I will cheerfully donate them to Science.  If I am not sentimental about embryos suspended in cryoprotectant, then why be sentimental about embryos in my uterus, or no longer in my uterus?

There is a difference, and that difference is the difference between missing a bus by seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks. How hard my heart was pounding, how much I thought I'd make it, how ferociously I clench my fists and dig my nails in frustration.

A BFN is missing the bus by weeks, I think. A pre-heartbeat loss is missing it by days, and a post-heartbeat loss is missing it by hours. I can only pray with all my heathen heart that I never experience missing this particular bus by minutes or seconds.

Begin again

I keep starting posts and fading out.

The Asherman's surgery in May was, by all accounts, a success. Dr. Isaacson was lovely, in accordance with all the recommendations I got from the Asherman's mailing list. He found one major band near the cornu (where the tube attaches) and some minor adhesions near the cervix. He feels pretty sure that the largest adhesion was from the c-section; apparently, when they're done popping out the baby, they sponge down the uterus. And either I was sponged too hard or -- more likely -- my body simply didn't like being sponged, and reacted by forming an adhesion.

Learning that it was probably the c-section, not the D&C, is kind of mixed. On one hand, it's comforting to know that it probably couldn't have been avoided. If someone asked me if I would pay the price of Asherman's to safely have Small Boy, I'd agree instantly. At least I got something out of the deal, you know?

On the other hand, it means that Dr. Stewart missed the adhesions during the quite-hasty SHSG. And that last year's pregnancy never had a chance, and that those embryos might have well been flushed down the toilet, and that all that horror could have been avoided.

Second-guessing does no good in the real world, so of course I try to spend no more than 80% of my waking hours running mental simulations of alternate universes.

---

But all that's old news. See? I put a line under it.  It's old news because yesterday I had my first Delestrogen shot for my FET cycle. HOLY CRAP that hurt. I'm a spoiled little princess who's only ever done progesterone in ethyl oleate with slender 25ga needles. The 22ga was like sticking a fucking drinking straw into my glute.

Her Indoors was, as ever, both charming and useful. After giving me the shot, she eyed my prone, gasping form sympathetically.

Her: Does it hurt?
Me: YES
Her: If I slap you, it might help.
Me: SURE WHATEVER
Her: delivers ringing slap to my buttock, right where the shot went
Me: ... wow, that totally helped.

This brief domestic scene illustrates two points about our life nicely:

1) Her Indoors is smart about all sorts of things. There's an explanation having to do with the dissipation of oil in the muscle and circulation and nerve endings and stuff.

2) I trust her really a lot.

---

So yeah, new cycle!

If my lining does as it ought -- and that's a big "if" -- my scheduled transfer date is November 12. In 2008, on the cycle that resulted in Small Boy, my transfer was November 15. In 2011, on the cycle that resulted in the zombie pregnancy, my transfer was November 10. I guess this is just the time of year that I like to put embryos in my uterus.

Here we go!
Here we go.
Here we go...

Day 6 embryo report

Nine. Nine. Beautiful, beautiful nine fucking frozen embryos.

Two made the grade yesterday at 7 am or so; one more joined them at 10:30 am, so that's three frozen on day 5. An additional six joined on Day 6.

Day 6 have been sometimes found to be less likely to implant than are day 5; a 2001 study found a 50% reduction (from 60% to 30%) -- but a much larger 2006 study found almost no difference (32% vs 28%).  The fact that the 2001 5-day blast group had a pregnancy rate of 60% makes me think that their population must have been a bit unusual, anyway -- I don't know of anywhere that can claim a 60% pregnancy rate, unless all their participants were 20!

Anyway, even the worst represents a good solid pregnancy rate, and did I mention six of them fomg.

And -- I might need them. I freaked myself out yesterday by reading a lot about Asherman's Syndrome, and it sucks. Makes it harder to get pregnant, and makes miscarriage a lot more likely; one source reports a miscarriage rate of 45%. Just what I need, huh? But it's also easy to find stories of women with Asherman's who have three or four miscarriages and then a live birth. If I have the balls to keep rolling the dice, there's a decent chance I'll eventually win.

Basically, if I go ahead here, I have to be prepared that it may take a few false starts. I have to figure out how to not go completely mental the way I did with the other two miscarriages. I have to figure out how to stay sane. I probably have to stay out of the forums where people assume that a positive pregnancy test means a baby.

This all sounds grim, and I was pretty damn down last night when I thought I had two embryos, or just one try. But now that I have 9, which could well be four tries, I'm feeling much more hopeful.

I think I am tough enough for this. I think I can do this. It helps to know that I can stop any time. Her Indoors is more than okay with keeping our family the way it is -- frankly, she's indulging me on this endeavor. There will be zero pressure on me to keep going. If it's too much, I can pause or walk away. It's not like my family sucks the way it is, you know? Yes, the wordless longing of my heart is for one more. Yes, I feel like there's still someone missing. But really, I could be wrong. I've been wrong before. Maybe our family's the way it's supposed to be. I have to try, though.

For the historical record, our family roster now consists of:

Hatching blasts:
2 - AA Good
2 - BB Fair

Expanding blasts:
2 - AA Good
2 - AB Fair
1 - BB Fair


FWIW, I'm not particularly hung up on embryo quality. Have I mentioned that a little 2BB blastocyst (different rating system, but prob equivalent to the BB Fair) turned into our entirely acceptable son? And I have seen many perfect embryos come to naught. Anecdotal, yeah, but it's anecdotes that make up my story, so.

In conclusion, beautiful, beautiful nine!

Day 5 embryo report

2 expanded blast (will be frozen)
7 early blasts, 6 fair, one poor
2 morulas
1 9+ cells
3 no change, on probation
2 no change, discarded

The early blasts and possibly the morulas are still in the game for Day 6. But at least we've got two safely in the freezer.

It's not what I'd fantasized about (I imagined my nurse's voice saying "all 9 were beautiful and we froze them!"), but it's far better than I'd feared (i.e., nothing to freeze, a big waste of a cycle).


*chews nails*

5 DPO: Transfer day

They thawed the two vitrified embryos. Both of them survived.

I'm gobsmacked, and grateful. I dunno if they found the right button on the microwave or what, but I'm happy.

They both made it through in good nick, too, 4A. No, I don't know what happened to the second letter, and I wasn't in the mood to ask, so I didn't. I'm a bit of a skeptic on blastocyst grading now, anyway -- I miscarried a 4AA, and my little 2BB is running around in his wee sneakers right now.

So far, so good, I can't ask for anything more. I'm in with a chance, as good a chance as anyone's. Now -- I wait.

4DPO: a.k.a. the day before transfer

I've swallowed the doxycycline, the methylprednisolone.  The progesterone in oil (well, thankfully, in ethyl oleate) has been sunk deep into my gluteals each evening by my lovely partner. Transfer is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. tomorrow.

Nothing to do now but wait, wait for my uterine lining to be synchronized, wait for the embryologist to (please) coax those little frozen things into life.

Tonight we will drink a toast of pomegranate juice, and wish the Tiny Frozen Americans a safe journey from the dark frozen underworld into our world of light and sound.

CD3: Hip hip hooray! FET #2.5 starts today!

Before I start getting excited about FET #2.5, I have something marvelous to celebrate:

Goldie is here! Goldie is the daughter of Olive and Fern from Insert Metaphor. I've been 'net friends with them for years, literally years. Difficult years.

Olive first left a comment on my blog in February of 2008. We were embarking on our first IVF after a year of unsuccessful home insems and IUIs.  They were just starting home insems.

After that, we traveled together.  Our journeys have been  so similar; they too moved from home insems to IUIs to IVF. Along the way, Olive has written beautifully and vividly about the grinding pain, isolation, and weariness that goes with measuring your TTC time in years. Looking at her old entries gives me the same lump in my throat that I get when looking at my old entries, when every word beat a tattoo of please. please. please.


So welcome, Goldie, and welcome to parenthood, Olive and Fern. Thank you for sharing your journey with us. The road was less lonely with you along.

* * *

Hokay, onto the cycle news! We start shooting up Follistim tonight. Yesteday's CD2 appointment went well: 13 or so antral follicles, lining 4.4 (is that a little thick for CD2? Does it matter? Probably not.), E2 43, FSH 5.9. All just ducky.

100 iu of Follistim every night for the next four days, then a lining check on Saturday. Wheeeee! I'm in a marvelously moodswingy up-mood. The only thing that makes my stomach drop is thinking about thawing the embryos, how my poor little two vitrified (badly vitrified?) embryos might or might not survive, and whether the five slow-frozen ones have much of a chance. Did so few of my vitrified embryos survive because they were badly frozen, badly thawed, or because for some reason I make embryos that just aren't very cold-resistant? Please let it be the first. It makes some sense; they were vitrified within the first three months of my clinic beginning their vitrification program. Maybe someone forgot to, I dunno, add salt?

Breathe. I can't affect it. All I can do is try and grow a nice cozy lining, and hope for the best. I'm chugging wheatgrass juice and trying to think plush, loamy thoughts.

Rock on, FET #2.5!

Waiting for the flood

I stopped the progesterone on Monday. My RE called later that day, with a kind "sorry" -- I didn't need to hear it, but I appreciated it.

For next round, which will be in bloody October (well, the transfer will be), we're going to switch to IM progesterone. I don't believe that there's a strong reason to do so, but I don't mind. The shots hurt, but Crinone isn't exactly pleasant, and maybe it was the lack of a sharps container that interfered with the last cycle.

I've been thinking, too, about fresh cycles. Two weeks ago I was fat and sassy, sitting on my 14 frozen embryos. Now I'm down to 7, 5 of which are slow-frozen. I have a fantasy that maybe I'll be the one person whose embryos like slow-freezing better than vitrification (or the lab fucked up the vitrifying on my embryos) and that the five I socked away from my very first cycle will thaw beautifully. But chances are that they won't. That means that if the next FET doesn't work I'll likely be starting fresh again, at age 38 this time.

That's okay. It'd be less scary this time, since I know the process inside and out by now. But this time, unlike last time, I have limits. First time 'round I pretty much would have kept going until I fell over. This time I've got... more exit conditions.

Mainly it's about how well I can hold my shit together. I have Small Boy now, and he deserves to have both of his mothers firing on all cylinders. I'm willing to allow for a substantial performance hit, given that I believe that a sibling would be of long-term use to him, but there's a limit.

Right now it's in his best interest for me to try for quite a long time and not succeed, because apparently my BFN-coping mechanism is to buy Small Boy a buttload of stuff. His first train set -- clothes -- some DVDs of vintage Sesame Street -- if I don't catch promptly, this kid is going to be spoiled rotten. I did not budget for this when figuring fertility expenses.

5dp5dt:: BFN

Sparkling white, glittering white, white like an Alpine peak, white like a Tea Party rally.

Some might say that it's early to feel pessimistic about this cycle, but I don't like to leave things till the last minute¹. I don't know. I've felt sort of off, grungy, a bit wrong -- I thought maybe it Meant Something -- but right this second I think maybe it means that I'm taking large amounts of exogenous hormones.

So I'm looking forward a bit. I can do probably one more FET. Just one? you might ask. But I thought you had a cool dozen-plus-two embryos on ice!

On transfer day, we had the unpleasant surprise of learning that seven embryos had to be defrosted in order for us to get two to transfer. This is an abysmal thaw rate; thaw rates (for vitrified embryos) are usually between 50-90%. I don't know whether there's something about my embryos that makes them freeze/thaw badly, whether the lab didn't do a good job freezing them, or whether the lab didn't do a good job thawing them. Regardless, I now have 7 embryos left, two frozen using the rapid-vitrification and five slow-frozen. Slow-frozen embryos usually have much worse thaw rates than vitrified, although much worse than 2/7 is *scribbles on piece of paper* approximately crap%. So... I don't have quite the bounty that I thought I had. I can probably get one more FET out of it, though. And after that, it's back into the fray.

¹This is a lie.

2dp5dt: the roller coaster continues

After the plunge from Saturday's embryo-quality news, I have been lifted up into the atmosphere again by the following news:

Eight of the remaining embryos turned into "very nice quality" (4AA or 4AB) by day 6 and were frozen! Eight! Eight! I expected to have nothing make it to freeze. And of course this is making me much more hopeful for the ones I have inside me. Maybe this batch of embryos are just slow but good-quality growers. That's okay with me.

4dp3dt: wild mood swings

Things I had at this point last cycle that I don't have now:

1. Heartburn
2. Lots of cramps
3. OHSS
4. A sore bum from the progesterone shots

Things I have now that I didn't have at this point last cycle:

1. The ability to stand up straight
2. Possibly a few little tiny cramps that disappear in the surge of adrenalin as soon as I pay any attention to them
3. A numb bum/upper thigh from the progesterone shots.

Stuff I'm grateful for:

1. One of my 8-celled embryos turned into... wait for it... a 5AA hatching blast! It was cryo'd on Monday, I believe. I'm stunned and grateful. I really didn't think I was going to get anything frozen out of this cycle. As me old mam used to say, there's no security like embryos in the bank.
2. As I type, some sturdy young men are installing our new Ikea kitchen. So! excited! Soon we will have actual cabinet space, and counter space, and ev'rything. Cannot wait. It's wonderfully distracting. I may not be able to will the world into giving me a baby, but dammit, I can with certain success go out and get myself a kitchen.
3. All the people who left me "fingers crossed"-type comments. Knowing that there are all these people out there pulling for us -- it's. well. it's nice. Really nice.
   

I am careening wildly between believing that this IVF worked and being sure it didn't. Stared at the baby stuff in Ikea last night, but also planned in great detail how and where I'm going to cry if it's negative. On the whole, considering how batshit crazy progesterone makes me, I'm doing okay.

Day 6 of stims: word problems.

Someday I will do something and not worry myself sick about it. Then the world will probably end. Feel free to finish your coffee, though, since it's not going to happen any time soon.

This IVF cycle is a whole 'nuther ballgame. The lower dose (150 Follistim, 75 Menopur) plus the metformin seem to have dialed my response way back. My E2 on Day 4 was only 134. I'll find out today's later on. We only saw 7 follicles on today's scan.

Reasons this is good:
Egg retrieval will likely be less painful/incapacitating
Very unlikely that I'll hyperstimulate and be painfully immobilized for two weeks

Reasons this is not good:
Fewer eggs is, well, fewer eggs. Last time: 25 eggs > 21 mature eggs > 16 fertilized > 15 embryos > 6 blastocysts.

This represents 84% mature, 76% fertilization, 94% make it to embryo, 40% make it to blast.

If identical numbers this time (leaving aside the absurdity of embryo fractions... believe me, you don't want your embryos fractured): 7 follicles > 5.88 mature > 4.48 fertilized > 4.2 embryo > 1.68 blast. If that actually means 6 mature > 5 fertlized > 4 embryo > 2 blast then I have one to transfer and one to freeze. But as you can see, there's very little wiggle room, a decent chance I won't have any to freeze, and even a possibility I won't have anything to transfer. If that happens I'll defrost one of my Tiny Frozen Americans, but it would be galling to have this cycle, the second of my three chances, be a bust.

ETA: E2 -- 445. Dunno. Seems low to me.

CD2

Today's bloodwork
E2: 34
FSH: 7.7

Last cycle, my E2 was 52 and my FSH was 6.5. FSH is the ticking time bomb of fertility, so seeing it go up is never thrilling, but it's still safely under 10. And I believe that E2 pushes down your FSH to some extent, so it's possible that I'm in the same boat I was last time when my FSH was lower but my E2 was higher.

Meds are ordered, and I'm starting birth control pills and metformin tonight.

On my last entry, the lovely & talented Emily asked why I'm going through stimulation and retrieval again when I am, in fact, the proud mother of five tiny frozen Americans.

I'm doing it because my insurance is generous but dumb. My insurance covers 3 IVF cycles but does not distinguish between fresh and frozen cycles. A fresh cycle costs about $10k and has about a 30-40% chance of working. A frozen cycle costs about $3k and has about a 15-20% chance of working. Therefore, it's in my interest to do three fresh cycles and then pay for frozen transfers out-of-pocket, if necessary.

It's kind of messed up, and not the decision I'd make if money weren't an issue at all. But I'm damn grateful to have coverage, however arbitrary.

Plus, at the ill-fated end of my last IVF, I could not imagine jumping back on that train any time soon. Well, my period took not the 4-6 weeks I'd been told to expect, but 8 weeks to find its way home. Apparently 8 weeks is exactly how long it takes me to forget physical unpleasantness. Right now I'm nothing but eager to begin.

1dp5dt

Stuff that's going on:

• Cramps. I'm torn between thinking whoopee, that's implantation right there! and thinking man, I am going to start menstruating the second my progesterone goes down low enough, because my body is dying to expel some lining right now.
• None of yesterday's excess batch made it to freeze. 5 frozen is just fine, a very good outcome, but I'm just amazed at how the numbers winnow at every point in this process. 25 eggs > 21 mature eggs > 16 fertilized > 15 embryos > 6 blastocysts.
• I have officially "peed out" the trigger shot, which is to say that I am no longer getting positive tests on my pee sticks. We will now enter a brief, brief time period of no-stick-peeing before I start peeing in earnest.
• I already have plans for the next cycle if this doesn't work. I don't do positive thinking. I'm all about the defensive pessimism.