Frostie update

I've been promising an update for a couple of days, but I've been holding off for two reasons. One, I don't really have anything of substance to report, and two, I wanted to be able to capture some of my thoughts and impressions on being back in the world of the infertile again. Whatever thoughts might have been floating around won't float close enough for me to capture them in writing, so you'll have to make due with a bare-bones update.

The ultrasound on Thursday showed that my lining is around 6.5 mm, which I think is right about bang-on average. The nurse to whom I spoke certainly seemed satisfied with it, anyway. (I'd appreciate any comparisons from those of you who have been through FETs before and are as neurotically obsessive about remembering and noting these things as I am!)

As of yesterday morning, I'm paying daily visits to the clinic to have them draw a vial of blood, which they analyze for the surge in luteinizing hormone (LH) that will precede ovulation by about 48 hours. There's no way of knowing exactly when that will happen, but based on my fairly regular cycles, I expect the surge to occur Monday or Tuesday, with transfer two days after that.

Each morning, I get to the clinic between 7:30 and 8:00, and wait only 10 or 15 minutes for my turn with the phlebotomist. I have small, rolling veins, and getting a blood draw is always a pain in the arm. They've resorted to taking it from the back of my hand, which is slightly more uncomfortable but better than having them dig around the inside of my elbow with the needle, which is what they did the first two times. Youch! After four or five hours, the nurse calls me with an update, telling me (so far) simply that I have to show up to do it all over again the next day.

I'm still on the fence about how to go about the transfer itself. Actually, it's how to accomodate the transfer that I'm waffling about. The wisdom on the subject of the amount of bedrest required after the embryo transfer runs the gamut from "you can leave the clinic on a pogo stick after transfer and not pose any risk to the embryos or implantation" (a favourite saying of the head of my clinic) to a week of absolute bedrest, as advoated by a lot of American clinics.

When we went through the IVF that resulted in Tristan, I took nearly three weeks off work to encompass the last few days of stims, the unexpected coasting, the retrieval and transfer (three days apart) and a few days after. The actual day of the transfer, we left the clinic and went out for lunch on the patio of our favourite restaurant, then went to the video store where I rented three movies and spent the rest of the day lying on the couch. It seemed like enough. Oh, and I ate about three pounds of fresh pineapple, shredding the inside of my mouth in the process.

This time around, I am considering working the morning of the transfer, or going back to work afterward, depending on the time of day of the transfer. I have a hell of a lot of work to get through and two weeks of vacation starting on Friday, and I'd like to get some stuff off my desk. Quite frankly, it would probably be more restfull to sit in my quiet, air-conditioned cube and work at my computer for an afternoon than be at home with the whirling dervishes that are the sunshine of my life. I dunno... I keep waffling about this. I'll play it by ear, I guess.

I'm not even sure if Beloved will be able to accompany me to the clinic the day of the transfer. There's no official reason for him to be there - he made his, ahem, contribution to the process five years ago, when the embryos were created. The transfer doesn't involve any medication for me, so there's no reason I might need assistance after the transfer. That leaves only the more intangible fact that it would be nice to have him there, but we'd have to arrange for someone to mind the boys, no easy feat on a weekday. Only a few days remain, so I guess we'll play this one by ear, too.

If I seem a little detached about this whole process, it feels the same from here. If I really stop to think about what we're doing, my stomach fills with butterflies - but I try my best not to think about it too much. Whatever happens happens, right? If I don't invest too much up front, there is less to lose - and everything to gain.

Now I have to go do some laundry so I can wash my new skort and take a picture to post so Marla will quit pestering me about it, and I can settle once and for all the debate raging about how far above my knees the hem actually falls...