The First Ultrasound

 In my previous post, I mentioned how Friday was the ultimate pit of despair. In my head, even as illogical as it all seems based COMPLETELY ON MY OWN RECORDED PROGRESS, I was terrified of the Ultrasound. I had built it up to this "all or nothing" type appointment where -- what if it proved all my labs were lies, what if things weren't as good as it seemed" etc., etc..

I keep referring to myself as the little "green" emoji that looks seasick - but not quite vomiting. Yeah, that's me. I haven't actually thrown up yet, but I've had a few days were I feel like I should look completely green.

Friday was one of those days. 

Betas, Betas, Betas

I've been through the entire emotional lifecycle in the last couple weeks. I think Thursday into Friday was the worst. It was like the ultimate pit of despair.

I woke up feeling sick - except that I don't even think I can honestly call it "morning sickness" because I feel it was actually physical manifestation of anxiety. 

To catch everything up to speed, here's my beta breakdown so far; including as much "lingo" as possible so I have it logged for future reference:

Almost There

 I realize there will be a million different "Finish Lines" that we will have to cross... but we can cross "Embryo Transfer Success" off the list. 

I'm not overly spiritual, but we've been blessed to be able to say our first Embryo transfer was a success. On some of my Reddit forums, I'd seen that some women had gotten positive pregnancy tests as early as 4 days post transfer. Never in a million years did I think I would fall in that category too.

Embryo Transfer Day!

We survived our first IVF FET. Today was the day. I am home now, have slept off the Valium (WOW it was strong) and we've been trying to adjust to our new realization that - as of right now, I am actually pregnant.

There's a legit, fertilized, week old embryo, who was aggressively making a jailbreak from his shell (the doctor was repeatedly commenting on how AWESOME it was) chilling in my uterus.

Baby's First Pic:

IVF Timeline (3): The ERA Biopsy

I realize my last entry was in October '22.  Fast forward 5 months and we are now almost the last week of March '23. It's been almost a full year from our Egg Donor news. Since October, I could have sat down and given a bunch of micro-updates along the way, but I'd rather given entries with more substance. Here's what been happening:

IVF Timeline (2): The Frozen Embryos

Coming back as a follow up to [this] entry concerning the tentative "timeline" that was strictly a guess-timate at the time. Ironically, that loose timeline was dead-on accurate!

So since Part 1: The Egg Acquisition, we have ordered, received, thawed, fertilized, embryo created, and refrozen. They call this whole timeframe and process The Hunger Games (because the attrition rate of your eggs is mind blowing). Here is a run down of our stats. 

IVF Timeline (1): The Egg Acquisition

Over the last few days, I had a very nice email update from my Nurse Coordinator, saying that the Egg Donor {referred to as "Mia"} had her submitted Genetics Profile crosschecked with Otters. There is no issues what so ever, so we are Golden! She outlined a few more of the next steps, and I was very relieved. 

I had a smidge of .... not quite impatience... but, like... I had an "In The Dark" vibe going for a hot minute. I don't need hard facts, I just work better with less surprises. It's really hard when -for right now- the point of contact is literally me. Trying to get these different facilities to communicate together.