Saturday, March 23, 2013

Waiting - 3dp3dt

3dp3dt - fertility lingo for "3 days past 3-day transfer." Good lord time is passing slowly. They should send you on a mandatory vacation during this wait. I am trying to visualize my embryos growing, cells continuing to divide and latching on to my uterine wall. Hard things to imagine.

I have come along way in 3 days from my sorry state on Wednesday, transfer day. When the doctor told me that my so-so embryos could be the reason for my not getting pregnant, it made me feel like a complete failure. All along, trying so hard, restricting everything in my diet and my eggs could have been bum the whole time. I'm sure my body is glad to not have guzzled Starbucks and labored over digesting dairy for the past year to several months (depending on which phase of my diet shenanigans we focus on) but it's hard not to think that perhaps I could have had a coffee now and then and not made a bit of difference. That said, I haven't reintroduced any of my vices. Old sad eggs made me feel awful. Proving annoyingly that there is a Sex and the City episode for all of life's situations, I felt very much like Miranda when she is diagnosed with a lazy ovary. "Those ovaries went to Harvard!"

I started mourning much too early. At least that's what my loving and supportive friends, family and, shockingly, Google, taught me. My B - B+ eggs, the ones that were transfered were 6-cell embryos. Ideally, they would have been 8-cell. So they're a little on the slow side. So's their mama, as I was reminded. My dear friend S immediately recalled that my first grade teacher told my mom and dad at the first parent teacher conference that I would never learn to read. Ever. Didn't have the capacity. Not only that but I "just wasn't going to make it." In life? After knowing a first grader for 6 weeks, can you really sentence them to an illiterate adulthood spent jobless living in their parents' basement? Mrs. Farmer felt that was exactly the case. Surprisingly, I am not dictating this to my transcriber. I am typing this myself. Because I can read. Quite well, actually. By second grade I was a voracious reader. I just started out a little slow. My mother pointed out that I didn't learn to walk until I was 17 months old. And then became a pretty decent ballet dancer. I have a tendency in life to take my time and get things right instead of rushing in and falling down. This is the hope for my embryos. They are like their mama, starting out slow, taking their time and then getting it right.

Dr. Google is typically a very evil thing. I should know since I received my medical degree in part from Google University and in part through osmosis by hanging out near my doctor dad, nurse sister and psychologist mom. It is a wonder no hospital will hire me with my credentials. Google tends to get me all anxious as I sift through every perfect search term with various combinations of infertility, unexplained, embryo, endometriosis, psychosis.  In this case, when I searched the term "6-cell embryo" I found encouragement both dependable sites written by fertility centers as well as crazy baby forums willed with posts by unstable, mentally-frail women. Fertility centers look for embryos to be between 6 and 10 cells on day 3 with 8-cell being ideal. I don't need ideal. I just need a fighting chance. And it looks like I have one. I have to stay positive and know that they embryos that were implanted were in the range that fertility doctors hope for.
As for the others, 2 5-cell embryos and a 4-cell, they were to be cultured in the lab until Friday or Saturday (today) and then either frozen or discarded. I was supposed to get a call by today with the news but never got one. I'll stalk the embryology lab down on Monday.

I also shall continue to remember that Miranda and her lazy ovary made a baby. In additon, I'll try not to feel like too much of a typical white, 30-something urbanite quoting Sex and the City. Ewwww.

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