Random Tidbits

As I’m sure you saw on social media, we are down to one, wonderful embryo. The biopsy of said embryo is at the lab and the results will be back in 10 business days. They got the sample last Thursday, so 10 business days puts me around March 19. So I’ve got nothing much to do but wait.

I’m anxious, but not as much as I thought because I’ve done everything I can and nothing I can do can effect the lab and their results. It’s very different from the two week wait. That’s when you know you’ve ovulated and you have to wait two weeks to find out if you’re pregnant. But then, it’s all happening in your body. And every twinge makes you wonder what is going on. You play the lovely “period or pregnancy” game. I know the two week wait when I transfer will be madness. You’ve been warned.

Someone on Facebook mentioned that this must be so stressful and you’d think it would be, but I’m oddly calm. The fact that I can share all of this with you has made this process so much easier.

I called the lab back last week after I got the word that only one made it. I wanted to know what happened with my second half of the #dynamicduo. The embryologist told me that the second one’s cells did expand and technically make it to Day 5, but the cells were of such low quality, there wasn’t a way to biopsy it and send it for testing.

I have determined that that little second embryo was just looking out for me and saving me the additional $300 it would have cost to test it, knowing it would have come back abnormal.

I also asked about the grading for the embryo that did make it, my little rock star. Most clinics rate embryos with a number and 2 letters. Mine of course doesn’t do that. The first number is basically a scale of it making it to blastocyst stage. So my lab says that since they only grade them if they make it to that stage, there’s no need to assign it a number.

For the letters, A is best, B is good and C is the lowest. The two letters correlate to the cells and how they look and how they divided and all sorts of sciency stuff that I don’t really understand. I just know A is good. My clinic doesn’t use A, B and C, they use 1, 2 and 3. So AA, or a 1,1, is the best rated embryo. You can have a BC or an AB or an AC.

My ONE-derful embryo (TM Tessa) was an AA or a 1,1. It was the best quality they could have. So I’m over the moon. My little overachiever got straight As! Just like its Virgo mother.

So I’m very pleased that I had the best quality one to test. It doesn’t guarantee anything, but odds are better that an AA embryo will come back normal as opposed to some of the other lower quality ones (not that those can’t either).

In other TMI news (go ahead and skip this if you’re not into hearing about periods), doctors should really warn you about the period after taking all these hormones. They didn’t when I did Clomid for the IUIs, and it was heavier then. But this time, holy shit. I’ve never seen so much blood. Sorry for the TMI, but between Sunday night and Tuesday morning, I was going through a tampon an hour. I bled through a tampon and an overnight pad TWICE Monday night. Sunday night I did not prepare for this and stained underwear, pajamas, sheets and mattress cover. It was like I was 13 again.

Thankfully it seems to have only been 24 hours of crime scene blood, and now we’re back to regular bleeding.

via GIPHY

Seriously, why doesn’t one doctor or nurse mention this? They tell you you’re period will come early (it did), but NOTHING about the grotesque amounts of bleeding.

I’d think it was just me, but thankfully I had heard about this from my FB groups so I was prepared for it to be bad. But not this bad.

Finally, my new thing is picking up pennies when I see them. I found one sitting on the frame of the car door of the Uber when it was taking me to one of my ultrasound appointments. I found another on the ground in the building where my doctor is. And I found one on the ground in the lobby of my office.

I’ve been putting all these in a pocket in my backpack so that they are always with me. Always carrying good luck around with me during this whole process.

I should probably stop picking these up, though, before I get the Coronavirus.