Update after today's transfer - pregnant until proven otherwise

I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning, too excited to sleep, but it might have been a side effect of the progesterone too.

The acupuncture session prior to transfer helped calm me down significantly. Thirty minutes prior to transfer, I took a Val.ium the clinic provided. At least, I tried to. I was alone in the waiting room, retrieved the Val.ium from my purse, and as I opened it, the pill broke into a million little pieces. A largish chunk fell into my purse, some of it was on the palm of my hand, and some powder was left in the pill wrapper. Argh! Gone was the serene calm. I was laughing out loud at Murphy, my constant companion. There I was, licking my palm like a junkie, frantically scratching through my purse to find the little orange getaway nugget, and dumping the rest of the pill wrapper contents onto my tongue. I'm so together.

Needless to say, the Val.ium didn't do much of anything. I don't know what I expected, but I didn't feel a sudden wave of calm or floatyness, nor did it help to relax my muscles (which was the primary reason I was persuaded to take it, because how would I even know to relax my cervix?)

We were soon dressed in OR garb, me proudly sporting crazy rainbow toe-socks this time around. The RE came in, loved the socks, discussed the embryo quality with us, and gave us a picture showing all seven embies. Apparently the embryos weren't doing as great as we had hoped. Although they are all 5 days old, just one made it to blast. The other 6 were all cleaved embryos that may or may not make it to blast.

The RE advised transferring three to four embryos. We were comfortable with three, given my age and the embryo quality. It was the hardest decision to make, because my heart was set on transferring two at most. I'm well aware of the risks of High Order Multiples, but I was swayed by the REs reasoning. The embryologists will continue to monitor the other 4 embies, and that should give us some indication on how the three in utero might be developing. Even though this is not the outcome I had hoped for, I'm still cautiously hopeful as even less-than-perfect embies can become healthy babies.

The RE left us alone for 10 minutes while they prepared the embies, and hubby and I had some space to just absorb the moment. Dh whispered beautiful things to me, while I clutched the photo of our embies. It was perfect.

The transfer itself went very well, and was over much quicker than I had anticipated. The speculum is obviously pretty uncomfortable, but my RE thankfully moves quickly. He pressed down very hard on my tummy with the u/s wand to see my uterus more clearly, but it was still a heck of a lot better than having the d.ildocam inside me every other day. A few deep breaths, hubby squeezing my hand, and then it was over.

The RE had me lay back for another 15 minutes, during which I tried to imagine the embies implanting over the next few days and growing inside me. This is as pregnant as I've ever been.

I went for a 2nd acupuncture session and fell asleep during the session. Calm. Content. I slept for a few hours when we got home too, following my doctor's instructions to "be a couch potato this weekend." Now THAT I can totally do.

Dh has been on pampering patrol - bringing tea, snacks, and pineapple. He will be making dinner tonight. Gotta love men who get it.