the (mis)adventures of jenna

We walked into the ARTS Department at Presby again today, canvas bag full of lounge clothes and books in hand.  (That place is getting less and less shady every time I go in, mostly because that’s where they were growing our children.)  We sat in the waiting room with another couple for awhile, and it kept getting really awkward because the woman would say to the man “well, now when you make your doctor’s appointment you can tell them EVERYTHING.”  She kept repeating the “tell them everything” part, and it really made me want to ask her what “everything” was.

I didn’t, though, because moments after their conversation was getting too awkward to handle, my nurse popped her head out the door and said they were ready for me.

She wasn’t the same nurse I had last time, but I’d seen her around and she remembered me, too.

We went into the room next to where I had been on Thursday, and she instructed me to put on the lovely hospital gown, lay on the bed, and drink lots and lots of water.

Can do.

Joey was instructed to put on a white Tyvex suit, booties, a hair thing, and a mask.  It was so amazing.  The best thing I have seen in pretty much my entire life.

Then we waited, and waited, and waited for the Embryologist to come in.  The Presby Embryologist I’ve always seen is a big, jovial kind of guy who looks like Santa would have when he was about 50; I like him very much, and I told Joey while we waited for him to show up..  He finally came in, same guy from retrieval day, and asked me the traditional questions: name, last 4 digits of social security number, birthday, etc.

Then he asked if I even remembered him from the retrieval day and I said yes, of course I did.  And he had been wearing green scrubs.  (I remember thinking “woah, sweet, he has ‘Embryologist’ sewn right on his scrubs” before the drugs passed me out.)  The Embryologist looked at me like I was some kind of shocking person and said, “Yes, I did have green scrubs on.  That’s kind of amazing that you remember that.”

He was wearing purple scrubs today, so he asked “Want to guess why I’m wearing purple scrubs today?”

I racked my brain for something witty like maybe he was raising awareness for premature babies, isn’t their color purple?, but I could think of nothing.  So he informed me that today was Tuesday, and that’s why he was wearing purple.

Good enough for me, Embryologist.

He presented us with a picture of our top two embryos.  They’re, um, really not all that cute yet.

BUT I CAN SEE THAT THEY HAVE POTENTIAL.

They all have lots more cells than they used to, over a hundred now, and are much more complex than the last time I had a report on them.

The Embryologist told us that the rest of our embryos had gone downhill since the last report, and were unable to be transferred.  They were going to try to keep growing them to see if they could get some of them strong enough to be frozen, but they said not to hold our breath.

So we signed on the line that it was OK to transfer both good embryos, and then we sat there to wait for a very long time.  I realized there was a TV in the room, so Joey hooked us up with Law & Order and I drank enough water to make myself suitably uncomfortable while we waited for my turn in the embryo transfer room.

About 12:30, Dr. Babyplease popped her head in and asked me if I was OK, was I relaxed?  Freaking out?  Did I need some Valium?  I just laughed and told her I was absolutely fine, no need for any Valium at all.  And that’s the truth; all day long I have felt great, like this is the most everyday procedure in the entire world.

At 12:45, it was time.  We both walked in, Joey in his sweet NASA/HAZMAT suit and me in my hospital gown.  Incidentally, everyone in the room had their faces covered except for me.  I’m not sure I can figure that out; am I not germy or something?  Is it that the embryos like my germs?  Hard to say.  But considering I was the one who got to experience the JOY that is embryo transfer, leaving the mask off me is the least they could do.

Because embryo transfer involves a slightly creepy procedure, I will omit most of the details about it.  50% of you don’t want to know.  The other 50% of you don’t need to know on the internet; you can ask me if you are dying of curiosity.  Suffice it to say, it’s not that uncomfortable, just really, really strange.

Our favorite ultrasound tech from the clinic was there, and she told us awesome stories about her really bad scars from the surgery she had when she lived in Russia (her doctor told her it looked so bad because she had bad skin; go figure), the time that her coworkers hazed her by having her get her next MRI “patient” for a scan but it turned out to be a dead body from the ER, and how when she worked in a psych ward her husband used to get uncomfortable when he came to visit her because of the screaming patients.

Joey and I were laughing SO HARD, once again, we were disturbing the sonic peace of the ARTS department and all of its embryos.  Absolutely no need for Valium.

Dr. Babyplease came in and began doing her thing and Joey and I watched on the ultrasound screen.  We saw the little embryos poof from their tube and into my uterus (sorry, boys) and within 5 minutes it was all done.  Dr. Babyplease kept apologizing for hurting me, but I told her she was doing just fine.

The rolled me back into the room and tilted my bed at a really strange angle, feet up and head down, and I was to lay there for half an hour.  During that half hour I learned what a bedpan is but mostly just watched Law & Order with Joey.  He took his awesome white suit off right away, but we are totally keeping it for the next time he has to do something really, really messy.  (It’s currently in his work clothes drawer in his dresser.)

After I laid there for half an hour, it was time to go.  It was also 1:30 and Joey and I were both starving.  I told him the embryos wanted Subway and Cheetos, so we decided to head straight to get lunch and then go home and eat it.

I got dressed quickly, and it was strange to put on dress pants, heels and a trench coat on after having just been in a hospital gown with a poofy blue hairnet on.

It was even stranger to walk out the door of the ARTS department and down the white marble stairs towards the parking lot, realizing I was now carrying two embryos, and we knew about it.

So here’s the deal:  yes, I now have two embryos in my uterus.  No, it’s not 100% they will implant. It’s somewhere over 50%, per Dr. Babyplease, but it’s not a done deal just because they’re in there.  They will likely implant within 1-3 days (in a normal person, it would be 5-7 days before an embryo would implant after it gets fertilized, so we’re right on track with that schedule) and sometime next week we’ll go to the clinic and get a blood test.

I may forget to make the appointment, though, because I am just unusually relaxed about this whole thing.  Maybe it’s because I know I can’t affect the outcome.  If God wants to give us a baby (OR TWO, PLEASE) then it’s out of our hands.  It’s out of Dr. Babyplease’s hands.  It’s out of the Embryologist’s hands.

They’re in me now, and I really hope they stay there.