I am Officially PUPO!!!

Egg transfer is done!!!

All, but the two eggs transferred today, are going to be cultured an additional day. Tomorrow, the embryologists will check them out and determine if they are worthy of freezing. Based on what he saw today, Dr. Weckstein is guessing we'll have around 4 or 5 embryos to freeze tomorrow. More than enough for a litter of Johnson babies. Just kidding!

While driving to RSC for the transfer, Dr. Weckstein called to consult with us on transferring one of two embryos. When he told me we had one absolutely perfect embryo, I thought for sure he was going to highly suggest only transferring that one, leaving me to have to somewhat "argue my case," if you will, of us wanting to transfer two. He then went on to say that putting in two embryos does increase my chances of success by 10% and that if I'm willing to risk having twins, that he can understand why I'd go the route with the higher chance of success. So, with that said, I told him we for sure wanted to do two. :)

As for the egg transfer. It was quite the experience. First, my bladder was too full, so I had to walk across the mini-hospital area at RSC with a blanket around me to pee for only 6 seconds. Yes, they are so down to a science that they know the exact amount of time to urinate!

(For those of you who don't know, the doctor likes to have a full bladder because it makes seeing the uterus easier, which then makes for an easier transfer).

The actual egg transfer wasn't painful. Much like a papsmear (with that darn speculum) and a catheter.

Technically, though, we had two transfers today because only one of the embryos decided to not cooperate with us the first go around, and it had to be transferred separately.

Only one embryo successfully left the catheter the first time around. The other one was retained in the catheter. The embryologist has to double check to make sure they both successfully transferred, but quickly came back into the room saying, "One of them jumped shipped."

I was so worried this was a bad sign. That our success rates would drop down because of this mishap, a mishap that only happens in 5% of transfers (according to Dr. Weckstein). He reassured me lots of testing has been done to that effect and it's been conclusively found that it does not affect the pregnancy success rates. Phew!

The nurse helping with the transfer immediately chimed in with some comedy relief and said, "Well, that kid is clearly going to be your stubborn one." :) Love it!

After the transfer (or transfers, I should say!), I laid there for a short while, still holding Aaron's hand. Aaron got up and gave me a hug and we both agreed that this is going to work.

But then...

I asked the nurse if I could talk to the embryologist to find out the grades on the embryos transferred. Embryos are assigned a number 1 through 5, depending on where it is in its blastocyst development, and then two letters, A through C. The ideal blastocyst grade is 5AA. That is the perfect, quintessential, textbook perfect embryo.

Mine were not.

Our big one. The one Dr. Weckstein said was an absolutely beautiful embryo, is graded at 5B-B-. The 5 means that the blastocyst is beginning to hatch out of its shell, which is very good! But the two B-s upset me. I hadn't even heard of that. I have only seen As and Bs (and Cs), but not with minuses.

A B- is awfully close to a C. That just makes me feel so uneasy.

The second embryo we transferred is graded 3AA. The double As are very exciting, and the 3 means it's a full blastocyst with a cavity completely filling the embryo. Not as good as a 4 or 5, but we'll take it!

As for the letters, the first letter measures the quality of the inner cell mass (ICM), which make up the cells that will become the fetus. The second letter measures the quality of the trophectoderm (TE), which are the cells that will form the placenta surrounding the cavity. Exciting stuff, huh?

The embryologist said our 3AA embryo had shown a lot of promise this morning, which is why they decided that was the second best to transfer. Growth spurts can happen in such short periods of time when dealing with blastocysts.

I just can't believe my best embryo, although a 5, still had such poor ICM and TE qualities. Aaron doesn't think I should be so down about this. He says it's gonna work. He's so convincing too! I guess because everything else had gone so remarkably well this cycle that I just assumed the quality of the embryos transferred would reflect that too.

In any case, Dr. Weckstein still gives us the highest chance of success (60% to 65%), with 30% to 40% chance of the pregnancy being twins.

So, the way I look at it, we have a one-third chance of having no babies, a one-third chance of having one baby, and a one-third chance of having twins. The odds are in our favor.

Now, to somehow focus my mind on something else for the next 9 days. :)