Babies on Board!

We're home from the clinic, and waiting for Shrike's parents to return Peeper to us. So, I'm going to try to post real quickly before she gets here.

To continue our seasonally-themed embryo > fetus > baby naming scheme, here are:

The Hoppers!

Well, sort of. Actually, one of those is a Hopper.

See, here's what happened.

First of all, everyone was very impressed with how the whole bunch of embryos was doing, overall. Of the twelve, one had arrested at five cells, one was eight cells with 20% fragmentation (still acceptable) and the other ten were eight cells with no fragmentation - which is perfect!

The embryologist told us that she had a hard time choosing which to transfer, because all ten of those looked so good, but there were two that were already starting to compact, which is the first step toward the next stage, so she chose them, since they're developing a smidge faster than the others.

While the doctor was getting Shrike all ready, they had us look at a monitor, which was hooked to a camera looking at the actual embryo dish - this is a new thing that they didn't have when we made Peeper.

First, it showed the label with Shrike's name on it, and then it panned over and showed a dish with two teeny dots, and then it zoomed in and there they were!

Hoppervision!

They then froze that picture (I think that's the photo at the top) and we could keep looking at it while the embryologist sucked them up into the catheter and brought them in.

After the transfer, the embryologist always takes the catheter back into the lab and puts it under the microscpe to check that nobody's stuck inside.

Well, not surprisingly, given the way things have gone at each step of the way here, with all the just-under-the-wires and near-misses-with-catastrophe, there was one stuck inside - it either didn't come out, or it kind of got sucked back in after going out.

When she looked at it, the embryologist wasn't quite as happy with its looks anymore, so back it went with the others, to continue to be watched (for possible freezing over the weekend) and she selected the next best one - out of eight more than are all looking "perfect," mind you - did the "assisted hatching" on it (they poke a little hole in the outer coating to help it move to the next stage and get ready for implantation), brought it in and did the whole transferring process again.

She didn't take a separate photo of that one, so of those two embryos pictured above, one is actually in Shrike, and one's back in the lab, while a different one is now in Shrike.

Of course, we couldn't do this the simple way!

Shrike's all set up on the couch now, Peeper should be home (and ready for a nap!) any minute and we'll probably join her. When we get up, we'll order pizza for dinner, pop in the Wizard of Oz DVD that Peeper doesn't yet know we own, and have a "couch party."

Shrike's supposed to be on the couch or in bed (feet up) for twenty-four hours. They specifically said, "So, until 2:45 tomorrow..." so we'll play it by ear whether she'll go to Drinking Liberally with us tomorrow evening or stay down until morning.

She's also not supposed to lift "over 25 pounds" but when I told the nurse that Peeper is 26 pounds, she said "Well, do what you can." I'm sure 25 is a rather arbitrary number, and she pointed out that lifting Peeper is something that Shrike's quite used to doing, so it's not exactly a strain on her body - but she shouldn't carry her up and down stairs or anything like that, if it can be avoided.

I suspect that 99% of the precautions they give are just to make you feel like you're doing something to help, and to make sure you don't feel like you did anything "wrong" if things don't work out (after all, the vast majority of women are just going about their lives at this point in pregnancy) but "path of least regret" and all, we'll follow them to the best of our ability.

And, now, we wait . . . .