The Big Transfer

I am finally sharing the third part of this *journey*, the transfer on what happens to be the week of the 1 year mark of our second loss and the bursting of the ectopic pregnancy and cyst that was the first domino of the past year. But for this post, I am keeping it positive because I am so thankful we had a successful transfer!So, to back up. You do your retrieval, get the final embryo count, possibly do testing (we did), and have the absolute number of healthy transferable embryos. From there we went straight into a transfer cycle, aka new meds to prep the body. These meds include estrogen and progesterone (and others I am blanking on) in form of shots, pills, patches, and vaginal suppositories. Yes, vaginal suppositories. Your mix and amount of these will vary and change throughout the month and let me just say this because I really don't think any men are here......stock up on panty liners, hell stock up on pads - trust me, it's not cute. For the shots, they are in your bum and for me personally didn't hurt too bad but everyone is different!You start these meds a few weeks leading up to the transfer and continue them until 10 weeks pregnant. Now for the actual transfer, it is WILD. At our clinic, they rolled in an incubator that had a petri dish with the embryo for us to look at, it was again, WILD. The Dr. picks it up with some tool and you watch on the screen as he pops it into your uterus. The entire thing took I want to say 15 minutes and then you go home and wait. That is when for me, it got weird. Did it work? Am I pregnant? They have you wait about a week before coming in for a blood test to see if the transfer stuck and if you are indeed pregnant. In that time, some people do take an at-home test, but I did not...despite by every-other-day asking Mike if I could. It starts to eat at you but (in my opinion) there is no win in doing so, the possibility of it being negative but in fact, it's just too early is high, and then if it says yes but between then and the blood test something could happen...so I wouldn't. On the day of the blood test, we really thought they would call on the earlier side of the day so Mike worked from home and of course they did not call until 3ish but the news was good, I was pregnant!!!! Here is the lowdown on the schedule from there:November 29th: TransferDecember 8th: Blood Pregnancy TestDecember 12th: Blood Work (make sure everything is trending where it should)December 28th: First Ultrasound (around 6-7 weeks pregnant)January 4th: Ultrasound (I had subchorionic hemorrhages, they are what I like to call little bruises from the implantation that do not affect the pregnancy at all but the pockets of blood do release which is alarming. They are fairly common but this ultrasound was an extra one as I was nervous about them)January 12th: Graduation from IVF clinic at 9 weeks! You have a final ultrasound with the Dr. and they send you off to begin routine care with your OB.After "graduation" we went and got ice cream and ran into the OB who did my second surgery which was kismet and was amazing to tell her the good news!That was a lot of information but I hope informative and helpful for those interested! Let me know if I forgot anything or if there are questions...you know I am an open book!!