Embryo Transfer: Boring In A Good Way

When I give feedback to families and talk about behavioral observations or emotional scales that are rated as either clinical or average, I’ll often get to report that these findings were “boring, in a good way.” There was no suicidal thoughts, no psychosis, no significant behavioral abnormalities. They had good social skills, a positive affect, and were cooperative. In short, my observations are mundane, but this isn’t always a bad thing.

And frankly, after my crazy retrieval debacle, that was my hope.

C and I went for pancakes and I began drinking water like it was my mission before the procedure. I was nervous about having my bladder be too full that it caused pain, which has been the norm lately, or not full enough, but they told me it was “beautiful” so no worries there. Some of the ladies had heard about my trip into the ED and then inpatient unit and asked me about it. Once of the nurses seemed to minimize my experience, saying that “everyone gets a little discomfort,” which pissed me off. They all seemed to be impressed with the number of puncture holes and bruises I had in both my hands and arms and took extra good care in drawing my blood for my estrogen and progesterone levels.

The actual procedure was only slightly more uncomfortable then a pap test. The worst part was in the beginning when they insert the scapula and “clean” me. I always thought this was weird; why does it have to be cleaned? I didn’t actually feel the catheter at all.

C was able to put on scrubs on and attend, which he wasn’t expecting. It was nice for him to be a part of it. They had a large TV monitor on the wall where they showed us the embryos in the petri dish and then watched them being sucked up into the catheter. They were huge (on the screen) and looked exactly like what you see online or in textbooks. We then watched the tiny catheter on the u/s monitor screen until there was a small white dot, which they told us was a small air bubble to indicate where the embryos had been placed. They checked to make sure that both embryos were out of the tube and then removed the speculum and congratulated us. The doctor performing the procedure was cute, earlier in career, and got really excited for us when they were in. They gave us these pictures of the growing embryos and also the petri dish that the embryos were living for the past 5 days as keepsakes. Baby’s first cradle. I was wheeled back into the recovery room and went to use the restroom after about five minutes. We both changed back into our street clothes and bid the nurses goodbye.

We intended to go see a movie afterwards, which was C’s awesome idea. He is sometimes so thoughtful that I wonder how I got so lucky. Unfortunately the show time listed on the website was not consistent with the sign on the theater’s door saying that they didn’t open for another two hours, so we went home instead. I did a little more paperwork to prepare for today and then a little more relaxing. My sister started some drama that I got completely sucked into and upset about, but I won’t dwell on that, and then I went to bed.

Easy peasey. If anything, it was anti-climactic. I’m not complaining. This is exactly what I was going for – low excitement, calm, and collected. Now I may be implanting some embryo(s) as we speak. No big deal.

First Pictures