We had our FET this morning and everything went great! Our highest quality blastocyst made it through the thaw and looked great, so that is what we transferred today. We opted to do the transfer at our IVF clinic itself instead of their surgical center in Redondo Beach, purely out of convenience. One of the things that I loved about this was that the nurses who prepped me were nurses that I see all the time. Patti (who taught us how to do our injections and has assisted on several ultrasounds) assisted Dr. Yee via ultrasound during the transfer.
You know, there is something really vulnerable about being completely spread eagle in a procedure room with your legs in stirrups (that have STRAPS!). I know it’s all business and no big deal for a Doctor, and at this point for me – I just do not care who looks at my vagina. Seriously, there is zero shame involved at this stage. Yet somehow, it is still odd when a door opens and my brain thinks about how that is the image that they see when they enter the room. Not my face, a smile, eye contact, they see my vagina first. Dr. Yee shook our hands, and explained how the procedure is performed and then began to prep. After the speculum was in place, Dr. Yee performed a pre-transfer first to make sure that would be implanting in the correct spot. As it turns out, my cervix was moving quite a bit and this made things a little challenging. The solution? Putting in a small suture to stabilize my cervix before performing the actual transfer. Yes, you read that correctly – a suture…on my cervix. During this transfer I was not given any valium, so this was not an entirely pleasant experience. Definitely not what I would call excruciating, but also really uncomfortable. Again, the worst part about the FET process is needing to pee the entire time.
After he did the suture everything was over in the blink of an eye. Doctor Yee told me that the embryologist was going to come in and would ask me to state my name. I joked that I would, “just wait here, then.” Everyone laughed (at this point, there were a total of six of us in the room).
Once the catheter is in, the blastocyst is pushed through and that is when we were able to snap this picture. It’s not going to be as clear as our previous one because their printer was broken, but we did what we could with Dean’s phone.
What I highlighted in yellow is the catheter still inside, and the red circle shows the fluid that they transfer in with the blastocyst.
When the procedure was over, Dr. Yee told me when I would be coming in for my bloodtest and told me, ‘and when you do, it’s going to be positive, I feel it in my bones.’ Sure, that’s purely anecdotal and normally that kind of hope would irritate me because I am so pragmatic in the face of disappointment. Coming from a Doctor though, it made me smile and feel pretty great about our chances.
So, now we wait.
Xoxox,
Jen