IVF#1 CD19 D-Day

Sitting in the Embio clinic lobby right now, waiting for our embryo transfer. Like the first day we were here, seems like they're running behind again. It's been an hour of waiting.

Was so excited last night I couldn't sleep much. Kept having dreams that they were going to tell us we couldn't. Do the transfer now after all, and would have to come back in a month. Ugh.

So how may embryos will we have? Will they be good ones? Will we do one or two?

A big decision that has to be made very soon...

Edit #1: so we finally got called in to meet with the doctor about an hour and a half after our appointment time. We have four embryos, and he says three are very good quality. He wants to put in all three. OMG. So I told him no more than two. He said he'd check on the embryos again, and now we're sitting waiting to go "upstairs". I am guessing that's where their procedure room is.

We may end up with two after all. I am a hundred times more nervous now. He seemed pretty confident that if he put three back "probably it will be only one or two, eh?" NO. No no no to that. Twins is scary. Triplets is just.... Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!

Now we are playing the waiting game again.

Edit #2: we are back at the hotel, and it's done. So here's how it went down:

They called us upstairs where Kaitlin had to wait in a small waiting room while the nurse took me back to "prepare," as she put it. She led me past a room full of women lying on gurneys, which was a little bit of a shock to my system to see about eight people lying side by side on wheeled hospital beds... Up to now when I've been in a US hospital people are usually spaced farther apart, often with curtains between, and this felt a little like some kind of assembly line. Anyway, she took me into a closet-sized room where I had to undress and put on a robe thing. I also went to the bathroom, which turned out to be a very good decision, as I'll explain in a sec...

Anyway, I came out of the room and was led to a stool in the middle of all the ladies on gurneys. And for about ten or fifteen minutes I just sat there, watching the nurses bustle around and a couple doctors come in and out of the nearby operating rooms and a couple of patients get wheeled in and out of those rooms... And then Dr. Thanos showed up and directed me into the room on the right, where they let Kaitlin come in (though she got the feeling they really didn't want her there.) The doctor was putting the speculum in while waving a catheter at me that he said had our embryos in it. I asked how many and he said two. Then he pried me open and started doing all kinds of things that were pretty uncomfortable... Apparently my cervix is small and he had to do something to open it more. Kaitlin said it looked like he was prying it open with tweezers. That was twingey and a little painful, though not too bad. Then he ran the catheter in, which also pinched, and he and the nurse pushed down hard above my pelvis with the ultrasound sensor. Finally they were done, and they put me on a gurney and wheeled me back into that room with all the other women. They slid me into a spot on the end, next to the wall.


Kaitlin snapped this just before the transfer procedure... I was so nervous, in case the clenched fists aren't a giveaway...  O.o

And here's where I started to get annoyed. Up to this point I had been patient with the three and four hour long office wait times. I had been patient with the slightly awkward, clipped communication from the doctor, and his abrupt and uncomfortable stuff-the-wand/speculum/whatever-up-in-there technique. I had been patient with the fact that while their website advertises a price of 4800 Euro I was charged 5500, and while the site quotes success at 70% the coordinator said pretty clearly that it was 60%. I had not complained when apparently they selected an egg donor for me without giving me choices, even though their site says patients can "choose from their list of 120 immediately available egg donors." And though I had expected more information and more options when it came to the choice of how many embryos to put in, as long as it was less than three I could even live with that. But after they wheeled me out, they said I would need to lie there for 30 minutes before I could get up. Totally cool.

Except I lay there for two hours. And, they had wheeled me next to an older Italian lady (I think she was 51?) who had just had her own embryo transfer done, and who spent the next two hours telling me that she thought the clinic was pretty useless, that she didn't get pregnant her first try and was having to try again, that she met a Moroccan patient in the lobby who was on her tenth try with no success, and that like me, she'd had a lot of hope on her first try but now she didn't believe it really worked for most people. She said the clinic had made her sign a paper acknowledging that their success rate was really only 20%.

Of course, having just come out of my own procedure, having spent a year of my life and probably over $25,000 on this crazy project, this bitter Negative Nancy was the last thing I wanted or needed. I tried to keep her naysaying out of my head, but I will admit that by the time the nurses finally remembered we were still there and let us get up and leave, I was pretty spooked. I still am. The doctor seemed so sure that the chances of triplets or even twins were low. But if his 60% success rate is true, the chances of twins are pretty much 50/50 if I do get pregnant. So either he was downplaying the risk, or the Italian lady was right about them misrepresenting their success rates. I even found myself imagining for a moment that they hadn't actually made me any embryos at all, maybe they just went through the motions of putting them in so they could swindle me out of my money. O.o paranoid much? But, the nurse at the transfer did ask me to confirm my name at least four times to be sure she had the right tube in her hand. And, after he had the catheter and speculum out Dr. Thanos did turn the ultrasound machine and point out on the screen the white area that held the embryos. So I just have to have faith, right?

Anyway, when they finally let me leave and come downstairs, I was feeling pretty down, and frustrated, and hungry.... It was almost 3 PM and I hadn't been able to eat since breakfast. We didn't have to wait too long, thankfully, for the rest. One of the nurses took us in to talk about the meds I'd have to take. Staying on the high doses of estrogen and progesterone, and adding daily injections of heparin. All of which cost 145 euro, or around $180. Then Dr. Thanos came in, only for a few seconds. He did confirm that the embryos he transferred were at the 5-day stage. But, he said he didn't think the remaining two would be good for freezing. He said they'd email me tomorrow if they were, but if I didn't get an email that meant they weren't. He didn't sound optimistic at all, or even really like he cared, but I'm pretty disappointed. If there's nothing to freeze, we won't be able to afford to try again. This is our last shot, and if it doesn't work, it's over.

Which doesn't help my stress level.

But anyway, for better or worse, it's done. There's nothing left to do but wait. Our test date is Christmas Eve, and we'll either be having the best Christmas ever or the most heartbroken one.

All in all, it was not a terrible experience, but certainly not as good as I had expected. I had no idea the wait times would be so long, the office would be so crowded, the doctor would be so rough and brusque, or that the enticing prices and choices promised by the website would not be all that they seemed. This is definitely not the place to go if you want close control over your procedure and embryos. But if I get pregnant, it won't matter. Though if I am pregnant with twins I do think I'll be kind of irritated with the clinic for not engaging more seriously in a discussion about using one or two embryos.

And, if it doesn't work, at least we did get a pretty nice vacation out of the deal.

We took a taxi back to the hotel and I've spent the rest of the day in bed. It's cold and rainy anyway, so at least it doesn't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Kaitlin went and got us food from a nearby restaurant, and we're just hanging out on our iPads until bedtime. I'm going to try and sleep around 8, since we have an early morning pickup for a day cruise tomorrow.

What a day. I don't think I've ever gone to such extremes for anything before. Praying to every power in the universe that this works.