Laughing with Sarah

Confirmed: No pregnancy this cycle. I had a pretty good sense by Thursday evening that this round hadn't been successful, and the blood draw Friday morning confirmed it. We are sad, definitely. And frustrated. And a little part of me is feeling flashes of the despair of five cycles in a row to get Sam. But mostly? We're doing fine. I am feeling strangely at peace. As I mentioned before, my biggest fear and concern with this cycle was getting any useful number of embryos to freeze, and we have six - SIX! - frozen. So that made this cycle feel successful to me, even if not in the way that I would have most wanted. We will pursue a frozen cycle sometime after the new year (no sense in squishing one in during one of the busiest times of the year for me). Meanwhile, I am itching to get back to running, and it couldn't hurt me to fix up my sleeping and eating habits a little bit as well. So even as we head toward the holidays, I am looking forward to making a little extra

Wednesday morning was transfer day. We left Sam with an early morning babysitter when we left the house at 5:00 a.m. to make it to Rochester for our 6:30 a.m. report time. We went up to the same floor as last Friday. The same pod of rooms. A couple of the same nurses. Our room had only chairs this time, not a bed, and the gown they gave me was easily twice the size of the one I wore on Friday. I couldn't keep the thing up over my shoulders! Thank goodness for the robe, which was more normal-sized, that I kept tied tightly around me. They took my medical history down (yet again) and gave me a small dose of Valium (which I really didn't want to do, but they assured me it was standard practice, that it would relax me, but more, that it would relax all of the lady parts that they'd be messing with, and if that would help our chances, then Valium it was). Then onto the wheely bed and down to pre-op. I was really glad when I figured out that the Valium wasn't making me a

Here's the before and after shot from last Friday's egg retrieval. I love how the main difference in the two pictures is the presence of toast (or lack thereof). I guess this is your visual proof that my retrieval was uneventful and that I tolerated the sedation well. :) We left the house before 6:00 a.m., dropping Sam off at a friend's house (who would take him to daycare when it opened) on our way out. Our check-in time was 7:30 a.m. We got there just fine, checked in, and went up to the outpatient surgery floor, where I got all gowned up and IV-ed. We were all ready to go by about 8:20 a.m. And then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, around 9:30 a.m., they came to get me. I hopped up onto a wheely-bed, and they took me down to pre-surgery, where some nice nurses and a nice anesthesiologist all came to check in with me. And then more waiting. I was there about half an hour, during which time I did one of those "doze off and feel like I'm fal