25 May 2017 (about two months after my egg retrieval)
I was so nervous on transfer day. I’d already been driving myself insane with the craziest thoughts leading up to it. We were to drop the Little Mister off at school and then make our way to the clinic (an hour’s drive from our home). We were going to be a bit early for our midday appointment so we tried to take our time. We weaved our way through Fremantle and found weird ways to stall without actually stopping in public (because I felt like the hottest emotional mess there ever was).
I was also trying to stay fresh ‘down there’ so I didn’t want to get sweaty walking heaps (hahaha). At one point during our drive up, I received a phone call from a nurse. She was letting us know that the embryo they’d thawed had ‘survived beautifully’ and they were ready for us when we arrived. I don’t know what it was but the words, ‘survived beautifully’ suddenly made it really real. That was a potential baby. HOLY SHIT. I hung up the phone and bawled. Mr Unprepared was quite startled!
I had already said that I was worried about this because I’d had too much time to get attached to my ‘babies’. No joke. I know it’s a bad idea. Kind of like naming your animals when you live on a farm. Well, except I wasn’t planning on eating them. OK now I’ve taken this to wrong town. Where was I? Oh yeah, I know it’s probably not smart and definitely not rational but I was already attached. After all this time, my potential completion of my family was right there in a lab and it was exciting and I already felt a maternal…something towards them.
I said to Mr Unprepared and my mum that this could end very very badly if this round of IVF didn’t take. I said I had no knowledge of what it’s like to miscarry but I wondered if maybe some of the feelings might be similar for me. That I’d feel the loss far more than if we had just conceived the ‘good old fashioned way’. I’d known too much about every step of the way.
When we got to the clinic, there were other couples waiting. I could very faintly hear whispers of them being there for the same reason as us. We were not the first people to go in. I watched people leave and come back. It was a very quick procedure. I saw one sharply dressed woman who appeared to be on her lunch break from work just take it in her stride! I tried to imagine being able to do that. Nope. Probably couldn’t do it.
When it was our turn, it was all very efficient too. I took off my pants, got on the reclining chair thingy and had my dignity taken away for the millionth time. My legs were up on stirrups, the chair was raised to eye level with the person responsible for putting in the embryo, a very very bright light was pointed at my hoo ha. A speculum was used to make access easy, so I was really feeling good about myself at that point. I think the key word for the feeling was ‘exposed’.
A phone call was made to the lab. There was a screen in the corner of the room where they showed the embryologist sucking up our embryo from a petri dish before running in for the transfer. I almost cried seeing our embryo. It was not just super cool that we could do that but emotional. Who can say they saw their baby before it was even a foetus?!
A really long catheter thingy was used to insert the embryo – it didn’t hurt or feel like much more than a pap smear. Then I was out of there thinking WTF just happened? Like did that really just happen? It was so weird to think the embryo was inside me!
It was such an emotional process and yet so clinical too. It was weirdly, by far, the easiest part of the whole IVF process.
It was really surreal to know it was inside of me. I felt like I was pregnant before I was pregnant (but knew very very well that I wasn’t yet – a very strange and confusing and anxiety ridden feeling). I really really hoped I would not have to experience the loss of it not implanting.
Now the waiting really had to begin.
To be continued…
