Crap day

I don't really feel like writing this, but I think I need this little journal to vent somewhere other than forums, and one day it might be something worth me looking back on.

So at around 8:20 this morning I got the phone call from the embryologist. He informed me that of our six eggs, only one had fertilised overnight. Just one. He said that they selected six sperm that had motility, but that the sample was predominantly abnormal sperm which is probably why five didn't fertilise. He then told me that they had booked me in for a transfer of my one little fertilised egg this morning at 11am.

When I hung up the phone I told my husband everything, we spent the next hour or so crying together. It was just such a shocking disappointment, especially after the happiness and hope of yesterday. He ended up ringing back the embryologist to ask a couple of questions, mainly to check if all five of his straws of sperm had been used. Apparently they were under strict orders from our fertility specialist to only use one straw, so there are still four left. We are wondering if next time we can convince our specialist to let us use more... He also asked why the transfer was today rather than day 3 like it was meant to be. The embryologist said that usually they wait til day 3 so they can select the best-looking embryo for transfer, but in this case as there was only one, it was better off inside me rather than spending the weekend in the lab. I guess that's fair enough.

One of the worst things about this is that today is the day that hubby moves to Brisbane, and I was meant to be taking him to the airport and seeing him off, but now I couldn't. So I left him at home after he ordered himself a taxi, and I told him that I would try and get to the airport before he boarded once I'd finished at the clinic.

Ha, yeah right. When I got there, there were two ladies ahead of me, one of them arrived well after me which pissed me off too. I had to have a full bladder for the transfer to make it easier for them to see stuff on the ultrasound, and it was sooo painful holding it in after my egg retrieval yesterday. I actually had to ask four times if I could go and let a little bit out, which helped slightly, but the waiting for nearly an hour was absolute torture. When it was finally my turn I went in with one of my favourite nurses at the clinic, and she explained that it was pretty much going to be like a pap smear. The embryologist come in to see me, confirming my details and asking if I had any questions. I just asked him if the egg quality had been okay, as the last thing we needed was for there to problems on my side too. He said it was fine though, that it seemed to just be a sperm issue.

The fertility specialist who was doing my transfer came in. I'd never met him before but he seemed quite nice. When he said something about putting in the embryo, I said to him, "Is it even an embryo yet? Wouldn't it still be a zygote?" to which he said, "Well, now we're just splitting hairs." Hehe.

The worst part of the procedure was keeping control of my bladder while the ultrasound probe was pressing onto it, and while a doctor fiddled around "down there". They showed me what was happening on the monitor; it took me a few seconds to understand it, but I got there in the end, and witnessed "Timmy" (Alan and my joke name for our hypothetical child) being squirted into my uterus. My husband texted me just before this, as I was lying there with catheters hanging out of me, to say he was just boarding his plane, so I thought of him while it was all happening. Once we were done, I raced to the loo to finally get some sweet relief, then the nurse gave me my wonderful rectal progesterone pessaries that I need to insert morning and evening for the next two weeks. I did one when I got home, and they're not bad at all. I've been dreading them so much, but they are actually really easy to put in and once it's in properly you don't even feel it.

So now for a very long TWW (two week wait). I have blood tests on 8th June and 15th June; the first is to check my progesterone and other hormone levels, and the second is obviously my pregnancy test. I am trying to stay hopeful that we manage a miracle out of this, but really, if the sperm were that bad, I'm not expecting this little "embryo" inside me to progress past today.

One can only dream though.

Now I'm going to attempt to escape the quiet emptiness of the house by watching DVDs and eating some chocolate, even though that will probably make me feel crappier once I've finished it.