Last I posted, it was Canada Day long weekend and we had just found out that 5 of our fertilized eggs had made it through freezing. Since I was so overstimulated after the egg retrieval, we were not able to transfer any of the embryos then and there. Which meant I would have to spend more time dealing with hormones and getting my body ready for the transfer.

This was new territory for me. I had spent so much time taking needles and working on getting those eggs to grow that I really had no clue what was supposed to happen next. All I knew was that I was to wait for my period and then we would go from there.

I was told it could take up to two weeks after the egg retrival for aunt flo to show up but to my surprise, the morning they called to tell me how many blayocysts had frozen was when she came! I was very happy because one thing you will learn about infertility is everything is time; waiting for the next doctors appointment and the right times, and so on and so forth. This just saved us an extra week and brought us even closer to the transfer!

I called into the clinic, the period hotline to be specific, yes, its a thing, and waited for them to call me back with instructions. That afternoon a nurse called and let me know that in a few days I would start a month of birth control. Once I got my next period, I would be in the cycle window of the Frozen Embryo Transfer, as long as my body was ready for it. She also let me know there would be other meds to add in but they would mail me a big envelope with all of the details and that the in house pharmacist would call me to discuss the extra meds.

So a couple days later after picking up my prescription I started taking my birth control pill. This was probably the easiest med I have taken in the past couple years, a nice change from what I was used to. The next week my package showed up. I opened it to discover quite the calendar, outlining what the next few weeks would look like. I read over all the papers and quickly learnt this wasn’t as simple as just come back in and put the egg in and BAM! Baby! There was still a fair amount of timing and preparing to make this work. Now i’m not naive, i knew it was going to be a bit of work and meds but I had no idea just how much.

In the next two months I would go from my simple birth control pill with daily prenatal multivitamin and ASA 81 to adding in an additional 5 medications all designed to get me through to transfer day. A week later on day 19 of my cycle I added in a nasal spray called Suprefact. This spray would ‘turn off’ my body’s hormonal system so that when I added in hormones in a specific order next month it would prepare my uterus and precisely time the embryo transfer without my natural hormones getting in the way. The spray was not fun. It tasted awful in the back of my throat and I had to take it 5 times a day at 4 hour increments. I was up early and went to bed late, waiting to get in all of my doses each day. As much as I hated taking it, it was all I had to do for the rest of this month, plus wait for my next period to show up which the clinic figured would be around August 2nd.

In early August I got my period. Right on their schedule. That meant it was hormone time. The Suprefact had basically put me into a menopausal state and I was now going to add back in hormones and get my body to the perfect place to introduce the embryo. I kept taking the Suprefact through the entire cycle but starting day one of this cycle I added in an oral estrogen pill. I would take this for 2 weeks until I went into the clinic for an ultrasound to measure the lining of my uterus. It had to be a certain thickness or more otherwise we couldn’t continue. Thankfully mine was well over what it needed to be.

The 5 medications I added to BC to get ready for the transfer

The good news from the ultrasound also meant we could schedule my transfer! It would be 8 days later. I couldn’t believe it was almost here! Before we got there though I had to finish getting my body and uterus ready for the transfer. A couple days after the ultrasound I added in Crinone which is a progesterone vaginal gel. I would continue on the oral estrogen and the progesterone gel through the rest of treatment and if it worked and I was pregnant would continue to take it for most of the first trimester.

I also added in a couple other meds; an antibiotic just to make sure I didn’t get any form of infection and also a corticosteroid that has been shown to help with implantation. I would only take those for 5 days. And finally the night before transfer I was able to stop the Suprefact nasal spray!

The day of the transfer had finally come. I would have been more excited if I didn’t have to pee so bad. You see to do the transfer they ask you to have a full bladder. But they didn’t tell me how much to drink or when to start. So I spent most of my morning worried it wouldn’t be full when the time came. So I drank, and drank, and then drank some more. Surprise surprise, I was still an hour out from my appointment and was ready to pee my pants. DH was laughing at my while I moved back and forth in my seat, trying to find a comfortable position.

When I got to the clinic I couldn’t hold it anymore. I ran to the washroom and let a little out, hoping there would still be enough for the transfer. A few minutes after reaching the lobby a nurse came to grab me and brought me into the same waiting area as when I had the egg retrieval. She confirmed who we were a couple of times and then I was asked to change into a gown and slippers. DH also got to put on a gown because he was allowed to come in with me this time.

We didn’t wait for long before they came and grabbed us. Thank goodness since I had to pee again. They brought us into an identical room as the one where they did the egg retrieval. They got me all set up on the bed and had DH come sit by my side. Our Embryologist came out to meet us and confirmed our identities. He let us know that they had successfully thawed two of our embryos, that one was still 100% and the second although it lost a couple of cells was still at 90% and the thawing was very successful. He gave us a picture of them to keep. He then left the room to show us the embryos still in the petri-dish via the tv to my left. He reconfirmed the name was ours, (they spend a lot of time making sure they have the right embryos and people, probably a good thing) and then he zoomed in to show us our two little embryos. The one that was at 100% was already ‘hatching’ which is a great thing since it would hopefully increase our chances of it implanting.

The two embryos we implanted

Me looking very excited and positive after the transfer

While he was preparing our embryos, our doctor was preparing me. I laid down and when the doctor was ready they inserted a catheter through my cervix, very similar to how they did during the retrieval.  We had done a trial months earlier so she knew exactly how long my uterus was and where to place the embryos. Once she was set up it was go time! The embryologist brought in the embryos in a syringe that they attached to the catheter. We were able to watch along on the ultrasound as little air bubbles released into the top of my uterus. The embryos are so small that you can’t actually see them so they used these air bubbles as a way to direct where they placed the embryos.

That was it. Quick and easy. They had me lay there for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile the Embryologist confirmed the embryos in fact were not still in the equipment and had been placed properly. They had! After ten minutes they brought us back to the waiting area and had me relax for a while longer. The nursing staff brought me paper work with minor details like no heavy lifting, etc. that I was not allowed to do for the next few weeks. They also reminded me to stay on the estrogen and progesterone until after the pregnancy blood test which I would have in about 2 weeks. Seemed pretty simple.

Before we knew it we were told we could leave. Now it was just a wait and see game. DH and I left the clinic, enjoyed a delicious celebratory lunch at one of our favorite Calgary restaurants and then headed home. I spent the next few days relaxing and trying to remove any of the stress I could. All that was left to do was wait for the blood test and the results that would come a few days after…