Can't you see the sunshine?

Heather is ostensibly bed-resting today after yesterday's egg transfer and she's doing just fine.  What she definitely is not doing-- definitely-- is crying over Team USA's triumph in the hockey film Miracle.  That's not something she would do.

What she would do, however, is tolerate my snuggling against her (albeit with tender accommodation of her everlastingly-sore breasts) with a hand placed over what I imagine to be her uterus.  She's reported to me that embryos are something like 1/100th of an inch in size, and I'm guessing they aren't receptive to my baby-talk, either, but I feel like we have to put those encouraging vibes out there.  Hence the inspirational movie that Heather most assuredly did not cry over.



Yesterday was surprisingly mellow.  Turns out, giving someone Valium makes them very mellow, and I got to sit around reading trashy celebrity magazines while Heather dozed.  They drugged her about an hour in advance of the procedure, interrupting occasionally to check blood pressure and what-not.  Molly Ringwald would inform you that "life isn't what-not," and neither is a lady from the embryology lab showing up with pictures of the three pre-babies that are getting catheter-ed into Heather's fluffy uterine lining.  We'd heard from them on Sunday that our embryo selection was not great, ultimately deciding against PGD, and Heather and I wondered if the right choice would be to put three her oven in if the other two were probably un-freezeable.

Turns out, they'd decided that for us, so the embryologist showed us three embryos-- two grade Bs and one grade C.  One of the Bs looked really nice, and the other was a little iffier.  I don't understand everything about the grading process, but I know that one factor is whether the individual cells making up the embryo are of similar size and shape, and I could see a difference between the B-grade embryos they showed us.  The C didn't look great at all, so I figured the Nashville clinic, like us, had figured they might as well throw it in, much like adding extra socks when packing for a trip.  Okey-dokey.

Just before the procedure, the nurse (whom I liked very much) asked if Heather had ever seen this particular doctor.  "No," she said.  Said I, "No, you saw him last Saturday when you were here by yourself.  He liked your uterine lining."  "Oh, right, okay."  The nurse smiled, then cautioned us that he would probably be playing some James Taylor in the OR.  Joke?  Not a joke?  I wasn't sure.  Was this an indication of something significant?

What I failed to mention is that they put me in scrubs so I could go in the OR, too.  I was delighted beyond reason.  So I was indeed able to sit in the darkened room and witness "Carolina on My Mind" and "Fire & Rain."  Whatever works, yo.

And I guess it worked.  The doctor was very mellow, the nurses were mellow, and everything seemed to proceed smoothly.  They invited me to look at the embryos in their petri dish beforehand; I attempted, but the microscope was at the top of a large incubator-- too high for me to see well.  So I sat on a stool, listening to Sweet Baby James, while Heather drifted in and out.

It's hard to know what to do or think in the meanwhile.  Heather has a blood draw to check her progesterone levels tomorrow, and then on August 3rd she has a pregnancy test.