Dan and I are petri parents!
It’s a really weird feeling knowing that after many years, shots, and tears, we’ve actually managed to coax our genetic material into hooking up. We wanted them to be sluts. We wanted them to do it on the first date and get knocked up. That wasn’t what happened.
Since we received the news, I’ve been mentally stuck in a holding pattern much like our embryos in the petri dish. Well, they’re not holding. They can’t help but multiply. However, they are not IN ME so my mind prefers to think my embryos are in a holding pattern too.
I was very thankful we were able to even get to the point where we could do the retrieval. In my research, I found out many patients with ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome would cancel their appointments before retrieval and all those shots, all the expense, pain, and expectations were for naught. I was able to go through with the procedure and twenty-three eggs were extracted.
Right away, two of my eggs kicked it. They saw the world was a scary place and said, “F you!” and jumped off the bridge holding hands. R.I.P, you little boogers.
Twenty-one were game to give this world a whirl. They were injected with Dan’s material and my eggs were all a-titter, wondering why they were so focused on preserving their purity and held out so long.
Three days passed. The doctors picked four of the strongest eggs and send the other seventeen to some other location clearly marked in Mandarin Chinese with a label that I imagine reads, “Keep Frozen. Don’t pull any abnormal shit here or we’ll be sued.”
And that leaves us with the four little pookies splitting and multiplying in our (from what I’ve been reading “souvenir”) petri dish.
Monday came. And so did a horrendous cough that landed me in the emergency room. The ER doctor looked at me questioningly. Maybe because I’m petite he cannot fathom the kind of coughing I can conjure up. I told him I actually vomited from coughing so hard. He gave me a tiny bottle of cough syrup and said it should last for three days.
I went through the entire bottle before my next appointment with my IVF specialist.
I was so sick, I don’t remember a lot about that appointment. What I do remember went like this:
ME: What do you think? Think we can do the fresh transfer on this cycle?
DR: No, you… Are you crazy? Get out of my office.
ME (patiently, gently smiling with molars clamped): Ok. But before I do, think you can write me an prescription for cough syrup meant for someone over two years of age? I’m kind of tired of coughing all the time and I don’t have any of the…
DR: You went through that WHOLE bottle the ER doc gave you? That was supposed to last 3 days!
ME: Yeah, maybe for a two-year old. And… I…. I….spilled some…
DR: How about this half-sized bottle that’s weaker than what they gave you that you’re complaining about?
ME: TWO please.
DR: Fine.
The doctor walked out and left the one bottle on his desk right in front of me. Naturally, I put it in my purse. After receiving my IV albumin drip and my long-needled progesterone shot I went up to pay for the visit and to pick up the second bottle the nurses prepared and realized they had prepared two whole bottles. (Insert happy jig.) Count ‘em! I got THREE altogether!
While I was downing cough syrup, my petri eggs were busy multiplying. As of that Wednesday night:
Egg #1: Three cells
Egg #2: FOUR cells
Egg #3: FOUR cells. (#2 whines, “Stop copying me!”)
Egg #4: FIVE cells. (#4 is bossy. ”You better sit your ass down at my tea party and mime drinking out of an empty cup with a smile RIGHT NOW!”)
Fluid in uterus: Minimal. This is good
Ovaries: Seven… something? Is it centimeters? Millimeters? The only numbers that have ever been my strong point is my idiot savant-like predisposition for remembering everybody’s birth date (it’s a curse, really). So seven whatever-size-they-are. This is not good. That is too large, like like grapefruits making out. Not good.
Me: Two bottles of cough syrup consumed.
It is now Friday afternoon and I’m down to half of my third itty bitty bottle of cough syrup and still coughing. When Dan gets home, we’re off to to find out if my ovarian hyperstimulation symptoms are under control enough to warrant going for the transfer as early as tomorrow. I am silently (and at times not silently) cursing the doctor. Why didn’t he just give me stuff that would knock this cough out BEFORE I possibly have one of my hard-earned embryos implanted?
I’ve left the holding pattern and I’m not steering here – go easy.