IVF #3, FET #3: Transfer Day, Part 1

It's funny how little superstitions creep in around your IVF cycles, especially when you've done more than one cycle. I'm guessing this is probably a normal thing to happen, I've definitely read of people who have to eat at a certain restaurant after transfer or will watch a particular film in the run up to egg collection, because that's what they did when it worked, so that's what they have to do this time.

I'm afraid I am one of those people.

The day before our transfer I very carefully made a list of all the things we needed to do that night and evening. This included things like organising the medication I would need the following day (since we needed to leave early and didn't know what time we would be back), laying out my clothes (so we could get up and leave with the minimal amount of stress) and making sure my lucky unicorn Ixi was packed in the bag Mr Click would be carrying (I have been banned from all heavy lifting).

The outfit I picked out is the exact same one that I have worn to every other appointment for this frozen embryo transfer; comfy jeans (with a hole in, oops), stripey top, Hogwarts Quidditch top and Wonder Woman socks. This was what I wore for the egg collection and that went pretty damn well, so I wore it for my baseline scan and that went perfectly, so I wore it for my lining scan and that went really well too. So there was never any question that I would wear anything else for Transfer Day.

Now although this is our third frozen transfer, it's our fourth transfer total. Two of those we've travelled to the hospital by car and one on public transport; the one where we travelled by public transport was the one which stuck (for a while). There was some debate about how we would get to the hospital and eventually we decided we would go by train and bus to keep the day kind of relaxed and give us something to do if we had a bit of a wait before we could go in.

The way that a Frozen Transfer works means that first the embryo has to be thawed, this only takes about twenty minutes but then they like to monitor them for a while to make sure they do everything they're supposed to. Ideally an embryo will be warmed up and then will continue on as it did before, dividing, preparing to hatch, actually hatching. Some are a little sluggish (who can blame them after being 'asleep' for so long) and others hop right back to it.

So on the day of the transfer you'll get a call from the Embryologist to let you know if they've thawed successfully. We'd given permission to keep thawing embryos if one didn't make it, but I was still hoping it wouldn't come to that. You don't like to think about your potential future babies failing to make it over the first hurdle. Nine seems like such a lot but it's strange how quickly it can seem like hardly any.

We had to leave before we got that call so we made our way into Glasgow, along the way I got very excited to see a pair of magpies out the train window (two for joy, of course) and the woman sat opposite us obviously overheard me freaking out talking about the transfer with Mr Click and wished us good luck as we got off.

Even though I knew we had pretty good odds for a successful thaw, I couldn't help but feel that little niggle of doubt that it wasn't going to work. We've been pretty lucky so far to have three embryos frozen and three make it through the thaw. That's 100% success. What if, I wondered, we'e used up all our luck? What if this is the time they don't make it? How many of our top quality embryos could we blow through in one go?

We headed up to trade in our old phones when the call from G, the Embryologist came in. Did I mention I got a new phone last week? Well I've never actually had to answer a call on this phone before!

Here's a little tip if you might be getting a call from your Embryositter: Make sure you know how to answer your phone!

I hung up on him!

In case you're keeping track, that's now twice I've failed to take a call from the Embryologist, the first being their first day of life when I totally missed their call. Thankfully G called back a second later. He was fine about me rejecting his call, I'm guessing they get a lot of that; anxious parents hitting the wrong button or something.

And he had good news for us.

Both embryos survived the thaw! And since we were already in Glasgow we got bumped up the list. Transfer was set for 11:40am giving us about an hour and a half before we needed to head to the hospital.

As for what happened when we got there, I'll save that for Monday, which is when this happened: