Day 41: Nahpoopo

So I posted a while back that I was flummoxed by all the IVF and pregnancy acronyms, but I do know this one: PUPO. Which is what I am, in theory… :O

Although T and I discussed it and decided we are more statistically minded and it was more likely to be Not Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise, so I wittily coined a new acronym: NPUPO – pronounced nahpoopo.

I think you’ll find that this is a valuable addition to the fertility-jargon canon.

(Nod if you agree.)

Well… After yesterday’s rant (sorry people, I think it just shows my true colours… I’m not the nice calm controlled person I would like people to think I am… haha) my day didn’t really get any better. We have a massive project deadline end of this week – it’s meant to finish, and most of my team will be rolling off, which means everyone is working like absolute dogs* to get it all finished. This means very long hours and because of my role on the project it means I have to do the longest. I think I was almost crying yesterday – I finally managed to finish up at 01:30 and then grabbed 3.5hrs sleep before getting up and going into work again. All before transfer!

(* Why are they trying to kid – dogs don’t usually have jobs. My dog sits around relaxing all day, goes for walks, gets tummy tickles and is fed at regular intervals. He has a better life than I do!)

Transfer was this morning and I had to leave a conference meeting to get to the hospital. I cunningly managed to dial out of the videoconference and dial in on my mobile so I could carry on the call whilst heading to hospital.

Once there, it was really one of the easiest bits of the whole process. The strange bit was that T was there and actually saw it happen (though happily for me he wasn’t down the business end – he is terribly squeamish anyway so it would be a risk he might faint!). I did say he didn’t have to be there as it would be quite boring, but he said he wanted to be there for the conception! 🙂

The doc, embryologist, scanner and nurse were all lovely and I’ve met some of them before so it wasn’t too bad. It really was pretty much like a smear test, which has never really bothered me. The worst thing about it was the fact that you have to go with a full bladder! I am a curious sort so I asked why (as for all other scans I’ve been asked to empty my bladder). You want to know, don’t you?

Turns out that if you have a uterus that tips up, then the passageway to implantation can be curved. The straighter it is, the easier it is for the doc to insert the catheter and deposit our little guy where he’s supposed to be. (I’ve decided our embryo is male, and T thinks it’s female.) So your full bladder pushes down the uterus and makes the passageway a bit straighter.

Anyway we didn’t even have to think about the whole twin thing, because we only had one embryo at the right stage of development for transfer. 😦 I thought this was a bad thing but the embryologist said that our embryo was great quality. I really try not to google things as I think Dr Google can just make you paranoid, but I do ask a bunch of questions when I’m there. Apparently ours was 3BB or something and the letter scale goes from A to J or something. We being the usual academic high achieving sorts said that we wanted an A 😉 but apparently that’s really rare, and BB is good! That said, the embryologist is always super positive about things so you wonder whether they’re just being positive or it’s actually good.

Anyway out of our remaining 6 embryos we had 2 that were just under that grade, so they’re leaving them sitting around trying to grow until tomorrow – then they’ll let us know if they’ve reached the required level for freezing. I was a little sad that we might not have any frozen embryos as I thought that means this is our only chance with this cycle… T said we should be positive and assume this is going to work! See – he’s a poopo (PUPO) person and I’m a nahpoopo person! 🙂

So anyway… the transfer was totally painless. I mean there’s a slightly weird situation when 4 people are staring into your v*gina but if you think about it, the act of natural conception is a fairly strange thing too! T watched on the ultrasound but we both agreed there was definitely a dark art involved in making any sort of sense of what was on the screen. I mean, we saw our little embryo being dropped off but to me it was like watching the tv when there’s no reception!

After it was all done I could go to the loo (phew) – you have to repress your natural idea that the embryo’s going to drop out! Apparently you can do all your normal activities and you can even have s*x if you want to – which is funny really, given I then got on a train to a city 3 hours away!

We went for a nice hot chocolate with whipped cream afterwards, and dissected what we thought the stats were (I told you we were stats geeks)… and then parted ways.

I have to work another looooong day today, but am avoiding any alcohol or cigarettes or bungee jumping (as if I was going to do any of those things, haha!). So we shall settle in for the wait…

N x