Cautiously Optimistic

Yep, six fertilized little growing embryos all with half of J's genetic makeup (lucky dawgs!) :)
It is truly insane to think about it in this way. Just 15 miles west of where we sit, right now, there are 6 babies-to-be growing. Our six little babies. Dr R wants to do a 5 day blastocyst transfer which means Thursday at 7am, 2 of those little babies-to-be will be inside J. FINALLY. We are SUPER nervous that some may not make it to day 5. Is it ok to be sad if some don't? Not sad b/c we won't be able to use them, but sad b/c right now they are growing and mulitplying and... real.

Dr R decided to do a 5 day transfer b/c these 6 embryos are multiplying perfectly and have a perfect shape to them. He wants to be able to watch them for a couple more days to be able to pick the perfect 2 to transfer. So, now we wait, again. Wait for our next fertilization report tomorrow. Wait for the transfer on Thursday. Wait to see if they embed. Wait to see if we are pregnant. Wait.

We are worried that Dr R should have chose a 3 day transfer but we know if he did, we would have worried about why we weren't doing a 5 day transfer. No matter what method we use, it is still 100% a guessing game. All up to luck and chance with a little assistance from a guy in scrubs.

In the meantime, we'll try to keep busy but we are not sure what else there is left to do! We did everything we could this past weekend waiting for our first update! The house is spotless, the coupons are clipped and organized and as previously mentioned, the sewing is done too. Aside from an insane amount of pills J is on post IVF, there are no more nightly injections to do and her stomach is finally beginning to look somewhat normal again. The only reminder that any of this IVF stuff ACTUALLY happened is J's sore ovaries from the retrieval and a small IV prick mark on her arm.

Would The Perfect Donor Please Stand Up

We always knew we wanted to start a family but being two women in a committed relationship, we didn't know where to begin. We embarked on an extensive internet search coming to the conclusion that we would need two things: a fertility doctor and a donor.

After months of meticulously searching for a the perfect altruist, we finally narrowed down the perspectives from ten to five, and finally to three. Three catalog numbers, three health reports, three personality profiles, three childhood photos. In the wise words of SchoolHouse Rock, "Three is the magic number" right? Well, in our case, THREE is TWO too many. Sigh.

We knew the main criteria for our perfect donor would be excellent health records, height (as we are both tall), blue eyes (since one of us has brown eyes and one has blue, we looked back to our grammar school days when we learned about eye color dominance and wanted to make sure that our children would have a chance to have either of our eye colors), and athletic (as we both are).

We knew we both wanted to carry a child and therefore determined that our donor would be the integral component that would interconnect our children. This decision only made our current deliberation that much more important.

In time, three narrowed to two and it soon became very clear to us who our donor should be.