Sophie's Choice . . . or hopefully the closest I ever have to come to it

What a blastocyst embryo looks like

We finally did the egg transfer!!! It went very well - we had four blastocyst embryos available at the time of transfer with one being good quality, two being fair quality and one being poor quality. We're keeping it a secret on how many we transfered and if we had any left to freeze because a lot of people seemed to have opinions on the matter and we don't want anyone saying to us down the road, "See? I told you you should have put in this many!" or "I can't believe you put in that many!" We feel it was a hard personal decision only we could make (but don't worry - I'm definitely NOT going to be an octomom!). Now we just have to wait to see what the results are. We could have found out as early as June 3rd, but I don't want negative news effecting Eric before his CFA test on the 5th if it comes down to that so we're waiting until June 7th. I may be a little neurotic til then.

The night before the egg retreival, Alex came down with the flu - and boy did he come down with it! We were up half the night as he threw up every five minutes for three hours!! Eric slept in his room the rest of the night and let me get sleep in preparation for the operation. I wnent to the procedure alone while Eric watched Alex the next day. Since then, Alex has improved but has still been racked by vomitting and diarrhea - it's going on eight days now! Needless to say, mom and dad have cleaned up a lot of messes, done a lot of wash, and haven't gotten a lot of sleep. We started to worry when on Sunday he was very lathargic and he's had pretty dry diapers since the beginning. We took him to a playground to see if that would make him feel better and he just climbed on it with our help and layed down :( Luckily, on Monday he seemed to improve but then kind of stopped again. I kept thinking he would get better the next day and then he'd throw up and/or have diarrhea again. We called the pediatrician twice and they said there's not really anything they can do and we'd have to go to the emergency room to get an IV for fluids if we thought he was in danger. We wanted to avoid the $100 copay of going to the ER as much as possible so we tried to hydrate him ourselves. Last night we when we went to check on Alex he was sleeping in his own throw-up. It was all over the walls, the floor his crib and him. We made the decision that our poor little boy had had enough and we decided to take him into urgent care today - which just happened to be the same day as my transfer. Talk about hard decision!!! I was so worried about my little boy but we had to transfer today or lose the cycle - followed by 24 hours of strict bedrest. It meant I couldn't come with Eric when he took him in.

It killed me to think that my little sweetheart might have to have an IV without his mother to hold him. But what could I do? Loose out on the possibility of future children? I definitely felt like it was Sophie's choice with leaning toward the needs of my current, only living little baby. However, if I didn't do the transfer I would have lost thousands of dollars, two months of pain and worrying, and the chance for the success of this cycle altogether. It gave me comfort to know that Daddy would be with him and I knew there was a possibility he wouldn't need an IV afterall. So Daddy took him after my procedure and luckily, he didn't have to get an IV! They said he just had the flu and we had to wait it out. Although he was probably low on fluids, he wasn't in the danger zone yet and we could keep trying to hydrate him at home! I'm sooooo grateful my little one is going to be ok and I guess in a way, his illness has kept me from obsessing over the eggs and embryos so maybe it was a blessing. Hopefully he'll be able to overcome this soon because it's hard to know we can't do much to help him and watch him suffer!

Going through this process I've really learned to appreciate what I have. I have the most wonderful husband in the entire world who still seems to love me even when I'm grouchy, bloated, anxious, tired, and definitely not looking my best. I also am soooooo blessed to have my sweet Alex - he truly was a miracle. I don't know what I would do without them - they are the source of my greatest happiness. Even if this doesn't work out, I know that I still have much more than a lot of people throughout the world and I'm am truly blessed. I grateful to be able to go through this process dispite what the outcome is. Of course, I hope that it will end up in a viable pregnancy and birth but we'll just have to wait and see!