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" This is the part of any cycle that drags. I&amp;#039;ve completed the paperwork, I&amp;#039;ve started the Pill, I&amp;#039;ve input all the relevant dates into my calendar using an intricate system of color-coding, and I&amp;#039;ve mapped out both the range of possible due dates and one lulu of a weeklong bender should the unthinkable occur. I like to cover my bases. I&amp;#039;ve done everything that can be done at this point. All there is now is the waiting. But I think about our cycle all the time, to the point of worrying that I&amp;#039;m going to blurt out embarrassing details to strangers \u2014 &amp;quot;And then! The needle! It goes right through the vagina!&amp;quot; I need to talk about it, but until something happens, there&amp;#039;s no real news to report. After all, how many times can I ask my close confidants, &amp;quot;Hey, did I mention that our donor is intelligent, well-adjusted, optimistic, caring, and self-reliant?&amp;quot; (Their answers vary from a tolerant &amp;quot;Yes, I believe you did say something about that,&amp;quot; to a somewhat less indulgent &amp;quot;Shut up shut up shut up SHUT UUUUUUP.&amp;quot;) So I&amp;#039;m so glad you had some questions. You&amp;#039;ve given me the perfect opportunity to talk about our cycle when nothing&amp;#039;s actually happening yet. j127h114 asked: They won&amp;#039;t tell how the donor is doing? Why not? Aren&amp;#039;t they your eggs she&amp;#039;s producing? I&amp;#039;m glad you asked because I wasn&amp;#039;t sure myself, so I took your question to our coordinator, who gasped, went pale, and screeched, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re not talking about your donor on the Internet, are you?&amp;quot; I reassured her by telling her I&amp;#039;d merely shared that our donor is easy-going, friendly, energetic, kind, and happy, and that I&amp;#039;d been careful not to let on, under any circumstances, that she graduated from college with honors. Wouldn&amp;#039;t want to compromise her anonymity or anything. (That is all a big lie. The only medical professional aware of my blogging is my first reproductive endocrinologist, and I think he is fairly appalled. Last time I saw him he offered me my ultrasound pictures \u2014 the ones that showed absolutely no ovarian response after 13 days of injections \u2014 and then pulled back, reconsidering, saying, &amp;quot;God only knows what you&amp;#039;d do with them.&amp;quot;) Anyway, j127h114, it has to do with preserving the donor&amp;#039;s privacy. It makes sense to me, and though I know it will drive me quite insane, it occurs to me that there&amp;#039;s a silver lining: I&amp;#039;ll be freed from the obsession that takes hold when you know exactly how many follicles you have, how large they were yesterday, how fast they should be growing, how large they should be tomorrow, and on down the line. Which brings us to\u2026 julieb said: Not to have a blow-by-blow account of how many follicles are developing, what size, etc., would be most....odd...for the IVF veteran. Most odd indeed. In fact, downright unnatural, if any of this could be said to be even remotely natural to begin with. Right now it feels like a good thing, though. There are those who would prefer to know so that they can frame their expectations accordingly. But when ten eggs suddenly dwindle to one embryo, as in my first cycle, or when nine large follicles yield only two eggs worth fertilizing, like in cycle number three, the idea that one can predict, well, anything starts to seem less plausible, even with a healthy donor. After all, knowing the details hasn&amp;#039;t done me any good in the past. It doesn&amp;#039;t confer any real control, no matter how much I hoped \u2014 only the dangerous illusion of it. And if wishing really hard never caused my own ovaries to suddenly produce ten more follicles overnight, I can&amp;#039;t imagine it&amp;#039;ll help our donor, either. Remind me of this placid sense of acceptance when the donor&amp;#039;s six days into stims and I&amp;#039;m climbing the freaking walls, will you? Speaking of that perfect Zenlike calm, OCGirl2 asked: How important is it to be mentally positive when going through a cycle? It&amp;#039;s a catch 22, don&amp;#039;t you think? If you get too excited, bad news will be crushing. If you expect bad news, and you&amp;#039;re successful, well it&amp;#039;s a bonus. As it happens, I have a lot of experience with this proposition. Over seven attempted cycles, my moods have run the gamut from &amp;quot;pretty sure it&amp;#039;ll work&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;probably not, but we have to try&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;please, God, someone shoot me.&amp;quot; The only conclusion I can draw is that whether you think it will work has nothing to do with whether it actually does. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn&amp;#039;t, and no one can really say why. This is a self-serving idea. I like it. It frees me from having to, you know, put on some lipstick and a brave, bright smile. I can just be my cranky-assed self, and let what happens, happen. I will say this: Bad news is crushing whether you expect it or not. If you&amp;#039;ve expected that negative, or that cancellation, or that miscarriage, it&amp;#039;s no less devastating when it actually happens. It&amp;#039;s just that you&amp;#039;re not as surprised. Now here is the part where I talk a bit about past pregnancies, including one that was successfully carried to completion. If that&amp;#039;s going to bring you down, perhaps you might like to look at a baby monkey until I finish. gcolby1 asked: Assuming that you end up with lots of fertilized eggs from this donor cycle, how many will be transferred into your uterus? One. Only one, no matter what. This is a fairly odd choice for an infertile woman, but one that makes sense for us. My pregnancy with Charlie was extraordinarily complicated; I ended up with gestational diabetes, placenta previa, HELLP syndrome, and a premature delivery. In a future pregnancy, I am at higher risk to develop these again. The risk is present with a singleton, and exponentially higher with a multiple pregnancy. Therefore my maternal/fetal medicine specialist has advised me to avoid a multiple pregnancy at all costs. It was still a tough decision. Most ART patients know that transferring two embryos increases the pregnancy rate dramatically, while a single-embryo transfer is much less likely to be successful. And I do want to get pregnant. But our doctor showed us her clinic&amp;#039;s most recent statistics, and they were sobering: In donor cycles where two embryos were transferred, 46% of those pregnancies were twins. And I do not want to get pregnant with twins. What made the choice slightly easier is the fact that when embryos are transferred into my uterus, I do seem to get pregnant. Sure, they may not implant exactly where they&amp;#039;re supposed to, or they may not live past 9 weeks. But they could, as my third pregnancy proved. And that is why we&amp;#039;re going for one. Okay, stop looking at monkeys. Much, much cuter than human babies, right? Now let us move on to my bladder! madelynlawler asked: Hmm. Full bladder [for embryo transfer]? Why is that? All the better to see you with? Many clinics perform transfers under ultrasound guidance, so that they can see exactly where they&amp;#039;re placing the embryos. For this, you need a full bladder. The catheter is threaded in through your cervix, the transducer is placed on your abdomen, and the nurse or the ultrasound tech puuuuushes as hard as she can, attempting to shove your poor bladder directly through your spinal column while the doctor finagles the catheter into place. You lie there and think frantically of dry things: the Gobi, a rice cake, those little packets of dessicant that come with new shoes\u2026 Once the embryos are placed, you&amp;#039;ll probably have to lie on the table for a little while, still unable to urinate, holding it, holding it, holllllldiiiiiingggg...Then, depending on your clinic&amp;#039;s views on post-transfer rest, you will either be offered a bedpan, allowed to get up and go to the bathroom on your own, or fitted with a catheter to empty your bladder. I still maintain that the feeling of relief after being catheterized is one of the most intensely pleasurable experiences I have ever had. (Paul, who had the misfortune of accidentally standing at end of the table after my first transfer, would probably disagree.) babies4me said: My partner and I are doing a donor cycle. I was curious of your timeline to see if you have an idea of when your donor will be doing her egg retrieval and you will be doing your transfer. Hey, congratulations. Are you as freaked out and amped up as I am? We are expecting retrieval to take place sometime between November 9 and 12. Transfer should be five days afterward. According to my color-coded calendar, I should begin fretting about symptoms (or absence thereof) approximately eighteen hours later. I am so happy to have you all along for the ride. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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