I remember my first venture onto a fertility web forum. This looks nice, I thought, other people in the same boat as us. I started to read the posts and the first thing I noticed were all the various acronyms for fertility world – things like ttc (trying to conceive), tww (two week wait), 5dpo (5 days past ovulation), and I thought, what the hell are they on about. There was a sub forum called TTC with Assistance. One day, with the confident knowledge that I would never need this section, I decided to have a peep in and see what was happening. The acronyms in here were even worse and scared the life out of me. ICSI, 5dp5dt, OHSS, PCOS?? I legged it.
And what do you know, here I am, 7dp5dt in the middle of my own TWW. That’s ‘7 days post 5-day transfer’ for the rest of you. ‘God this week is flying isn’t it?’ a friend said to me on the bus to work this morning. ‘It’s Thursday already!’ Thursday Already?? ONLY Thursday more like! Flying in? If by Flying In you mean every second is crawling past in torturous slow motion then yes, I suppose it is!
The transfer itself went very well. They said the quality of the embryo after the thaw was as good as the day it got frozen. Great! They showed it to us on a screen before they did the transfer. It looked like a side view of an eyeball. Lovely, it’s the best looking eyeball I’d ever seen. They do the transfer which is like a smear test, and using an ultrasound the doctor can see where he’s putting it and they explain each thing as they go along. Overall it’s a fascinating process. Once it was done I was instructed to take it very easy during the next few days especially. No housework, no cooking, no exercise, no nothing. Jackpot!
At first I was afraid to move in case I disturbed embryo, or knocked him out of position. The first day or two of total relaxation were fun but after that it got a bit…quiet. I won’t say boring because I know the days I’m stuck at work I will be dreaming of duvet days again so it would be against my religion to say otherwise. I started to feel a bit protective of embryo, I know it’s only an embryo, but it’s our embryo, we fought hard for him to even get to this stage. I hope he sticks around.
The wait is nothing but torture. Every twinge I get I wonder does it mean something? I am trying to resist the urge to Google everything and cracked a bit last night under the pressure of it all. I swing from being positive that this might have actually worked, to the next hour being convinced that it hasn’t. I can feel the usual signs that usually crop up when that time of the month is near and that doesn’t help the positivity effort, although I have also been told that cramps can be down to the progesterone medication I am taking.
In a weird way a strange calmness has replaced the total panic of the thought of a failure though. It’s like my mind is gone into autopilot to prepare for a negative test result. It’s impossible to guess your way through this – some women have loads of symptoms, some have none, everyone is different. I know this. I’m trying to tell myself I’m not getting alarmingly fat all of a sudden, I’m bloated from the medicine. It’s a bit like that actually. When you eat a load of crap and know you are putting on a few pounds, but you tell yourself, don’t be silly, sure didn’t you walk up a set of stairs last week, that counts as exercise, you’ll be grand. Eventually you convince yourself of what you want to believe.
Is that what I’m doing? My head says it recognizes these symptoms as my period being imminent, and my heart says that the signs can still mean it has worked, to hold on to the hope that it could end up being a positive result. I wish I knew who to believe. I think the head is winning because it always won in the past.
In the meantime all I can do is wait – after all, why am I surprised – this is what this whole thing has been this whole time, waiting for things.
We’re halfway there now, and all I can do is hope for the best and get through the torture that is the TWW until test day arrives on February 26th. At least, whatever the test says, this torturous wait will be over and some sense of normality can hopefully resume.
The Scenic Route 