HAPPY TRANSFER DAY!

April 18th was the anniversary of our frozen tot's thaw. Today is the one year anniversary of her thaw!

I didn't have a blog up and running a year ago, but if I did have, I would probably have noted the five estrogen patches all over my hips, the shots Daddio was plugging me with, the extreme sleepiness all that estrogen caused, and the elation we were feeling with the transfer. Well, okay, I was feeling groggy elation while Daddio was a bundle of nerves. He's always the rational one.

I've been keeping a slip of paper in my day planner - the note I wrote when our nurse Elizabeth called on thaw day with the news. It reads,

2 not progressing well
3 progressing well

My reaction? "Okay!" It never occurred to me this frozen embryo transfer would not work. Elizabeth sounded guarded. Jack, the rational one, was sweating bullets.

Later, our embryologist Klaus called with more news about the number of cells each embyro has and its overall state of health. My note reads:

2 cell - no fragments
3 cell - fragments
5 cell - fragments

Klaus went on to explain the fragments were shards of air that occur after a freeze and thaw. He said he'd work on those embryos to remove the fragments, kind of like performing plastic surgery on an embryo. Fragments did not mean the embryo was in trouble. He did say they wanted to see the 2 cell embryo "catch up" on its development. "It should be an 8- or 10-cell embryo by the time we need to transfer," he said.

So I phoned my mother and Auntie Anne and said, "Please pray for the little embryo with 2 cells! It needs some extra encouragement." In the end, that little 2-celler took off like popcorn, surpassed the other two (one of whom didn't end up progressing) and is most likely the kazillion-celled infant we hold in our arms and call Vanessa.

Auntie Anne left last weekend and we realized it had been a year and a half since we'd last seen each other. So much happened during that time.

Grandma Patty is still here for another week. She helped me cross several things off my to-do list on Monday, which catapulted me from feeling like I couldn't accomplish a solitary thing in the morning, to feeling like I'd scaled mountains by the evening. Thank you, Mom!

Nessa had her 4 month check up with the pediatrician on Friday. She's doing great! She weighs 16 lbs. 10 oz. and is 25.5 inches tall/long. She's in the 90th percentile of height, 94th percentile of weight, and 95th percentile of head circumference. Her hair is definitely strawberry blonde - still trying to figure out if it will be curly or straight. She did have a few more vaccinations, which she does not particularly enjoy, and was told she can start solid food any time between now and her 6 month check up.


This week she's been grabbing her toys, yanking on the strings of our sweatshirts, and is laughing like a fiend. She woke up me, Daddio and Milo the other night laughing in her sleep. What on earth was she dreaming about?



Our baby kitten continues to coo at us, her mobiles, the dark beams in the ceiling, and all the nice folks on the television. In the mother's group this week we had all 9 babies down on the floor, stripped to their diapers, getting body massages. Vanessa couldn't keep her eyes (and hands) off the boy babies next to her. She's clearly a socialite in the making.