Intralipids

Yesterday was a big day for two reasons:

1) I had my first intralipid infusion. It was a little anti-climatic in that they plugged me into an IV and I sat there for an our as milky-white liquid dripped into me. Luckily we brought a cd with the first season of It's_Always_Sunny_in_Philadelphia so we laughed the whole hour. For the last few minutes I listened to my Circle + Bloom guided meditation. I felt so good, calm, zen. I received the intralipid in the room they use for prep and recovery for egg retrieval, so I feel good knowing where I'll be going in a week. It's just day 3 of stims so egg retrieval is estimated for between Jan 15-18, depending on how I respond (come on follies! Do your thing and make beautiful, healthy, mature eggs for us!).

My experience with Dr. Z has been very positive. I like that he does all the scans and we LOVE his bedside manner. When we saw him right after New Years and asked him if he ever went on vacation, he answer with a great big smile, "I hate vacations!" He always takes the time to answer our questions and his in-cycle nursing staff is awesome! (pre-cycle, less so, but not horrible). The clinic is very well organized, and very clean with and Asian theme (his wife is Asian). There are a ton of hoops to jump through, but we've sailed through so far. the latest hoop was they asked us to have a conversation with a woman who is both a psychologist and a family lawyer because there's a possibility of us using donor sperm (yes, sperm!) this cycle. Has anyone else been asked to do this for donor sperm?

2) The second big event yesterday was that we delivered our 9 vials of sperm (8 are Mr. Jem's, 1 is donor) to the new clinic. The old clinic lent us a two-foot tall metal travel canister, which I put in the foot-well of the car between my feet for the 40 minute drive to Dr. Z's clinic. Mr. Jem and I giggled about if we got pulled over we wouldn't know what to say if the officer asked, "What's in the canister?"

Other news: we had visitors yesterday, a very nice couple who used to live on our cul-de-sac. What was nice was that two sets of our current neighbors came to see the visitors, and came with their kids, so we had two 4-y-o boys running through the house being chased by their 15-m-o brothers. It was so wonderful to hear the pidder-pat of kids' feet, to hear their laughter, to play ball with them. After they left I turned to Mr. Jem and said, "This is why we are going through the paperwork, the injections, the prodding, the surgery. To have THAT! I want that!" He nodded at me, eyes shining. "You really want a boy, don't you?" I asked. All he could do was nod. I saw it all in his eyes. Hey, we are doing PGS, so theoretically we could know the sex of our future baby before it's deposited back in me... Of course, I just want A BABY. I don't care if it's a boy or a girl. Just give me that baby!!!!!!!!!

Wow, this post turned out longer than I had thought it would be. I do love all your comments and appreciate  your support. And your questions. I did ask Dr. Z about DNA fragmentation and he said that his clinic doesn't do it anymore because they didn't see any benefit to their patients. They found that there were no more pregnancies as a result of choosing "better" sperm than more fragmented sperm. In any case, we don't have enough to do any such procedures, so the point is moot.

Okay, I better get back to work! Love you guys!

~Jem