Oh baby! It’s transfer day!

For the last month, I have been anxiously waiting. And not in the way a girl anxiously awaits her wedding day. More as in the girl who has been through four embryo transfers without any success. I made it through each ultrasound this cycle, even as my estrogen dropped lower than they wanted and I was in danger of a canceled cycle. But then it rose, not to around 200-something like I thought, but to over 2,000 since adding the vaginal estrogen pill at night (I thought it was a typo in my patient portal). Once I knew we were a go, the next thing to focus on was the fertilization report, which we found out Saturday that 6 of the 8 eggs fertilized.

We left my sister’s Tuesday morning and met our friend, Celina, in Houston, and drove together down to the Gulf to the beach house we were all renting for the week. I mean, what better place to do my bedrest than on the ocean? I was doing a great job at not thinking about the transfer. About what it would mean if there were no embryos. If the embryos weren’t good quality. We ate at a fantastic seafood restaurant on the coast the night before and then spent the rest of the evening unpacking and star-gazing. It wasn’t until I was in bed, listening to the waves crashing outside my window that I did something that I haven’t done in a while: I prayed. And I decided right then and there that I was going to give this worry to God and put it in His hands. And then I fell asleep and woke up and ate breakfast and then we were off to the clinic in Houston for a 12:45 transfer.

The nurse called us back and took my blood pressure (high-I wonder why) and asked how my bladder felt after drinking 36 oz of water (very full, thank you very much). We changed into our surgical garb, the nurse gave me the Motrin and Valium and we were left waiting for Dr. G.

Guess what? My hands weren’t clammy. I wasn’t sitting there, wringing my hands wondering if we had embryos. “We have embryos,” I told Chris, “They wouldn’t take us this far if there were no embryos.” I laughed and cracked jokes with Chris and changed positions frequently because my bladder felt like it was going to ZOMGEXPLODE!

Then the doctor came through the curtain. By this time I was flying high from the Valium and gushed to Dr. G., “I am SO glad to see you!”

He broke into a huge smile and shook our hands, “I have great news for you guys!”

“Are you serious?” My smile faltered and I started feeling the prick of tears.

He nodded his head. I can’t even remember all of what he said. But he told us we have two beautiful embryos, blasts, and they looked amazing. He said we have another blast (a day 5 embryo) and a morula, which he said he was confident, could catch up. “I think you could even have 1 or 2 left to freeze.”

And acting in true Risa fashion, I put my hands to my face, my head down and burst into tears.

“Are you serious?” I kept asking through my tears.

He told me we have two to transfer unless I wanted to do one.

I waved my hand at him, “Go big or go home.”

He smiled again, “Excellent.”

The thing I love about my doctor is that he is incredibly sweet and kind-hearted. But he is also honest and he doesn’t sugar-coat things. So when he is excited about this, it means he has reason to be excited.

I stared at Chris through my tears and just kept repeating over and over, “We have two. They’re perfect. They’ve never been perfect before.” And then I laughed and cried some more and then it was time to take me back to transfer them.

It couldn’t have gone any better, you guys. Our first IVF, with Adam, we had one three day embryo because that’s all there was. IVF #2 and #3 each had one embryo each, behind. Donor transfer #1 had two embryos each 1 and 2 days behind. Ask me if I ever had a glimmer of freezing leftover embryos and I would go into hysterics. Chris and I—we don’t make good embryos.

Now I am sitting, laying rather, here in the living room of a beach house in Galveston, with no Internet service with two beautiful well-developed embryos and I have two more in the lab continuing to grow. I am in awe, you guys. I feel like for the first time in a month I can breathe without the panic in my chest that this cycle is going to go south like every other cycle before it. I actually feel (be still my heart) that I am going to come out of this with a baby or two.