ultra-cool ultrasound

So we had our first post-FET ultrasound yesterday. I would have posted a quick synopsis last night, but the annoying Mr. Foxy was hogging the laptop, looking up tiles and whatnot for his big bathroom rehab project. This is what IF husbands do while IF wives are busy blogging, posting on support boards, and getting opinions from Dr. Goog.le.

Our exam was one day short of 6 weeks, so we expected to see a fetal pole and (maybe or maybe not) a heartbeat. I was relieved and surprised to see that, even though the embryo was a mere 2 mm long, the technician was able to point out to us a faint little heart flicker. The whole thing was too tiny to zero in and actually measure the heart-rate, but the techie was upbeat and went so far as to label "BABY" on the u/s printout. Our ill-fated pregnancy in October never got beyond the "SAC" label. Ugh.

Dr. Snaggletooth wants us to come back in 2 weeks for another u/s. I expected him to have us back in one week, so I guess 2 weeks is a sign that he's pretty confident in Lil' Scrappy's growing potential. He said that if things look good at 8 weeks then he can comfortably pass us on to a regular OB. All-in-all this is very encouraging. I'm not yet 100% convinced that this is for real, but I definitely feel more "pregnant" than "in limbo".

I took the opportunity to inquire about our other frosties and to mildly critique my clinic's freezing protocols. (You may recall that our highest quality AA and AB blasts were frozen in pairs and the lower-grade BB that we transferred was the only one frozen as a single.) The doctor confirmed that our 4 remaining blasts are frozen in pairs and so there's no easy way to do a single transfer again in the future. If Lil' Scrappy doesn't pull through, or if we want another child in the future, we'll have to thaw 2 embryos and either transfer both or do one and discard the other. (It's not really advisable to freeze-thaw embies repeatedly.) I refrained from complaining about the single BB we received (instead of the AA or AB), because *knock wood* this one is going great guns so far.

Dr. Snaggletooth didn't really have a good explanation except that 2 embies is their standard procedure, most patients transfer 2-3, I'm really a "special case", yadda yadda. I didn't lay it on too thick, but I did suggest that they should get their freezing protocols more in line with the trend toward doing more single transfers. (It was their idea, not mine, but I've read up on it since and think it's a very good thing.) I may be a special case for my age group, but I know they have much younger patients with great embies who are increasingly inclined to do single transfers.

In the next few days, our embie should grow from the size of a sesame seed to a lentil bean. Then it goes through a progression of ever-larger beans, followed by a sequence of increasingly large fruit. I really hope we get to do the whole gastronomical sequence.. fingers crossed.