Day 21: A wedding!

Good news: we have a wedding to look forward to! Our friend Sander finally got around to popping the big question to Alexandra last weekend. They are the living proof of the famous Dutch saying 'from a wedding comes a wedding', since they met at our wedding five years ago! When she sent me a text message announcing the exciting news, it made me all emotional. Of course I blame the pregnancy hormones for that!

I am given the pregnancy (HCG) hormone injections to support the implantation of the embryo and sort of kick start the system into believing it's pregnant. It could fool me: they make me nauseous, tired and wobbly. Fortunately Jonny has found the perfect balance between giving me full emotional support and not taking my rantings too seriously. Bless!

There is really nothing we can do but wait. Unfortunately patience has never been one of my virtues and I am finding this two week wait really difficult. Most of the time I am happy though. Happy about how far we have gotten and how close we are to having our own offspring. And most importantly, how strong we both are! :-)

In order to keep myself occupied, I drop off the new door handles in the house this morning. One of my friends said that the house is starting to look so good, surely the stork MUST want to pop by soon. I make a mental note of remembering to tell him that babies are not brought by the stork... I like the thought though, so I show emmy around and tell how nice the baby room to be is looking already.

Day 17: Blastocyst and books

I am now the proud caretaker of a blastocyst: it already has so many cells that individual cells are no longer recognizable.

Implantation can start to occur as soon as six to seven days after the retrieval. So that would be tomorrow or Tuesday. In order to give emmy every possible chance to implant I continue to take it easy.

There is a wide range of opinions on the subject of bed rest, but it has not been proven that bed rest will give a better chance of getting pregnant. However, it is a very good excuse to just potter around the house and finally read some books that were waiting to be read!

Painters and decorators

When we started painting the house a few weeks back, we were pretty confident that, despite taking a bit of time and effort, we'd be able to finish most of the painting ourselves, before it was time to move into the house. After spending a couple of weekends painting, the realisation of exactly how much work was required hit us with a bang and we unanimously decided it was time to call in the professionals.

 
We've been picking up some pretty good references and tips along the way... the company that installed our lights for us also recommended the guy to install our floor. So we decided to follow up their lead on the painter. After agreeing on a price, they started work early Monday morning. Even with two professional painters working full time, they anticipated that the work would take at least a week and a half. As you can see from the pictures, one week has gone already and they've not yet completed the front of the house and this is with three guys working! So we're anicipating them to finish at the end of next week.

But the timing is fine... with everything else that's going on in our lives at the moment, we've certainly become a lot less stressed about the house, simply because we haven't got the energy to! However, as a result, things seem to be ticking along quite smoothly and at a pleasant pace. As you can see from the pictures, the builders continue to be in and out as they've now installed nearly all of the doors. They were going to have the floor in the front finished this week, but decided to hold back and let the painters finish in the front before they come and lay the floor... which we're fine with.

The builders are also going to fit the kitchen for us. They've already lined it all up, but they need to make some modifications to the unit that is going to house the sink, since behind this unit is the manifold for the underfloor heating, which needs to be accommodated in the kitchen unit. But the builders seem to think it's no big deal, so we're leaving them to it!

 
It's been a couple of weeks since we made a post on the house... shows that our minds have been mostly elsewhere! However, this doesn't mean that we've not been busy on the house! The wooden floor panels have now arrived, as have the plinths, both of which I've committed to install, but I'll wait until the builders have finished before I start work. As you can see, colour decisions have been made for the painting, the doors have been installed and a decision has been made on door handle designs.

A quote has been received for manufacturing a stainless steel counter top for the sink... we're just waiting for another quote before we decide on preffered supplier! We've already fitted a washing machine in the cupboard in the kitchen (thank you Martin, Grada and Wouter, it fits perfectly!) and the rest of the white goods are waiting to be delivered.

So we're pretty confident that the house will be in an hospitable state by the time we need to move out of our current home, or at least I was until I discovered that my presence has been requested for a two week trip to the other side of the world... starting two weeks before we're due to move house! So, as is typical with life, just as things are ticking along nicely, there's a little twist thrown in to spice things up a little. I'm confident that Flo and I can keep on top of things though... I'm pretty overwhelmed with how smooth things have been maintained to date, which gives me confidence that we can handle whatever is thrown at us...

I've added some more pictures of the house to our growing photo album. I'll update this with some of the pictures of the house when we'd just bought it so that you can get a real feel for just how big a transformation has occurred!

Enjoy your weekend! 

Day 15: 4 cell embryo

After an early night, our excitement continues this morning: today we are going to be another step closer to our baby!

I feel all relaxed after my appointment with the acupuncturist last night. She stayed late, especially for me, so she could see me before the transfer and ensure the best possible circumstances for the embryo. How good is that! Embryo you are very welcome!

The hospital has some good news this morning; the embryo has divided into two cells and is a good quality embryo. I'm told that if we get to the hospital early, we can have a look at the Flonny in the making prior to the transfer.

When we arrive in the hospital, our enthusiastic embryo has already divided into four cells and we can see it under the microscope. It is really amazing to see our embryo. This little life in the making, this little wonder is a combination of our cells! Jonny squeezes my hand and we smile at each other.

The actual transfer takes less than 5 minutes. On a screen we follow the embryo being transferred to my uterus. They double check that it is not left in the small cathether. And that is it. Officially I'm not pregnant yet, but it feels very special to have come this far. In exactly two weeks time we can do a pregnancy test at home.


We leave the hospital smiling.

Day 14: What's cooking? Two pronuclei!

We could call the hospital between 11:30 and 12:30 to find out how many eggs had fertilised. It made me wonder, is there anybody that waits until 12:25 to call? Just to increase the tension a bit more? We agreed Jonny would call since I was too nervous.

For a change ready on time, I was sat next to the phone at 11:25 waiting for Jonny to call me with some news. He didn't. Which I assumed had to do with serious phone congestion after seven egg retrievals yesterday. At 11:49 I could not contain myself any longer and called him.

Slight miscommunication from my side, telling Jonny he could call the hospital between 12:30 and 13:30. It must have been a slip of the finger when I typed up the appoinment in Microsoft Outlook. Since he was in a meeting I offered to make the phone call myself after all.

So at 11:50 the labaratory informed me that one egg cell had fertilised! They told me they had a bit of a scare, since it turned out the other one was immature and had no chance of fertilising at all. The one would have to do! And it did. Assuming it will divide further (this usually happens), the return to the mothership is tomorrow afternoon. This we will find out at 10:00 tomorrow morning. At 11:53 I called Jonny again during his meeting to tell him we are still in the race.

For those of you that actually want to know what stage the our combined DNA is at: the pronucleus of the female cell (egg) and the pronucleus of the male cell (sperm) fuse together to form a normal diploid number of chromosomes (2N = 46 in humans).

The appearance of two pronuclei (2pn) is the first sign of successful fertilization and is usually observed 18 hours after the ICSI procedure.

The embryo is placed in a CO2 incubator with a controlled temperature that is the same as my body: 37 degrees C. The conditions in the incubator and the culture medium are designed to mimic the conditions in the fallopian tube, so that the embryo can grow happily in vitro. The culture medium contains various ingredients such as protein, salts, buffer and antibiotics which allow optimal growth of the embryo – like chicken soup for the embryo!