Consider me PUPO

The Vancouver housing market is insane.  A report that came out yesterday posited "Vancouver residents could expect to spend 92.5% of their pre-tax income on home ownership costs, including mortgage payments, utilities and property taxes."  In-freaking-sane.  That's why Sweets and I bought a townhouse in the 'burbs.  Granted, a townhouse in the 'burbs is the price of a home in Calgary.  Ugh....  

Where is this going?  Well, while housing costs are lower "across the bridge", when it comes to commuting, we suburbanites are slaves to traffic.  Our clinic is a good 40-50 mins away, almost in the heart of Vancouver.  This morning, three out of the 4 routes into the city had major accidents on them.  Not good.  Sweets is a slow mover in the morning but when he heard that we had to take the dreaded Port Mann into the city, he started moving double time.  Fortunately, while the traffic was not the best, I've seen it worse.  We actually got to the clinic only 3 minutes late.   Three minutes.  Wow.  I was expecting about 15-20 minutes late.  

After changing into my gown, the embryologist escorted us into the treatment room and got me seated on the table.  "You've got some very good embryos."  What?  Good embryos?  Us?  Is she mistaken?  She showed me the patient information sheet and said,  "Yes, you are transferring 3 8 cell embryos.  They are grade 1.  Very good."  She went on to explain, "We froze 5 of the embryos and are culturing 2 more to blastocyst stage.  They are good embryos too."  The remaining embryos are mainly grades 1 and 2.  There is one grade 4.  Sweets and I were both gobsmacked.  Wow!  What a difference a couple of months makes.

  Dr. A., who did the retrieval, performed the transfer as well.  I researched her a little online.  Apparently, she's the one of the best in Canada in the field of endometriosis and one of the early adopters in Canada of advanced laparoscopic surgical techniques  No wonder my retrieval went so well. 

As usual, Sweets has been awesome. He has insisted on me stretching out in the car on the way home.  When we got home, he asked "Do you need some help out of the car?"  LOL   What a sweetheart.

Now here I am.  Relaxing on the couch with my kitties, hoping and praying that one of those little guys takes.  

This is gonna be a long two weeks.  

Up. Up. Up.

Cycle day 9.  

A quick visit to the clinic proved to be fruitful.  Both my left and right ovaries have approximately 5 decent sized follicles and 4-5 follicles 9mm or under each.  The largest follicle is on the right sized at 17mm.  I think the grand total is about 10 substantial follicles and 10 wee ones.  For the most part, the follicles on my left ovary are quite uniform - 4 are 14mm in size.  My E2 has gone up nicely as well - around 5200.  I have two more days of injections (200 today; 150 tomorrow) and then another visit to the clinic on Friday.  I have a feeling that I'll be triggering on Friday night with my ER on Sunday.

I've been stressing out about this cycle, thinking I'm not progressing well.  Thanks to the many reassurances from the doctors and forums members on IVF.CA and Fertile Thoughts
Things are going well.  As they've stated over and over, it's quality not quantity.  Last time I had a lot of follicles but not necessarily the best quality eggs.   
 
That's about it on the fertility front.   Nothing else to report.  

View of West Vancouver from Prospect Point in Stanley Park