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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Egg retrieval and more tales from dirty headquarters (Liane's house)

I left Sunday afternoon for Jacksonville with Jason, Cooper, and Carley. When we arrived at their house, there was dirty laundry piled up as high as the kitchen table on the floor, old dishes in the sink, cat barf everywhere, and the place smelled like a litter box. Good times. Anyway, I couldn't deal with any of that after a long day on the road. By the time we arrived, we had to start putting the kids to bed. I made a mental note, however, that the next day would be devoted to a cleaning frenzy!

Monday morning was insane. Cooper has school from 8:30-11:30, which is not nearly long enough, but I was willing to take the break from him temporarily. The kids got up around 7:15, and the craziness started immediately. Well, Carley's little bad habits had already sparked up in the middle of the night. She started crying at around midnight, and I had to go take her out of her crib and bring her to bed with me. That's what Liane does every night. Then, Carley puts herself to sleep and comforts herself by tugging at Liane's hair all night, and since I was the one there Sunday night, she got to yank on my hair all night. Needless to say, I did not sleep very well at all. Hair pulling may comfort her, but it gives me a headache.

Anyway, at 7:15 I had to start by changing Cooper's diaper and clothes. I was still in my pajamas, and Carley is very needy in the morning so I was trying to juggle her on one hip while getting Cooper situated. Then, he came out of his room, and he wanted to watch tv for a while, which was fine because I needed time to make breakfast. I toasted some bread and waffles, got sippy cups with orange juice ready...all while still holding Carley. I really had to pee at this point so I ran into the bathroom and had to go with Carley on my lap. That was pleasant.

After that, it was right back to breakfast prep (yes, I washed my hands). I got Cooper and Carley in their high chairs, and they ate some breakfast. Then, Cooper wanted to get out of his chair. He takes a dump every morning after breakfast. He runs into his playroom and shuts the door. He needs privacy for pooping. At one point, I went in to check on him, and he was squatting in the corner, and he waved me off saying, "No, Wasie, go way." He calls me Wasie now. I guess Leslie is too hard to say.

He finally emerged from the room around 7:50, and I had to get him changed again and ready for school. I took advantage of his poop time to change Carley out of her pajamas. I fought with him for several minutes about putting on his shoes and going to school. He didn't want to go, but I used scare tactics, and they worked.

I dropped him off at about 8:25. Good timing. He asked the lady who opened the door in the carpool line, "Have you seen Miss Mandy around?" That's his teacher. It was so cute the way he asked. He hadn't been there in 2 weeks so I was worried about how the day was going to go, but I was hoping for the best, but that's not how it turned out.

From school, I took Carley to Super Wal-Mart for a grocery shopping excursion. She only sat in the cart for about the first 10 minutes and then wanted to be held. It's not easy pushing a cart while holding a child, and it's nearly impossible to find what you are looking for in a store with which you are not familiar. So we got through that as quickly as possible (I only purchased the essentials) and headed home.

I unpacked the groceries and had some one-on-one playtime with Carley. I also started some loads of laundry when I got back. Then, it was time to get Cooper. Here we go again! When I pulled up in the carpool line, there was Cooper, and Miss Mandy was next to him holding his hand, signaling for me to stop to talk to her. Great. Cooper had been a very bad boy that day. As Miss Mandy put it, "it was rough." She asked if he slept okay because he had been whiny and hadn't listened to her. I said I was sorry, and I would inform his parents. I wasn't going to take the fall for those folks.

We got home, and I put in some more loads of laundry and shifted around the clean clothes to the dryer. Next came lunch time. I heated up some food for the kids, put them in their chairs, but Cooper didn't want to eat. He kept saying, "My no eat, Wasie." I had to resort to bribes at that point, and he choked down some of his food. He watched TV for a few minutes, but it was nap time so I started prepping them both for naps. I had to change diapers, read books, etc. Cooper was refusing to go to sleep, and I was rocking Carley in her room and could hear him screaming, "Wasie! Wasie! Wasie, come back!" from his room. Once I finally got Carley out, I went back in his room, read him another book, scared him a little more about what would happen if he didn't fall asleep, and he was off to dreamland...well, maybe nightmares, but I didn't care. He was asleep.

While they napped, I continued on my mad cleaning streak by doing more laundry, emptying the dishwasher and reloading it, and sweeping the floor in the kitchen. I also started some dinner prep. I chopped some onions and other ingredients. I was making a tortellini-vegetable soup for Liane and a meatloaf and mashed potatoes for my dad, Jason, and myself.

Carley woke up after about 45 minutes, which sucked. I needed more time, but oh well. I got her out of bed and brought her out to the kitchen with me. She chased around the cats for a while and shortly thereafter, Cooper was up and ready to go again. He's at 100% all the time. I decided we needed to go outside and play so we headed out there.

Jason had been replacing rotten siding on the house, and there were pieces of the old siding with nails sticking out in the driveway. Cooper stepped on one, but luckily it did not go through his shoe. Then, he ran over to an orange tree and picked off a small orange that must have tasted terrible because it was so tiny. I'm guessing it was super sour, but before I knew it, he had peeled it and was eating it. Yuck.

Carley kept trying to run out in the street so I was chasing her all over the place. Cooper got on his bike and tried to run Carley down. It was total insanity. This was around 4 p.m., and I still had not even brushed my hair. I was looking good.

My dad and Liane arrived around 4:30, which was sweet salvation. I was so glad to have some help. Mostly, I needed help folding the mountain of laundry I had cleaned all day. Liane took over kiddy duty, and my dad and I went back to working on cleaning projects.

Liane said that Kibby (Alice's husband) had asked what time her procedure was Monday, and she told him 8 a.m. He said, "So, you and Billy are going to be doin' it at 8 a.m. basically." Ha! I told her to tell Kibby that in exchange for her doing it with Billy, I was showing my butt to Jason on Sunday and Monday nights. Jason had to give me my progesterone shots those two nights. That needle is huge, but at least he's a doctor so it wasn't that big of a deal. Still, it was weird to have him shoot me up. The things I must do to make a baby.

So here's the news you've all been waiting for. They retrieved 25 eggs from Liane. Of those, 19 were mature enough to be fertilized. They separated out 6 of those to fertilize conventionally, which means they just put the egg and sperm together and let nature takes its course. Of those, 4 fertilized. Then, the took the other 13 and did ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection), which basically means they take a sperm and inject it directly into the egg. Of those, 12 fertilized. Therefore, we currently have 16 embryos growing in some dish in a lab. They will have genetic testing done starting Thursday, and we will not know the results until Saturday morning, just before embryo transfer. I'm supposed to get a call Friday afternoon to have the transfer scheduled.

Liane was doing fine after the surgery. She was just a little tired and slightly crampy, but that's to be expected. Dad and I stayed Monday night to get her through the evening, and she was better in the morning. We left there around 8:30 a.m. and arrived back in Atlanta around 3 p.m.

I'm glad to be back but exhausted. I'm ready to get some rest. If it's triplets, I don't know what I'll do. I'm just not thinking about that for now.

I'll let you all know once my embryo transfer is scheduled. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for reading this super long entry.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

you've got an army working for you - awesome!!! i am so excited for you. i look forward to reading your blog, i check it every night - it's one of my bookmarks! happy turkey day. i'll be checking this weekend for an update and sending you happy uterus and implantation thoughts!!

kmehawkeye said...

excellent details. Can you come clean my house while you are at it? JK! Great news on the egg numbers....why stop at 3 when you could have 16 little bambinos running around. You would definitely score a spot on oprah! Happy Thanksgiving!

Anonymous said...

I am tired just reading this entry!!! How does Liane do it??? I guess when cleaning isn't part of your day you have extra time. Congrats to Liane's ovaries...Good work!

Jamie said...

Awesome news on the eggs/embryos!! Sending you lots of baby vibes. Happy Thanksgiving but more importantly, happy implanting...
Love ya.

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