Valium Kicks Betsy's Butt

First of all, if you find yourself in a contest where you have to choose one partner to take narcotic drugs, don't pick Betsy.

She is such a light-weight when it comes to mind-altering drugs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased with that fact, but she is knocked out right now because she had to take Valium for this procedure that happened this morning.

We had instructions to be at the clinic this morning at 8:45 am for, what people in the biz call, the embryo transfer.

Just to give you a visual, Betsy decided to wear KMart brand grey sweatpants with elastic cuffs and she looked good! You don't have to wear fancy lingerie to get pregnant anymore, you can just wear sweatpants.

Here is another little tidbit - Betsy had to come with a full bladder which makes it easier to do the transfer. (If you need more information about that, just let me know.) But to keep it simple, she arrived at 8:45 kinda wanting to pee.

So, the first thing that happens is acupuncture! Can you believe it?! MeritCare's reproductive clinic has a 20% increase in pregnancy rates for people who do acupuncture when doing IVF.

An MD does the acupuncture and she was awesome. I don't understand it, but I'm glad to hear it helps. She started by pokin' a little needle in Betsy's head. Then the doctor looked at Betsy's thumb carefully, said "okay," then shoved two more needles into her calves. Then the doctor held her hand up to Betsy's and said, "yep." Then she popped two more needles into her belly!

It's strange, I know. But this type of procedure helps the blood flow to the "oven." (People in the medical field...well, I guess most people, call it the uterus, not the oven.)

While we wait for the acupuncture procedure to be completed, other people start coming in with a variety of clamps, very large Q-tips, and something that sounded like a bug zapper.

Our doctor, Dr. Dahl, came in and she was pumped! She told us that 8 of those 12 fertilized eggs were still growing! And that is great!! The picture above shows the two best embryos. The top right one was GRADE 1 and the other was GRADE 2. Grade 1 embryos are not easy to get, so Betsy and I shared a high five. (But I had to be careful - she had about 14 needles in her at that point.)

So, the plan was made to transfer 2 and freeze the other 6. Those can be used later if we want. We would just come back, they'd take them out the fridge and leave them on the counter to thaw out, then put them in.

Anyways, after 25 minutes of acupuncture and making sure that they were taking the correct embryos from the lab, it was time for the actual transfer.

Remember how I said Betsy had to pee at 8:45 am? Well, it's now 10:00 am and still no good time to pee.

Next, a masked lady comes into the room and says, "Debertin two." That means she is carrying two embryos in a syringe from the Debertin family. If she would have walked in and said, "Johnson three." I would've had to use my hockey goalie skills and stand between the pipes to make sure they weren't going to put the wrong ones in. (When I say stand between the pipes, I mean stirrups. But saying "standing between the pipes" sounds cooler.)

So, in the room, there is the doctor, Bob the ultrasound guy, the masked lady, and then some other stranger walked in, too. Not sure who she was. Anyways, there were 6 of us in the room. Betsy didn't get to see from her angle, but I, along with the other four, got to watch everything on the ultrasound screen. It was awesome.

Anyways, during this time I decided to say, "Betsy, usually there wasn't this many people in the bedroom." The problem was that Betsy laughed a little. so the doctor had to scold us, slightly, for laughing. I guess when your placing embryos in a uterus, you shouldn't make any movements in the belly area. When she laughed, I saw her "innards" wiggle on the ultrasound screen. Oops, sorry Betsy for the joke.

Actually, the doctor wasn't really upset. I think she just was surprised to have her patient laughing during a sorta important part of the process.

So, the embryos went in at 10:20 am. Wow.

Then it was time for 25 more minutes of acupuncture. Remember that "bug zapper" sound I mentioned? Well, she took this little zapping tool and put it up to Betsy's ears to look for a good point to poke. Betsy was a trooper. 10 more needles and then 25 more minutes of relaxing. The problem was now she was really needing to go to the bathroom. She chugged a liter bottle of water on the car ride in and now she was about to explode! She made it to 20 minutes then had to call it. It was time to pee.

So, I held Betsy's hand while she walked to the bathroom while wearing one of those hospital gowns on. I was dying to say some sort of joke about her butt checks showing, but we had already gotten in trouble once for laughing, so I didn't want to push my luck. But I'll tell you one thing, Betsy "high on Valium" with her cute tush showing is so dang funny! She also has two Sharpie marker circles on her butt!

Betsy got a hug from the nurse and then we were free to go. So today is just a resting day. We will either come home Sunday or Monday.

Then we wait.

Well, I better go get some snacks for Betsy. Talk to you soon.