4DT5DT

Another snow day...woke up to a veritable winter wonderland outside of our apartment. I love how the snow envelops the sounds of the city and everything is quiet. For once. I sleep so good when it snows because the sound of the light rail at the end of our block is muffled.

*bliss*

I'm not sure about these POAS that I bought off of Amazon (manufactured by WongFo - 20mIU/ml sensitivity). Tried another one this AM and the same faint line persists, hasn't changed for two days. I am certain it's just an evaporation line as it's too early for it to be picking up anything. I just wish that the test area was completely "white" so that there would be no mistake. (For you newbies: it's an area on the stick where the reagent is located that picks up the hCG. In the right light you can see it and be fooled into thinking it's a BFP).

I'm 10 days past trigger at this point, so the damned stuff should be completely gone by now. Maybe I'll get the boyfriend to pee on one tonight so I can use him as a baseline for what NO hCG looks like with these sticks? Or maybe one of the cats?

Here kitty kitty...

3DP5DT: Snow Day

We've got big snow here today. It just keeps falling out of the sky. 4-8" due this afternoon and another 5-9" this evening. If I weren't in my 2WW I'd grab my board and go board in the park until someone stopped me. :-)

My two cats are interested in the snow but have no idea what it is. They occasionally jump into the window to check it out and just stare at it all. My bigger girl, Gigi, is the bolder of the two. Coco is a meek chocolate point Siamese mix - scared of the TV and her own shadow. One day I'll post a picture.

I put a collar on Gigi and attached a leash. When she wakes up I'm going to see if I can walk her downstairs to frolic about in the snow for a few minutes. If she'll stand for that. My cats have NEVER been in snow. This is the first year they've actually SEEN it, in fact, but from the safety of the double paned windows of our apartment. Gigi's bold. I imagine she'll dive right into a pile until she realizes how cold it is!

On the IF front:

After a number of emails back and forth between myself and Dr. Italian, I finally got to the bottom of the miscommunication about my "blasts".

Apparently the nurse (or office person) who conveyed the information to me was incorrect about BOTH being blasts. One was a grade 3 blast, the other was a cleaved embryo (he used the word "cleaved" which I was unfamiliar with - I had to look it up to basically determine that it's an embryo that hasn't gone blast). How she got so far off track is beyond me. So the end result wasn't as good as I'd hoped for...but still one good blast.

Aside from that, I got up at the crack of dawn, 3:30 or 4:00AM to take the boyfriend to the train station so he could get to Boston for two days of meetings. I POAS about 4AM then went back to bed for 15 minutes. I POAS again at 4:30AM just to see if these cheapo things test consisently. One looked liked yesterday's, a very very faint line that is still trigger HCG and one showed nothing. So they're close. FRER showed nothing yesterday morning when my trigger HCG would have been stronger, so they're a POS compared to the cheapos. 50 cheapos that test 20mIU for $11 is a great deal in my book.

I spent a bit of time reading a number of different IF sites last night. Most women who get a BFP after a 5DT saw a positive line no earlier than 5DP5DT and 6DP5DT, so I won't really start to pay attention to anything on the tests until about then. Until then, I love seeing the trigger disappear.

2DT5DT: Yes, I'm POAS!

It's only 2 days since transfer but I peed on a couple sticks today to see if my trigger is all gone.

First Response can't see a thing (25mIU) and my new ones from WondFo (20mIU) have a very very very light line, might be a evaporation line - who knows. So the trigger is pretty much gone. At least I'll know if anything turns up in the days to come and I won't have to ask the question, "Gosh, I wonder if that's still my trigger?" I like having a "baseline" pee stick to base other pee sticks on. Must be the scientist in me.

So the other embryo didn't make it.

Dr. Italian wrote and said the following:

The second embryo was cleaved (i.e. never made it to blast) on day 5 and never changed therefore it was discarded.
The blastocyst that you had transferred had no deeper grading; it was grade 3.

OK. This is a bit of a contradiction to me.

The nurse wrote to me on Monday and said:

"You have one non-expanded and one compacted, both grade 3. There will be one last update right before transfer.

Grade 3, in reference to an embryo that is "non-expanded" or "compacted" means that they are "blasts".

Cleaved means an embryo that is not yet a blast.

So which was it? Was it a grade 3 blast? Or was it a cleaved embryo?

It can't be both. It is so frustrating when people aren't clear. Maybe I just don't understand something about embryo or blast grading, but I wish they would educate me on this. I emailed Dr. Italian asking for further clarification and haven't heard back from him.

I hate being "that patient", that irritating "has to ask every question" patient...but I think that's me ... despite my trying so hard to not be irritating.