Family

I'm sorry to keep you waiting for the update on how many were frozen, but I was happily distracted by a visit from family this week. So they told us they would be freezing 3 embryos. This is a much smaller number than I expected, but it's more than we've ever had in the past. I don't know anything about the quality of those three, but I'm sure they'll tell me if and when we need to use them.

It's amazing how few actual children will/would result from so many eggs in the beginning. here's a recap on the numbers:
17 eggs
15 of those eggs were mature
11 fertilized
9 were still growing on day 3
2 were ready on day 5, leaving 7 needing one more day of watching
3 of those 7 continued to grow normally and were frozen.

Statistically, of the 2 embryos already transferred, it is likely that 1 of them will become a baby.
Then, of the three frozen embryos, 2/3 are likely to survive the freezing/thawing, and then if two are transferred, it is likely that one will become a baby.

So that means 17 eggs = 2 babies. If we're lucky! Now two would be enough, but it's just astounding to me how nature works. Men make hundreds of millions of sperm every month compared to a woman's one egg. And that one egg is by no means guaranteed to be any good. It's just amazing. Babies really are a miracle, and my time this week with family really highlighted that.

I got to see my two nieces, and I LOVE being Aunt Sarah. Having the "next generation" around is what keeps the prior generations together. "It's what life is all about" is what I kept hearing. Funny thing how people say things like that. There are studies out there that show that married couples sans children are generally happier than their parenting counterparts. But maybe those studies are just too narrow to have any real meaning. Maybe you can't judge the worthiness of having children on the happiness of the parents in the middle of it all. Children are way, way more than that: they are grandchildren, nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, future members of society, and much much more. Thank you to my family for visiting this week and for distracting me from the waiting.

Speaking of waiting...well...what can you say about it? It stinks. Monday seems like an eternity from now. Part of me thinks "there's just no way I can be pregnant when I don't feel any different." And another part of me thinks "there's just no way I can NOT be pregnant since we've come so far and the odds are really in our favor." But really, either could be true, and there's nothing to do but wait.