It's Time.

Saturday.

Saturday’s are great for many things. Sleeping in, yard work, debating where to go for brunch on Sunday….making a baby? Hell yeah Saturday’s are good for making a baby.

Ok, technically the baby was already made, six of them actually. As you all know, following the egg retrieval, Jess and I ended up with six healthy and viable blastocysts/embryos. Following the growth of our embryo’s we had to wait for several things, Jessica’s next cycle as well as spending about 10-11 days on estrogen/progesterone supplements to help grow her endometrium. We went in on Tuesday of last week to visit with our doctor and she was pleased with the progress and scheduled our embryo transfer for Saturday morning at 11:00am. Woohoo! We finally had a transfer date! The only problem was that we were scheduled to fly out of Barcelona on Friday afternoon.

Long story short, we moved our flight, booked another hotel for the additional two nights, and settled in for the longest 4 days of our lives. The waiting. The anticipation. The excitement. It was finally here. The event that we had spent so much money on, travelled so far for, and invested so much emotion on was finally here!

Fast forward to Saturday morning. We awoke in our hotel, got ready and booked a taxi up to the clinic. Upon our arrival, one of the nurses we had been dealing with quite frequently, Mar, was there to assist us. She gave us some water, more-so for Jess as she needed a “comfortably full” bladder for the transfer. I think it’s something to do with making the ultrasound easier to see? I’m not really sure on that one. After that, we met briefly with our doctor who told us that our embryo’s had successfully made it through the thawing process, and she was pleased with the health of them, and confirmed that we wished to transfer two in this one visit. We had long ago agreed to transfer two. The chances of having twins when transferring two embryo’s is around 24%. A chance we were more than willing to take after coming so far and investing so much in this process. We were taken to a sort of ‘staging room’ where we put on a sweet medical gown, booties, and a hair net while we waited for the doctor to finish the previous transfers scheduled ahead of us.

When our turn came, it felt…surreal. It was difficult to comprehend that in mere minutes, we would be pregnant. We were escorted to the operating theater and Jess took her seat in what has to be the most awkward/uncomfortable sort of chair ever created. Ladies, you know the one. While the nurses were preparing various items needed for the transfer, the doctor directed our attention to a television in the room that was playing on a loop. It was a looped sequence from a microscope, looking at our embryo’s! It was so cool to see! The doctor made a comment about them being our babies, one boy, and one girl. In hindsight, Jessica and I are kicking ourselves for not asking her for clarification. Was there really one of each? Or was she just making conversation to break the ice, and said there was one of each since we decided to transfer two? Either way, the excitement in the moment had our minds all over the place.

The time came to complete the transfer, and in all honesty, it was over very quickly. From the time we entered the operating theater to the time the doctor said we were done was under 5 minutes. After the transfer, the doctor said that she was again pleased with the embryo’s and confirmed for us that the embryo’s had made it out of the catheter and asked us to rest in the room for a few minutes before getting up. Afterwards we spend 5-10 minutes in our staging room to recover, said goodbye to the amazing medical staff, and took a taxi back to our hotel.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the hotel, napping, netflixing (no chilling though), and sharing in the excitement of the moment. As of this moment, we are considered PUPO, pregnant until proven otherwise. We will take a pregnancy test approximately two weeks after returning home. I am hopeful that the levels come back really high, as that would be indicative of twins!

We are over-the-moon with excitement at this point. We have enjoyed every minute of our time in Spain. It has been truly, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. At the same time, we are ready to come home. The homesickness is setting in. We miss our friends, our families, our dogs, our bed.

Thank you all for sticking with us through this incredible journey. But make sure you stay tuned, because we will be continuing this blog to provide pictures from adventures in Spain that we haven’t shared yet, as well as transitioning into a pregnancy journey blog.

Thank you again to all of our friends and family for all of your love and support.

We look forward to seeing you all when we arrive home.

Love and Respect

-- Cole

P.S. If you’re asking…yes. I did cry during the transfer.