Graduation Day

Tuesday marked our final 5:50 AM trek to RMA for what is hopefully a good long while (at least until 2015.) We're graduates!  We've been officially discharged and sent off with the masses to a regular OB who we will only see once a month until the third trimester.  Imagine that!  No weekly blood work, no, um, probes after 9 weeks, and best of all, no more shots!  I am on progesterone suppositories now through Week 10 but after that, it's cold turkey.  Once the placenta is fully formed, my body takes over making whatever hormones it needs from then on and I am free from all the meds, if not the side effects of said hormones.

It was good to say thank you and farewell to Dr. Hock in person.  She is genuinely thrilled for us and said she talks about me all the time with the other doctors, the girl with the phantom ovary who defied the odds.  It has been over 10 months of treatments with her and before that, an even longer road that stretches back to 2012.  It will be difficult to suddenly have nowhere to be before the sun is up but I'm sure within a few weeks, we'll get used to logging some extra zzzz's.  Certainly won't be missing the "waist down" strip or the "slight pressure" followed by a continual ooze for the remainder of the day, that's for sure.

We owe the entire RMA team, every doctor and nurse we've come into contact with, our baby's very life. Without them, we wouldn't have the Punkid growing on the vine or the 5 potential siblings waiting in cryopreservation.  I can't wait for the day when, watching The Empire Strikes Back, with our young child, I can point to the scene where Han Solo gets frozen and say, "Hey!  That's how you started out!"   

Dr. Hock

With a final look at the baby, which is now a proper fetus, complete with a giant head and little webbed fingers and toes, we closed the exam room door and walked out into the rising sun.  We said our goodbyes to the staff and to Harriet, the receptionist, who handed me my records and a pile of three magazines selling overpriced baby gear and designer maternity outfits.  HA!  As if real pregnant women, let alone IVF patients, will look like that in the third trimester...I read them for shits and giggles, trying to tell the difference between this breast pump and that one.  The day is fast approaching when we will have to decide on which gear is best but for now, I'm enjoying my stretchy jeans.