Monday morning I got my eggs sucked out of me.  We arrived at the doc's office at 8:30 and the procedure was to begin at 9:30.  On the 8:30 dot James got me a "sip" of water (he really didn't overdo it -- there was about a centimeter of water in the paper cup) and I took the pretty blue Valium pill.  In a few minutes I told him, "The part of my head right here (I pointed to the space between my eyes) is feeling fuzzy."  He looked at it and said, "Nope.  Not fuzzy."  I said, "I'm pretty sure it's fuzzy."  He looked again and said, "No.  It's pretty smooth."  Then the Valium totally won over my desire to continue that game, and my head collapsed onto his big strong shoulder.The night before the procedure we had discussed our worries.  I was worried that I wouldn't have many eggs, or that they wouldn't be any good.  He was worried that he wouldn't have enough sperm to get the job done.  I thought his worries were silly and he thought mine were silly.  That's what makes our marriage good.  We both worry on our own behalf but can very easily reassure the other.Around 8:45 James walked my intoxicated self to the back of the doctor's office.  I had to "empty my bladder" (some people call this peeing) and had to do it on my own.  It was very similar to trying to go to the bathroom in a bar when you're really drunk.  The nurses were perched to help me if I fell, but they were also amused.  Just like your good friends at the bar.  I made it out in one piece and was led into the IVF suite.  Very sweet.  James was turned away to go do his "business" in the bathroom that has the recliner and porno magazines in it. It was a different kind of fun than I was going to have.First they traded my shoes for a set of paper booties.  Very cool.  Then I stripped from the waist down and covered myself with one of those pretty paper "drapes" that neither drapes nor reaches all the way around from the front to my spine in back.  The IVF nurse got me set up on the IV(not F) drip and filled me up with Demerol.  She showed me the ultrasound wand that they would use to delve into my vagina and get a picture of the shadows it contained.  Within the wand would be a needle that they could pop up, pierce each follicle sac in my ovaries, and let the fluid and eggs drain into.  I asked how big that needle was.  She said with a smile, "Big enough."  Hm. Comforting.A man dressed all in paper came in and introduced himself as the embryologist.  He held up a folder in front of him to refer to, and asked me to say my name.  I told him, even going for the fancy "Katherine" version rather than my everyday "Kay."  He confirmed that I was right.  He said that once the drugs get going, they get better results if they ask the women to recite their names, rather than just confirm that they are who the embryologist suggests.  Apparently women in that condition are prone to agreeing that they are anyone.  I said that, in that case, I was Liz Taylor.  But he already knew I wasn't.The nurse came back in and had me scootch down to the end of the table and put my knees in some knee stirrups -- this is the unconscious-woman version of the foot stirrups -- and that was the end of that.  When I woke up I was back in one of the normal rooms on a normal table, with James sitting by my side.  Those memories are pretty hazy, but even when I'm only operating at 10%, I take after my Aunt Julie in wanting to document EVERYTHING.  So James helped me get my clothes and shoes back on, and then I had all three nurses that I'd seen that day come in and pose for a picture.  I can't believe I was the one to take the picture.  I can't believe that it came out okay.  My picture-taking skills were probably 3-year-old level.  At least I didn't get my fingers in the shot.The team cheered me on and drunk-me and steady-James walked out of the office.  They had given us instructions on how to care for me during recovery, but only James was aware of that.  He carried the precious instruction sheet, with things like "don't let her drive!!!!" highlighted in yellow, in his pocket.  They let us leave through a short-cut, not the office lobby, and I felt like a star.  Comensurate with that importance, James took me to McDonalds and bought me a Big Mac MEAL -- yeah, that's right; I got French Fries too!  Large ones, no less.  And a Diet Coke, LARGE, the elixr of life.We came home, I sucked down the special sauce, lettuce, cheese, and flopped down on the bed.  My dear friend Lucy was sweet enough to have emptied her closet onto my floor the day before (hand-me-downs) and I was wearing a wonderful pair of white pyjama pants that she'd given me.  I got under the covers and realized as my own lights were dimming that I needed socks.  James gave me his best snuggly pair, I put them on, grabbed Muffin (the teddy bear) and appreciated how wonderful the bed felt.  That was the end of me for many hours.That afternoon and evening my abdomen felt a little sore, but I mostly just slept it off.  The next day the soreness raged.  I felt like a collander: lots of pin pricks all through my abdomen.  The nurse called and congratulated us for having produced 9 nice embryos from 11 eggs.  My spirit soared but my belly felt like I'd swallowed a whole bunch of staples.  For the next two days, everything that involved my abdomen hurt terribly.  Standing up from a sitting position, sitting down from a standing position, and taking a step with my right foot, my left foot, my right foot... each jarred.  I tried to fix myself in every way I could think of.  Maybe it was gas: I took some GasX.  Maybe my inactivity had caused constipation (my Infertility for Dummies book said that was possible): I took some stool softener.  Maybe all of my innards were infected: I took the doxicyclene that my doctor had prescribed to ward off infection.  Then online at Daily Strength, someone told me that "Tylenol is your friend."  After three days of bedrest, I took a Tylenol PM, and the next day, I woke up a new woman.  My old self.It was on that day, Thursday, "Day 3," that we were tentatively scheduled for the embryo transfer; the homecoming.  That morning the nurse was supposed to call to tell us whether it would happen that day as planned, or whether we'd wait until Day 5.  I was hoping for Day 3 because I am a girl who likes Progress.  Especially since it's taken me 18 months to get to this point.  Who can wait two more days?  Well, I can, as it turns out.  Positive phrasing can help a lot of things: "Great news-- your embryos look really good, so the embryologist and doctor say you can wait until Day 5!  Congratulations!"  As my plans for the day vanished, my excitement level rose.  James had stayed up until 3:30 the night before doing the work that he thought he might not be able to do if I had the transfer on Thursday, so he was a sleepy guy.  My eyes were so wide open that they almost exposed my optic nerve.  I bounced and rolled and wanted to talk about blastocysts.  How inhumane.  When he woke up more, he was excited too.One of the best things about this process is my support network.  I've got friends in all sorts of categories.  There is my set of service provider friends -- my therapist, my acupuncturist (specialist in infertility), and my chiropractor (just did IVF successfully herself a year ago).  Then there is my set of once-distant acquaintances who have had IVF, either successfully or not.  There are four women I know in that category.  Of course there are my own loved ones who are learning about IVF as we go along, and rely on me to tell them what's good and bad.  And finally, and VERY importantly, are the women on DailyStrength.org.  This is a miraculous community.  I imagine it as a 50's style suburb full of tract houses and white picket fences.  Inside the houses are women in various stages of infertility and treatment.  At the end of the street live the women who have finally achieved their goal of having children.  At the other end are the newcomers who are newly devastated, scared and hopeful.  The thing we all have in common is that we belong to the same culture.  We all viscerally know what it's like to want children, the disappointment of not being able to have them easily, and the fissures that form when our friends and relatives get pregnant or Try to Help.  We all speak the same language.  We know what TTC means, many of us have DHs, and 10 units of Lupron actually makes some sense to us.  Most of all, we all know what the 2ww is: the dreaded Two Week Wait.  After the 18-month wait, it would seem like 2 weeks are the least of our trials.  But Nooooooooooooo.  Our communication through the website shows that in our special community, we're all completely normal.  We're all in the same situation, and we can offer each other answers, informed consolation, and actual understanding.One of my favorite discoveries on DS.Org has been my friend AshleyPenelope, who grew up in small-town Texas with me and lived next door to my best friend.  I never knew her well (our moment of greatest interaction was when my friend and I went to her house to see her big sister's diffuser attachment for her blow dryer).  Now she is a whoppin 33 (I didn't know little sisters ever became peers!) and I'm 35.  We are both doing our first round of IVF right now, and we timed it up really well.  I retrieved on Monday and she did on Tuesday.  Now she's having her Day 3 transfer today and I'll have my Day 5 tomorrow.  She's been a great friend to go through this with, and has become one more person whose uterine contents I desperately care about.Tomorrow I hope to have the transfer of two good embryos -- actually "blastocysts" at this stage of development -- into my well-prepped uterus.  Most of the preparation has been the intramuscular delivery of progesterone in a sesame oil base!  That is, each morning since the harvest, I've iced my nerve cells to oblivion on the back of one side of my hips (alternating every morning) then swabbed my numb flesh down with an alcohol prep pad.  In the meantime, James has cleaned the top of the progesterone vial, stuck a needle into its rubber cap, withdrawn 1 cc of spiked sesame oil, taken the needle out of the vial, switched to a new sharper needle, and counted "One, Two, Two and a Half."  Then he plunges the 1.5 inch gargantuan needle into my strong childbearing hips, squeezes the medicine in, and then counts to one-thousand-three.  The short way.  He whisks the needle straight up and puts on a band-aid, and we're usually done.  Two days ago, however, we hit a snag.  Or should I say a vein?  When he took the needle out of my hip, my hip morphed into a blood volcano, gushing streams of bloody lava down my numb side and onto my back, underwear, and the antique quilt I had thoughfully flopped down onto.  James raced around looking for a towel or something he could use to stop the blood, flailing his needle, and I tried to reassure him while I looked back, surprised, at the rush of red.  We finally got the blood stopped and band-aided, and I got to give him a hug.  His poor heart was racing and he was breathing hard.  Numb girl had felt nothing, but shot-administering, loving husband had been so scared!  I think giving the shots is way harder than receiving them.  To me it's just a pinch.  To him, it's inflicting pain (and possibly blood loss) on the love of his life and the mother of his embryos.All this drama goes to make the lining of the uterus as thick and inviting as possible.  When you think of 7 mm of bloody accumulation, you feel welcome too, don't you?  The progesterone is what helps the uterus build that up.  So tomorrow, two of our pretty blastocysts, whom we have a hard time not feeling are already our children, will be squirted into that bloody blanket, where we hope they will take hold, cuddle up, and grow into two babies.  Or even one baby would be okay.  In the meantime, our other little cell bundles with half my DNA and half James's (what a miracle!  what a miracle!) will go into the cryogenic freezer right by Walt Disney's frozen body, and will hope to be woken up before he does.  If we need them to try again for a first child, or if we need them for thawed-out siblings later, they will be ready and waiting for the magic kiss to wake them up.  Until then, they can sing Frosty the Snowman and other winter-time songs with old Walt.  And if there are any Disney songs about being in a freezer or being cold, I feel sure that Walt will know them and can teach them to our babies-in-waiting.My fertility-specialist acupuncturist told me that on the morning of the transfer, I should meditate on the Yin part of the Yin and Yang: the female part; the loving part; the welcoming, receiving mother earth.  I should open myself to the embryos as I imagine opening my arms to my children.  As I picture them running towards me, I should think about what I will tell them and what I'll sing to them.  So I've got a song ready.  Its lilting melody sings about a woman doing the impossible, taking a harrowing ride, and putting things right.  There was an old woman tossed up in a basket / seventeen times as high as the moon.And where she was going, I couldn't but ask it / for in her hand she carried a broom.Old woman, old woman, old woman, said I / oh whither, oh whither, oh whither so high.To sweep the cobwebs off the sky.  /  Shall I go with you?  Aye, by and by.By and by.