Baby Q and Tender Roni

Every great love affair has a song. Sloan and my's song is All My Life by David Wilcox. And the song for me and my two sweet blastocyst babies is Beethoven's Symphony Number 4 in B Flat: Adagio. This is the song that was playing on my Ipod when I first saw them pop into view on the ultrasound screen.

Right around the time I took my Valium, Valerie called to tell me that they thawed out my first pair of blasts and that they did not look optimum so that they were going to thaw out the second pair. Okay, I said. By this time, according to Sloan, I was pretty baked.

After dropping Henry off at his beloved Na-no's house, we arrived at the center around 11:30. At noon, Dr. T came in with the above photo of our babies. He explained that the two on the right were the first pair they thawed. With embryos, there is a relatively basic grading system. But blast transfers are different and there isn't such a grading system. However according to the embryologists, the bottom left blast was rated "good", the top left blast was "fair", and the two on the right were poor to non-viable. So we decided to transfer the two on the left and allow the two on the right to grow for another day and should they survive, be refrozen and subsequently stored. (How American of us to have a system that ranks you before you are even born. My buddy Ann always laughs at the apgar score, "Welcome to the world, here's your score." Well, my two babies have already been graded. Hopefully, and I hope I get to regret this statement, I hope my babies grow up to be like their Momma and place little value on grades.)

I noticed that the blastocysts look like those pre-made pizza doughs. Or little pepperonis. Which led me then to tell the doctor that we would be transferring "Baby Q" and "Tender Roni".

Yes, I have named one of my in utero babies after a Bobby Brown song. In my defense, I'm all hepped up on hormones. We are very excited and scared at the prospect of twins. But also know that should God give us twins it will be His job to take care of the details and our job to simply love them.

Speaking of loving children, Sloan has had the pleasure of experiencing Henry's Transformer alter-ego--"Stairscream". I know it is evil of me, but it brings me joy to simply lie on the couch watching Al Roker (because I gotta raise these two babies on Al like their older brother was) while Sloan experiences Henry like he never has before. Henry screamed all through eating his breakfast waffle. He did stop screaming to cuddle with me on the couch and watch the movie Bolt. Although he did, from time to time, go up to the TV screen to point at the animals and identify them for me. Dog, woo woo. Ca--meow, meow. And the hamster? Well, he just fell into the category that all unidentified animals fall into--Baa. Baa.

At lunch time, he started screaming again so that Sloan finally said, "That's it. You obviously aren't hungry. You're taking your nap early. I need to not be around you for awhile." And as he took the Pickle upstairs, I simply sat on the couch and laughed my evil Count Chockula laugh. Ha Ha Ha.

We will find out whether one or both of these babies "take" on May 18th. We will be at the beach and I'll be getting tested at a LabCorp somewhere in South Carolina. Because we'll be at the beach and because of the nature of the news, I will be taking a Blogatical from May 16-25th. Should you desperately need something to read during that week, I suggest taking a gander at one of the blogs in my blog list.