"I'm really happy with everything I see here..."

...said the doctor to the surrogate, while checking out her uterus via ultrasound.

Today was my last appointment with Dr. L until transfer day, which we can now officially say is next week (thanks to M for pointing that out to me!), and Dr. L is super happy with how everything looks - which is awesome to hear.  Gotta love when your uterus cooperates!

This weekend is going to be very exciting! On Saturday, the clinic will thaw 6 eggs from M and C's selected egg donor (which were frozen after a previous cycle).  According to Dr. L, stastically, 5 or 6 are expected to survive the thaw.  Because freezing of the eggs can make the outer layer of the egg harder to penetrate, they will be using ICSI to help encourage fertilization.  Typically, they will check for fertilization 24 hours later - so Sunday morning.  Again, statistically, they expect about 2/3 of the eggs to fertilize.  This should leave us with 3 or 4 embryos.  Dr. L will want to see which embryo will be the best to transfer so they will observe the embryos over a 3 to 5 day period.  Some of them will not grow and there is a small chance that we will only be left with one embryo by day 3, if that's the case, we will do a day 3 transfer on August 28th.  More likely, they will continue to grow the embryos until August 30th, which will be day 5, or the blastocyst stage.  At this stage it is easier to select the best one to transfer.  Depending on the thickness of the outer layer of the selected embryo, the embryologist may perform an assisted hatching procedure immediately before transfer, to help encourage implantation.  Any remaining embryos will be frozen for future use.

Then the agonizing wait until I can take a pregnancy test begins!

P.S. Read the links above if you have the time, the science behind all this is really fascinating!