LA, Part 1: Hotels, Needles and Catheters

So we arrived in LA Thursday morning at 8:30 on very little sleep. We caught a shuttle from the airport to the car rental place. I still need to send thanks to my insurance agent at AAA, who, in a response to an email sent at 11:30 the previous night, emailed me proof of insurance literally one minute before the person at the car rental place asked to see it. We got our car and headed to our hotel, which was actually a 3 minute walk from the rental place, but involved us driving all the way around a big block 1.5 times to find street parking, in order to avoid the $15 parking fee at the hotel.

We arrived at the hotel around 9:15, which gave us just enough time for us to check in and take our baggage upstairs. I got to lay on the bed for literally 5 minutes, and dubbed it a fantastic place for a future nap, before we had to leave for our appointments.

Since it was the day after Fourth of July, it seemed most everyone was still on vacation, so we were lucky to avoid the infamous LA traffic, and made it to our appointment in time despite having to be detoured because of roadwork.

My case manager, L, met us at the IVF office. I'm realizing now that that is the place the magic, the embryo transfer, will actually take place in a (hopefully) short time. It was a beautiful building just a short ways from Santa Monica. It was a pleasure to meet L, who is a very nice, patient woman almost 20 weeks pregnant with her 3rd surro baby.

When we checked in, they took Tony back for his blood work, and had me fill out all those same papers you fill out at every doctor's office you visit. After that, I got to get my blood drawn and got to pee in a cup. I think the blood draw went better. :) I've been listening to my HypnoBabies ""Needles are Okay!" track almost every night for at least a month now to prepare me for this and all the future needles I will be encountering, and I made it through 5 vials of blood without needing to lie down, so I'm thinking it's helping. I never get better at peeing in a cup, though.

After the testing, Tony and I were called back to meet with Dr. R, who will be in charge of this transfer and the pregnancy up until about 10 weeks. He was a nice, soft-spoken man who explained the medications and transfer procedure to us, which, thanks to all my fellow bloggers, is pretty old hat to me.

We were then led to the ultrasound room where L joined us. The nurse took my blood pressure, and asked if I was a very calm person, which I took to be a compliment. I always rock the blood pressure.  :) Dr. R used the vaginal probe to start the ultrasound on my uterus, and then used a thin tube to fill my uterus with saline so he could check it for lesions and other bad stuff. Apparently, it was spotless, because he dubbed my uterus "beautiful," which I thought was something that only happened in other people's blogs. :-D The procedure wasn't painful, but did result in minor cramping for the next half hour. Dr. R did say, however, that my lining was not as thick as they would like, which is very common for someone on birth control pills, so he wants me to stop taking them for the time being. Tony was rather bummed at this news, as he hates condoms, but we will survive.

We've got to get to the gym while the kids club is still open, so I'll dub this LA Part 1, and finish up my lengthy account of our LA trip later. :)