This morning I had my screening ultrasound to make sure everything looks a-okay before the embryo transfer in one week. With the morning traffic, it took about 50 minutes to get to the clinic and about 3 minutes for the ultrasound. (As the clinic is really close to the hospital I gave birth at with Marie, I'm feeling quite glad we decided to change networks -- I can't imagine being in the car that long while in labor!) My ovaries are free of cysts and my endometrial lining is "trilaminar," which basically means it has three layers, which is what they're looking for. They were also looking for a thickness above 7.5 millimeters, and mine was 8.7 mm, so that's encouraging.

After the ultrasound I met with the nurse to go over the protocol for the rest of the cycle. Apparently the dose of progesterone I need to take this time is double the dose I took last time -- since my ovaries have been suppressed this whole time, they aren't making any progesterone on their own. I won't lie -- I watched the injection training video last night and started getting some major anxiety about these shots, so hearing that news did not make me feel any better! The nurse also took her pen and drew circles on my hips to show the appropriate locations for the injections. I wish they had done that last time -- after looking at the placement, we definitely did not do the shots in the right spot three years ago. Good thing it still worked! I think I may have Jacob re-draw them every few days so they don't fade too much.

Anyway, I got home and showed Jacob the circles, which is when I noticed for the first time that she had drawn frowny faces inside each one. The nurse mentioned that my "hips would start twitching" (comforting, no?) so I suppose that was her way of expressing sympathy? Marie saw them and immediately requested that she get faces on her back, too. Ha!

I am a little nervous about the possibility of Marie watching the progesterone injections. She's watched a couple of the Lupron ones and hasn't seemed to care, but those needles are small and I don't usually have much of a reaction to them. The progesterone ones, though, are a different story. So I'm trying to figure out what time of day we should do them. It can't be during her nap because I go back to work in three weeks, and if I get pregnant we'll need to do them probably through the end of September. We could potentially do them in the evening after she goes to bed, but on occasion I have activities in the evening that take me away from home. The other option is to do them before she wakes up in the morning, but since she wakes up early -- usually 6:30 or earlier -- that would require waking up quite early for it still being summer break! Maybe we'll just end up distracting her with Youtube in the morning and then do them in our bedroom or something.

Anyway, I found out that they'll do the beta blood test twelve days after the transfer, which would be August 14th, three days before I go back to work. I did buy three cheap pregnancy tests after my appointment today, so I'll probably start testing around August 10th or so just to get an idea whether it worked or not. I'd like some preparation either way before the fateful phone call we get.

To think -- in just over two weeks, we could find out we're having a baby! (Or . . . not, but let's not dwell on those thoughts too much.)