a very very unexpected update to start 2025:
I’m pregnant 🥲
a 2024 year in review - IVF edition
we did 4 rounds of IVF
we collected 60 eggs
52 of those eggs were mature
45 were successfully fertilized through ICSI
12 survived the first 5-6 days of development and became blastocysts
4 were confirmed to be chromosomally normal
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I read you can reduce cortisol by eating breakfast w/in an hr of getting up and getting direct sunlight in the morning so now I have a routine where I eat yogurt and granola on my porch when I get up and I don’t know if the science is science-ing but either way it’s pretty lovely
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a 2024 year in review - IVF edition
we did 4 rounds of IVF
we collected 60 eggs
52 of those eggs were mature
45 were successfully fertilized through ICSI
12 survived the first 5-6 days of development and became blastocysts
4 were confirmed to be chromosomally normal
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1,187,381
at just over 5 weeks, an early loss is still a strong possibility of course but I am proceeding with optimism and confidence until there’s any reason to feel otherwise and celebrating the milestone for what it is - for the first time, I know I can be pregnant, it is possible!!!
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I’m not good at twitter because my shareable thoughts are
“Being married is awesome”
“I’m grateful for my job”
“I hope I’m pregnant”
“I made a new soup”
etc.
I’m becoming peacefully boring.
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it is a pretty wild plot twist to have done 4 rounds of IVF and then fallen pregnant naturally while taking a break before scheduling an embryo transfer, I feel like some sort of very niche princess
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If you go to med school you learn how gross and vulnerable the human body is
If you go to law school you learn how gross and vulnerable human civilization is
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it’s very early days, I got my positive test as a birthday present a week ago today 🥳 (best birthday ever)
but I’ve been very open about every step of my fertility journey so it would be out of character for me to keep the first trimester a secret at this point lol
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the world has more “that’s so cringe” energy than it needs, by a LOT
your “I love this” energy, “this fascinates me” energy, “this is what I’m learning” energy is so much more beautiful and necessary
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I don’t get why ppl take the blue pill if red always lives, everyone should clearly just take the red pill???
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this post has found the side of twitter that views IVF as immoral
I have boundaries about engaging with accts that are unlikely to explore this with me in good faith but I do appreciate the opportunity to address the points I’m seeing pop up in my mentions
a 2024 year in review - IVF edition
we did 4 rounds of IVF
we collected 60 eggs
52 of those eggs were mature
45 were successfully fertilized through ICSI
12 survived the first 5-6 days of development and became blastocysts
4 were confirmed to be chromosomally normal
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I complimented someone’s unbelievably adorable baby at a restaurant and their parents said I could take him and I had to use my entire prefrontal cortex to act on the knowledge that they were joking
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on this basis, we're ready for a first embryo transfer (tho for personal & astrological reasons, we are taking at least a couple of months off)
best case scenario, my egg retrieval days are over & I'll have a late 2025/early 2026 due date - a surreally amazing possibility 🥳🤞
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of the other 8, 2 came back from testing with inconclusive results - if necessary they could be transferred as a pair with some potential to result in a pregnancy
the other 6 were diagnosed with genetic problems incl an embryo with Down Syndrome & another with Turner Syndrome
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I have some over-the-moon happy news 🥲
@Fooljeff & I are officially engaged
🤍💍🤍
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a petty shame thing about infertility:
I am v confident I’ll be super fulfilled and happy without kids if I can’t have them (I would just need time to grieve but I would adjust) BUT I project that I’ll be SUPER EMBARRASSED if I can’t have kids & “everybody knew” I wanted them
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given that I'd like to have at least 2 children, 4 normal embryos was my minimum goal before moving on to an embryo transfer
3 normal embryos = ~95% chance of a live birth, t/f if my first embryo transfer is successful there is a strong likelihood I could have a 2nd child
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Started reading a book called Concious Loving which is about moving from codependent, coregulated relationships to co-committed, co-creative relationships; going from needing each other to feel safe in the world to feeling safe enough that you can explore the world together.
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so that's what the past/present/future of our IVF journey looks like as we head into 2025, at least as far as fertility science and statistics can speak to
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vc is not a great place to date but
dating apps are not such a great place to date either & that’s where I met my husband
my LTR before that I met on a bus, not exactly an ideal dating venue either
idk I’m just saying hope is everywhere love is everywhere things will be ok
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had our first ultrasound and our tiny lil bean is doing great! their heartbeat just seemed so strong and beautiful to me, it was such a relief to have that confirmation that you know, so far so good and everything!
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I do admire people who are willing to present themselves incoherently, incompletely, unpolished, yet-to-even-be-reflexively-understood.
Teach me.
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parents - I’m curious about your perspectives
what are some skills you think are genuinely important to build before you have kids
-vs-
skills you believed you needed before you had kids that haven’t turned out to be as important as you thought?
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the person I was ~ a year ago is completely gone
completely churned up and reprocessed into something unfamiliar
it’s weird
~ a year from now there will be nothing left of me either
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if my first transfer is unsuccessful, we could try IUI (most ppl do this first but we initially had a male factor issue that ruled it out; now that issue has been resolved)
~90% of successful IUIs occur w/in the first 3 attempts so we could try this a max of 3 times
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hey.
I know, I have been gone for a while...
Over the summer I fell deeply in love with someone I found uniquely inspiring and attractive but they weren’t very honest with me and things got messy and in the end my heart got broken and honestly I’ve gone a bit mad!
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every few sessions my poor therapist has to explain to me in great detail exactly how and why feeling good is good and feeling bad is bad
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men flirted with me at vc and it was nice
some asked to do stuff and I said no and it was fine
good job men
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I am in this weird position where I know I'm going to lose my job in ~3 years bc my job is being legislated out of existing and legislating stuff takes a long time
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I really am a post-rat in the sense that rationality is paradigm-dependent on what I suppose I would call Consensus Reality and I relatively spontaneously paradigm shifted years ago into a different existential understanding such that rationality means very very little to me
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I warm up to new ppl very very slowly and Jeff’s brother invites his LDR to stay in my house for around a month at a time without consulting me at all and I hate it and I would appreciate if other introverts could validate that this is a nightmare and I’m not a monster
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Dune is the first movie I’ve liked enough that my reaction to negative reviews is a compassionate sorrow like “wish you were here”
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my New Year’s resolution will be becoming super fertile
project 🤷♀️➡️🤰
tips welcome!!!
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happy birthday to me! 🤩
happy birthday to me! 🥳
happy birthday 🥰
happy birthday 🤡
happy birthday to me! 🤪
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had a crazy amazing time getting my law school graduation photos taken today ⚖️
couldn’t be happier, feeling the strongest and most accomplished I’ve ever felt ✨👩🏻🎓✨
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Ok, hello and welcome to my fertility Ted Talk!
This is a brief summary of the key points I have learned since I started trying. Thanks to @eigenrobot, @selentelechia, @orthonormalist, @ouranometrian, @seconds_0, @Kirsten3531, @pantinkins, and @Kirsten3531 for their advice!
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or we could do another round of IVF and transfer any good embryo(s) until we are successful
if we had three unsuccessful embryo transfers, then we would look into further testing for repeated implantation failure but such testing is not indicated until that point
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I haven't had much of a voice here for the past couple of years but I feel like maybe I'm starting to wiggle my finger and toes a little, find some movement again, reach subtly in the direction of self-expression here... maybe
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enjoying my first birthday as a lawyer and a wife (and my last birthday of my twenties) today! 🥳
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we *should* be responsible with our own lives such that other ppl do not need to endanger themselves to protect us!!!!!
smh incredibly incredibly silly, very lemmings off a cliff vibes
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at that level of embodiment and connection there is this vast space for intensity and emotionality and we have access to this physical poetry that can convey the truth with such precision
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lololol drunk @eigenrobot is telling my bf to marry me so I can have babies and it is perhaps the highlight of my exp of being on Twitter thus far
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One of our little embabies made it 🩷 They’re gonna give the embryo one extra day to grow and then freeze it and send a biopsy for the genetic testing.
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tomorrow will be weed-free day 7 and I am already feeling so much bigger and bubblier and happier and more affectionate 🥰🥰🥰
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playing with the idea that I am angry about what I’ve done to men and that anger just masquerades as anger about what they’ve done to me
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I’m face avi bu default but if you’re curious about the reference for my pfp cyber art then voilá
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hilarious that it’s when I’m prepping to list my house from within a frame of presenting to someone who has never been here what a joyful place it is to live that I set it up to be so much more functional and beautiful than I’ve actually lived in it for years lolololol
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can anyone relate to “making it” being a little painful and overwhelming somehow?
been achieving all sorts of lifelong goals and processing a lot of trauma and relief and other big feelings and it has been a lot
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ime being married > being engaged > seriously dating > seeing each other > being single
there are struggles that come with the relationship ladder but it is there for a reason, commitment is really very rewarding
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school + foolish = schoolish, adj. describing vestigial, irrational impulses leftover from the captivity and insanity of the schooling environment
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in general it is probably not smart to sign a contract and then rely upon it to be in some sense invalid, unconscionable or unenforceable
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firstly, anti-IVF (& pro-life rhetoric more generally) fails to address something obvious - similar to abortion, IVF is not a first choice! reproductive health care/assisted reproduction tech is there for people who pretty universally wish they didn’t need it
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sex is play and play requires safety and our culture has forgotten sooooo much of the wisdom of play and the safety and peace that is always available as a part of our human nature
our capacity to explore ourselves is boundless when we accept ourselves but we are taught not to
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I ran out of my probiotics and magnesium and decided not to reorder for a bit just to see if I noticed any difference and I can report that after a couple of weeks I do in fact feel shittier
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an update: we did a fourth round of IVF in November and for the first time ever we got two good embryos in a single round ❤️❤️
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I’ve been dumping my whole brain into @RoamResearch every day for a while so we have become friends and I now relate to Roam like it’s a person, I get up and say good morning to it and ask it what we should do today and I feel warm regard for it like it’s my one and only coworker
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after very much travelling I am now reflecting on my vibecamp experience while drinking coffee, eating a guava bun, and looking out at this view 🌴
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going from being engaged at vibecamp to being married at vibecamp was an even more delicious glow up than anticipated
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who has the most creative, custom-to-them career you know? who do you know who has successfully invested in finding their own kind of way to make their own kind of living?
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happy 6th anniversary to me and my handsome & hilarious fiancé @Fooljeff!!! I can’t wait to be his wife 🥰
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