When I learned I had the explosion of follicles in my ovaries I posted “I’m just a big jar full of jelly beans.” I laughed at myself, because that’s really what I felt like.

I never got around to posting it, since I was making a cute little graphic when the Dr called with the news that only one egg mature (and thus I got distracted and didn’t feel like fiddling with graphics anymore) but I came home from retrieval and took a photo of a glass of 38 jelly beans. I thought it would be cute.

When we got the fertilization report it was natural to call them my two jellybeans. And when we put this one back inside me it definitely felt like that was my one Jellybean. The name has just stuck. Den says that’s what cute nicknames are supposed to be – spur-of-the-moment names that just come to you in the middle of the situation.

Den likes the name, too, because he says our two little embryos are the black licorice jelly beans. They’re his favorite flavor, and of course the most rare – you have a whole bag of jelly beans and you might get one or two. Of course I don’t like black licorice so I’ve been arguing with him, saying NO they aren’t black!! But the metaphor really does fit.

We may come up with a different name for this little guy if/when we see a heartbeat on an ultrasound. Devin’s embryo was Han Solo from the moment we found out we had only one until our first ultrasound when Den proclaimed that it looked like a sheep, at which time he became Sheepie. (And he still is our Sheepie, even after we named him Devin at the level II ultrasound when we saw the boy-parts.)

So I really don’t know how long this name will last, if something new will come along. But for right now it’s our little Jellybean.