Fert Report...

What an exhausting 48 hours!  I didn't sleep much last night because I knew sometime this morning we would be getting the call to tell us how everything was progressing.  Anything can happen and that terrifies me!  At 8am exactly I got the call from the embryologist.  I'm sure he thought I was a weirdo because I was hyperventilating and begging him to give me good news.  He relayed the news that out of the 9 retrieved, 6 eggs were mature, all 6 fertilized normally, and all 6 were "dividing beautifully".  He said it will definitely be a 5 day transfer which is fantastic news!  They will call back on Wednesday when they open the incubator again and give me another update of how my babies are growing and give me instructions about our Thursday transfer.

It's a funny feeling knowing we (along with a team of fertility specialists) may have just conceived our entire family and I already feel kind of like a protective mama bear.  I want all my 6 embies to make it, to have a shot.  I feel very strong today and I KNOW this is going to work.  I just have to survive until Thursday.  I'm going to try to keep myself busy with studying and getting things ready to be in bed in for 5 days.  And of course, I will keep praying.

This is what all 6 look like today.  4-cell embies.  They should be 8-cells by Wednesday!

Retrieval...

Woke-up very early this morning and got ready to head to the clinic. We arrived 10 mins early which I was happy about because we are not exactly always on time for things.  Michael started to feel sick because he took his antibiotic on an empty stomach (silly boy) and they were very nice and made him oatmeal. They took me back to change and start my IV.

Michael was not allowed to come in with me which surprised me because we were told by my friend her hubby was there the whole time.  He was able to be with me when I woke-up though. They had to give me more medicine at first because I could feel everything.  I knew they would because every time I have that kind of anesthesia, it's never enough.  It really hurt.

Now, about my follies. I started to cry when I woke-up because the first thing I asked Michael was how many eggs were retrieved. He told me 9. NINE? I thought he was joking. I had 22 follicles! I had to ask him several times if he was not joking. The nurse came back in because my blood pressure was up due to being so upset. She told me I should not be upset because their average number of eggs retrieved is 6. The RE was not going to come back in but the nurse said she's have her come talk to me since I was so upset. I just had no idea what could have happened when I had 22 good sized follies?  I certainly wasn't prepared for the possibility of having no eggs in the follicles.

The RE came in a was little surprised I was upset because she was very pleased with the results.  I asked what happened to all the other eggs when I had so many follies. She said that a lot of the time the bigger ones will start to deteriorate when the smaller ones catch-up.  I implied that maybe it was mistake to go the extra day and she said that if we retrieved the day before I probably would have more eggs but they would not have been mature.  Quality over quantity in this case.  I gave her examples of my two friends who had over 20 eggs retrieved and one ended up with two great embies to transfer and 16 frozen embies and the other ended with nothing to freeze and two, not so great embies to transfer. Both got pregnant but both very different. She said I was probably somewhere in the middle of them and reassured me that my chances of getting pregnant are still the same today as they were this morning, yesterday, and the day before. She guessed that with my E2 level, there was a good chance that they would all be mature and still had a good chance there would be a few to freeze...just a guess though.

I still have no idea what happened even after she explained everything to me. I had NO idea that having no eggs in the follies was possible. I expected to have the 22 eggs and be told on Monday that only a percentage were mature and a percentage of those fertilized normally. I just feel blindsided and I'm kind of sad.  I won't know anything about anything until Monday and the worst part of this whole process begins....waiting.


58 needles...stared Progesterone today.  

This is what's going on right now with our eggs.  That needle is the 1/10 the size of a human hair.

Day 12: Stims, Ultrasound, Trigger...Oh, My!...

So, yesterday we went for my ultrasound and oh, boy...did I grow!  I still have 22 follies but 14 of them were over 17mm, 4 of them were 15-16mm, and 4 were 11-14mm.  That is crazy growth from the day before.  My doctor said she was going to wait until my E2 levels came back but she was positive the trigger was going to be that night.  My E2 levels came back at 2888 which is beyond perfect (it should double every 48 hours) and the nurse gave me instructions to trigger last night!  She said I was going to trigger at exactly 8pm and that I was to have nothing to eat after midnight on Friday.  I am also to start the antibiotic Friday night and Michael should take his last on Saturday morning.  My retrieval is set for Saturday morning at 8am and we need to show up at 7:30am.  I will be given an IV and sign paperwork and Michael will umm...do his business.  We are out of our minds excited today.  Work has been pretty tough for Michael lately and he called me on his way home, after I told him we were trigger last night, and his voice was so different.  He was still tired but I could tell he was so happy that this is actually happening.


We got everything ready for the trigger shot and just waited until the clock said 8pm exactly.  I was so nervous.  Michael has never given a shot like that before and it is not fun to think about a gigantic needle being shoved into your hip.  I, personally, hate giving those kinds of shots because I am always afraid I'm going to hit bone even though that is very difficult to do, but still...I was not excited even knowing I knew that anticipation was much worse than it was actually going to be.  He counted to three and it was over.  The HcG stung a little going in but it was not bad at all and I barely felt the needle.  I have been told that it gets worse though.  I start taking Progesterone the day of the retrieval and you eventually run out of places on your hip that are not sore after a couple weeks.

I feel like everything is falling into place.  We have all confidence in our doctors but this last week, we questioned whether they maybe have been too conservative with me since I am, as they say, still so "young".  We have said, "do they really know what they are doing?"  Well, they absolutely know what they are doing.  Going an extra day made me nervous because I felt like that was "not normal" but it was 100% the right decision.  I've got so much potential with these eggs and I am even starting to think that we might have a few good ones to freeze.  We just want to get one healthy baby but having embies to freeze would be gravy.
We are just excited that it is actually to this point in the process.  We get a call tomorrow letting us know how many eggs were retrieved, how many were mature, and how many fertilized and then it's just a waiting game with daily updates about how our embies are developing.  Oh, gosh...I'm getting anxious.  Prayers are welcome.

56 needles...