Day of Retrieval

June 21, 2012

This morning I awoke at 4:30 to shower and get ready for the egg retrieval. I didn't get much sleep last night for all the excitement and nervousness for today. We left Seymour around 5:30 and arrived in Bedford by 8:15.

When we arrived at the clinic, the nurses immediately took me back to prepare me for surgery. They took my vitals, asked tons of questions, and began my IV. Dr. Kevin Doody introduced himself to me since he was going to perform my surgery in place of Dr. Kathleen Doody. The anesthesiologist then introduced himself and explained the standard risks involved with anesthesia.

While I was under, Justin was required to give his sample. They tested the sample to make sure there was enough sperm and good sperm quality that they could work with.

Around 9:00 they took me back to the O.R. to perform the egg retrieval. They were done by 9:30, and I woke up very quickly while we were still in the O.R. Dr. Doody informed me that they probably got a surplus of 20 eggs and that the embryologist would talk to us shortly about the exact number. For those of you who don't know, that is a LOT of eggs! It is good for the embryologist because he has so many to work with and thus increases chances for fertilization and good embryo quality. However, it puts Justin and I in a dilemma as to what we should do with the left over embryos. I hate that part of IVF.

After I came to the recovery room, I had some pretty significant pain from the procedure. The nurses were great about getting pain medication to me to ease the pain. Within 30 minutes I felt a lot better and we were able to go to the consultation area in the clinic to meet with the embryologist.

The embryologist came and introduced himself to us, and he described how the next few days would go with our embryos. He said that they retrieved 27 eggs from my ovaries. He said about 70% would fertilize, and about 50% of those would likely go on to be good enough quality for us to transfer. That means we would most likely end up with around 6-8 eggs available for transfer. We have decided that we are going to only transfer the 2 best quality embryos. The embryologist will give them a grade on the 5th day of incubation.

Tomorrow the embryologist will call us to inform us how many of our eggs fertilized. On day 3, they will call again to inform us how their cell development is progressing. On day 5 (day of transfer) they will give us their grades and show us pictures of our developing embryos. I think that part is pretty cool. How many people get to say they saw their child as a cluster of cells before they were born?

Tonight I am required to continue taking my antibiotics and steroids until they run out. Starting tomorrow I will be taking Endometrin (progesterone) and Estradiol. These help maintain a pregnancy once we have one.

I absolutely cannot wait for the next few days!