Egg Retrieval is Done!

I'm feeling a little woozy. It's that neat, good pain-killer woozy lol. I had my egg retrieval today, and I was in a lot more pain than last time. I wore jeans like a dumbass, which I unbuttoned for the car ride home. They gave me a heating pad which was AWESOME and it helped some.

So what's the verdict? 12 eggs!!!! This is exactly double from last time so I'm very excited. My RE aims for 10-15 so we're perfect. They said they're less aggressive with me, so they dropped my follistim to 75 a few days before retrieval so I think we could have gotten more. They're very conservative because of my kidneys and because we're only putting 1 in, but I'm OK with that. I'd like to have 2 or 3 eggs to freeze, but I don't want a ton. I don't want to have more in the freezer than children we'd like to have (with maybe 1 or 2 extra in case some don't work).

I still feel great about this cycle, and I'm just waiting for the fert report. I'm hoping most of the ones we got were mature. We didn't have an awesome fertilization rate last time, but with only 5 eggs it was 60%... one more and it would have been 80% so it's kind of tough to tell. Before we went in for retrieval I asked Andy how many eggs he thought we'd get and he said 12, so he was right. He says he thinks we'll get 7 fertilized eggs, which would be great. We still really want to do a day 5 transfer. Andy keeps saying even if we only get 1 fertilized that's OK. And I know it's still possible we don't get any. But I hope we get more than last time for the sake of a 5 day.

If for some reason this cycle doesn't work we're definitely going to do frozen transfers until we're out of frozen blasts. I want to give my body a rest from everything I've put it through the last 3 months. My ovaries in particular. And I want to lose about 30 pounds before trying again. We'd start BCPs in October and do the FET in November. I'm still trying to be pregnant for Christmas.

I think I'm getting a little bonus sometime soon. We do awards at work in July and I think I'm getting at least 1, which would be really cool. Assuming this cycle works, we're going to use it to buy our crib.  I really feel so good about this cycle. I hope the eggs are good quality and they fertilize. I am so nervous for that call but I'm hopeful that we get some good embies and we get to day 5 for a blast transfer.

Things went easier at the actual transfer this time. I was the second person there. It was quite a wait between changing into my gown and actually getting into the OR, but Andy was there to keep me company and I checked my email and such. Everything was pink today!

The needle for the IV, the routing tube thing, and the round thing on the right is my boob, which was covered in a pink gown. I kind of just took this for posterity. It's a real event getting eggs retrieved. I had a hair cover and foot covers on. I wore my shark socks again.

We signed the consents and I was hooked up to the saline really quickly since I hadn't had a drink since 10:30 the night before. I think my retrieval really started right around 7:30 when it was supposed to. I went in and sat on the table. the anesthesiologist immediately gave me something to calm me down, and they asked me my name and such. By the third question I wasn't sure I knew the answers, and I laid down and passed out. I vaguely remember lifting my legs to put them in the holders and then I woke up. The nurse came in and I asked her if she would be able to tell us how many eggs were mature. She said no, but she'd tell us the total in a few minutes. When she came back I told her we had 6 last time and we were really hoping for more. She said "Well you're going to be happy then because you got 12". I was expecting 8-12 so it was on the higher end of what she expected. I would've been OK with 8, too, but 12 just feels like a great number.

Andy gave me some juice that spilled all over me, and we left about 20 minutes later. I kept saying "it really hurts this time" but the vicodin is really helping. Since we'd been up since 4:15-4:45 we came home and sat down. We both fell asleep for a while. I think I slept from about 10-2, and Andy slept from maybe 11-12:30 or so. We've been hanging out and talking all day and it's awesome.

We said a prayer before retrieval and we'll say one tonight that a lot of our babies are mature and fertilize. We're so thankful for these opportunities and that we got more eggs this time. I hope things continue to be improved from last cycle and that we get a beautiful healthy baby this time. I'm really happy today. I feel good about this.