Our Embryo or should I say Embryo(s) were transferred this past Tuesday! Everything went beautifully and we have one little boy and one little girl cooking away! One was already “hatching” which is a really good thing. I think they look like my Husband, don’t you? Bed rest is in full swing… Praying these little babes stick! Here’s to a long two weeks!
My egg retrieval was this past Friday, February 5th. All went according to plan and I survived! This being my second egg retrieval, I was far less anxious, and I was even looking forward to that drug induced nap. Seriously, going under is kind of awesome.
I’m probably the most annoying drugged up patient. When I got rolled into the OR I remember talking and talking and talking and then I was out. The doctor probably asked the anesthesiologist to, “give this chick a little extra so she shuts up.” ( Next time they will probably put me out before I even make it into the room). I would be interested to know exactly what I was saying. Hubs told me that when I was coming to that I kept saying how good I felt and was asking if I could have some more. I do remember I kept asking the nurse the same two questions because for the life of me I could not remember what she said! She told us we had gotten 11 eggs, but I kept saying 13. We got 13? No honey 11. 13? No 11. I remember before my retrieval a girl came out of her own harvest and I heard them tell her she had 13 eggs. That makes sense now… hahaaaaa. Hubs also told me that while I was coming to I kept trying to talk but all that was coming out of my mouth was “djfhkdejeroijdfdekjen”. Oh and when hubs told me he loved me in my ear while I was still asleep a tear came from my closed eye and streamed down my cheek. I guess I can be sweet and cute when I am unconscious. Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!!
I like to think of an egg retrieval as picking apples from an apple tree. My ovaries are the tree producing these beautiful, juicy apples. The apples are all my little follicles. The doctor is the apple picker. He is in charge of taking his apple picker tool thingy and plucking each apple gently, one at a time, off of the tree. Making sure not to bruise or drop the apple on the ground he gently places the apples, individually, into his bag or test tube in this case. Then the magic happens!
Results thus far:
11 eggs retrieved >>> 5 more than last time! Which is a significant amount.
9 mature
9 fertilized! >>> I guess Hubs and I really like each other. Fertilization does not seem to be our issue- last time all of our eggs fertilized as well.
We will find out today if the other 2 eggs matured and fertilized. The embryologist will try and mature eggs that aren’t fully there yet after they have been retrieved in the lab… who knew! I think this makes our clinic pretty cutting edge since our last clinic did not do this. It’s cool because they give every egg a chance! Crossing fingers and toes that we have more good news today xoxo
Here is a picture of me posing as usual before the surgery.
Here we are, right in the midst of our second IVF cycle. I don’t really know if this is considered our second because we banking eggs at this point. What constitutes a full IVF cycle? Whatever. All I know is right now we are here. We decided to do two egg retrieval’s back to back so that we could bank as many eggs as possible since eggs are the issue. I can already tell a huge difference from this cycle from the last- and I’m not just talking about the decrease in meds, but the length of time I am taking them. I have been doing shots for almost 3 weeks. July of last year when we did our first IVF I did not have any side effects, other than being extremely tired. This time around I just don’t feel “good”. I am tired. I am short. I just feel off. I am taking this as a good sign that my body is liking whatever the doctor is prescribing.
I do have to say I am way more confident and have less anxiety this time around. Maybe it’s because there is not the looming pressure of an embryo transfer. Or because our doctor is a million times better than our last. All I have to focus on right now is growing eggs. I have been working out as normalish as I can. I cut my workouts down to three days and week I have had to lower my weight since I am not allowed to lift more than 20lbs. Do you know how hard that is? My precious puppy weights 25lbs. I have been taking all my antioxidants to help my egg quality. I have been doing my Circle and Bloom meditations.
We had our first appointment last week for my baseline ultrasound. I couldn’t believe it. I had 13 follicles!! Lucky 13! And this is before any stimulation meds. For me this is 3 more than I have ever had before naturally (I have low AMH). Obviously I have been doing something right with my body. I am not getting my hopes up just yet though because I know this rollercoaster. Just because I have 13 follies it doesn’t mean they all have an egg. But, this is a great start!
The Chronicles of the Unfruitfulness 