In Vitro Journey - Cycle #1 - Egg Retrieval and Embryo Update

Lots of exciting news to share with everyone! 

On Tuesday 8/18 at 11:00am we had our surgical egg retrieval. We arrived at the surgery center, which is just next door to the fertility clinic, at 10am and got checked in and into pre-op. Stylish surgery gowns, my lucky troll socks, and a high end massage chair had me pretending to feel pretty relaxed. In reality I was freaking out.  

David stayed with me until it was time to go into the operating room. As soon as he left, I broke down. Cried all the way onto the operating table until I fell asleep from the anesthesia.
Took a quick little nap and woke up hyperventilating about 30 minutes later. The nurses brought David back to my recovery room and gave me a narcotic to ease the pain. Eventually I calmed down enough to talk to our Dr. about how the procedure went. 

We were told they got a total of 16 eggs from my ovaries!

The rest of Tuesday was spent in a blur of groggy, pain filled complaints and not being able to stand up or walk unassisted. David was the most amazing caretaker; administering my meds, going to the store for things I needed, and continuously telling me how great I did and how proud of me he was. Wednesday was Day 1 of conception for our embryos. We got a call first thing in the morning that of the 16 eggs, 9 of them were mature. Of those 9 mature eggs 6 were successfully fertilized. 

Today is Thursday or Day 2 for our little embabies. They are being closely monitored and documented and are expected to have divided from single cell organisms to 2-4 cells. 1 embryo is ahead of the game and has already divided into 7 cells! 4 of them are in the normal 2-4 range and 1 was still a single cell organism. Our embryos are rated on a "poor, fair, good" scale and they all fall in the fair - good range.

We will get a call every day to update us on our embryos progress. We hope that they make it to 5 day blastocysts and then they will be frozen right before hatching. We will meet with our Reproductive Expert in 2 weeks to have some more blood tests done and see how my estrogen levels are doing. From there we will have a better idea of when we will start preparing for the Frozen Embryo Transfer.

This has been such a crazy, intense journey so far and I am so so thankful that I have David by my side through it all. He is just as involved in this process as I am, attending every doctors appointment and is constantly by my side encouraging and helping me in anyway possible. He has put up with my extreme mood swings, constant complaints about side effects, has given me over 30 shots and so much more. I couldn't imagine doing this without him. We are both so amazed and happy that we have 6 little embryos made up of 50% of his DNA and 50% of mine. We are so excited for everything the future holds.

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