Onto the Next Phase

I am so happy to say that I am done with the shots in the stomach and in the thigh for this cycle!  Last night I had my first shot in the back/hip area and it really wasn't as bad as I imagined.  The shot had to be at exactly 10:45 p.m. since my retrieval is scheduled for 9:45 a.m. tomorrow, so the hardest part was staying up that late and thinking about the shot all night.  But it's done and I at least have two injection-free days (today an tomorrow), and possibly a third if my transfer is done on Day 5.  I did go in for one more blood draw this morning, but now I won't have to do that again until the end of the month for the pregnancy test. 

I met with the nurse yesterday to discuss pre and post op stuff for the retrieval and she said they expect a Day 5 transfer for me, but they will tell me for sure on Thursday when I call for my fertilization report.  Of course she made it clear that even if we go with Day 5, I have to be on standby on Day 3 (this Saturday) in case the embryos don't develop as expected.

I was a little surprised to hear that the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome increases after the retrieval as my body might think it needs to refill with fluid after all of the eggs are retrieved.  This can be really serious, so I'm supposed to drink plenty of Gatorade so that the electrolytes help my body regulate.  I will also be weighing myself every day to make sure I am not gaining 5 pounds in one day as this would indicate a serious problem.  Yikes.  Please pray for my body to react correctly!

One big decision we had to make was how many eggs to fertilize as we plan on freezing any extras but we don't want to end up with too many.  After some discussion with the doctor today, we decided that we would fertilize 10 mature eggs tomorrow in hopes that we end up with 4-5 well developing embryos.  It is impossible to predict how many good embryos we will actually have since there are so many factors (how many are retrieved, how many eggs are mature, how many fertilize, how many develop normally, etc) and the doctor really preferred that we fertilized all mature eggs so that we have the best possible result, but he also understood that we do not want to throw out embryos.  Thankfully, as of a few weeks ago egg freezing is no longer considered "experimental" by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, so if I have more than 10 mature eggs retrieved tomorrow those will be frozen before they are fertilized.  This is exciting as even if none of the embryos develop properly over the next few days, we might still have some unfertilized eggs that we could use without having to go through the stimulation process first (which I've been doing for the last couple of weeks).

Hopefully I can sleep well tonight so I'm ready to go for the retrieval tomorrow!