The Conception

It was my first time.  He gave me the "good stuff" so I could relax.   There was an air of anticipation in the room.  It was over before I knew it.  Yes, that is exactly how my morning retrieval felt this a.m. ;)

In all seriousness, though, being that it was my first time with the a retrieval I really had no idea what to expect.  There were way more people in the room than I expected.  I figured one doctor, the anesthesiologist and one nurse, but it seemed like there were five nurses plus the lab guy waiting for the eggs - that's a crowd!  I had an IV, oxygen saturation monitor, EKG, and blood pressure cuff hooked up.  Luckily I was asleep within a few minutes of everyone getting in the room because I'd rather not have an audience for that type of procedure.

Anyway, 12 eggs were retrieved, which we were happy about.  My doctor was careful not to prescribe very high doses of the injections as I am at risk of hyperstimulation, so 12 seems like the perfect number for us.  If our case is in line with the average, 10 will be mature eggs, 8 will fertilize normally and 4 will grow to Day 5/6 (they plan to transfer on Day 5 and freeze the remaining on Day 6).  Tomorrow morning I will call the clinic for the report on how many fertilized and to see if the doctor still thinks a Day 5 transfer will be best.  It's exciting to think that our future child(ren) COULD have been conceived today (sorry if that's too much info - please don't share that with Grandma ;) ).

One downer is that yesterday I started having a sore throat and I felt pretty awful during the night.  I guess my daily trips to the hospital for my ultrasounds and blood draws were the culprit as that is germ city.  When I feel sick all I want to do is drink fluids, which maybe helped me not be as anxious about the procedure today as I knew the sooner I got done with it the sooner I could drink something (plus they were giving me fluids through the IV which was good).  Micah and I are hoping that I kick this quickly as I don't want to be fighting a cold when I have the transfer on Monday.  It seems that my body needs to be relaxed and not fighting off anything as the embryos will be transferred to an environment that doesn't realize it's "pregnant" yet, so the more I can do to help my body relax the better.  I think that is part of the reason they prescribe bed rest after the transfer too, so your body relaxes and doesn't fight off "foreign" objects.

I will post how many fertilized after I call the clinic tomorrow morning!