Today was the big day! I was a bit stressed out because I stupidly spilled some of my HCG trigger shot on Friday night. I was supposed to be injecting 2 mL split between two syringes, but in the end, I had 1 mL in one, and just over 0.7 mL in the other. However, when I talked to the doctor doing my retrieval this morning, he said that the 10,000 units I was supposed to take (a total of 2 mL) was more of a safeguard, and half of the dose works just as well for most women.
We arrived at the clinic at 9:30 am and were ushered in to the back where the nurse sat me in a chair and put a heating pad over the arm that was going to get the IV. She explained the process to both of us and went over the post-ER instructions, including my doses for estrogen and progesterone to be started tomorrow morning. After about 20 minutes, the doctor came by and did my IV (he said I have nice veins - but really, it's just that he was great at inserting it). They walked me in to a darkened room with stars painted on the walls and roof and a TV screen on the far wall. He immediately gave me Fentanyl for the pain and Versed to relax me. I was awake and responsive for the whole procedure.
He inserted an ultrasound probe and I was able to watch what he was doing on the ultrasound screen. He gave me a heads up before he inserted the needle through the vaginal wall and in to my ovary. I felt a lot of pressure and some pain, so the nurse gave me some more pain meds. Afterwards, I felt very little until the very end of the procedure when he had to dig a bit to get at the last two follies on the left. It wasn't any worse then period cramps though, so tolerable.
I could see the needle go in to each follicle on the ultrasound, which looks like a dark, almost circular spot on the screen. I could actually see him sucking the fluid and egg out on the screen - pretty cool to watch! Every few minutes, the embryologist would come in to the room and pick up a bit of the fluid and take it in to the lab on the other side of the wall. I was able to see what he saw in his microscope on the TV screen at the end of the bed. Every few minutes he'd tell us how many eggs we were up to.
"...five eggs..."
"Up to seven now..."
"...eleven!"
I was out of the room and in recovery before he had counted them all, but he came by within about 15 minutes.
17 eggs!
If you recall, at my last ultrasound I have 11 follies on the right and five on the left (with only two looking promising), so we ended up with more follicles and eggs then we thought.
Now it's more of a waiting game. The clinic hasn't called today, which means they had enough sperm to attempt natural fertilization. The embryologist will call tomorrow morning with our fertilization report. According to the clinic's typical rates, we're looking at around 70% mature, so of those 17, around 12 will be mature. Of those 12, 70% will fertilize properly. We should end up with eight or nine embryos.
By Tuesday morning we should know if we're doing a three day transfer of two embryos, or a five day transfer of one blastocyst. It's really up to the embryologist to decide what will be best for us.
Either way, I'm very, very pleased with the retrieval and can't wait to get that call tomorrow. It's amazing to me that at this very moment, Derek and I have a bunch of our potential babies in a dish at the lab. Crazy.
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