How do you like your eggs? Fertilized, please!

The best husband ever.
I can't imagine a better partner to have throughout all of this.  

Well, for the first time in 3 years I really feel truly hopeful!  Sure, I have had moments of hope speckled in here and there but I have never actually been able to say with 100% certainty that I finally know that my eggs are not deformed!  YAY!!!!
So, here is the story...details to come.

     As you all know, we went in for our egg retrieval yesterday.  We did a trigger injection on Sunday night in order to fully mature the follicles growing inside me and turn them into viable mature eggs.   Then on Monday  I actually got to experience an entire day without a needle being poked into me.  I know it doesn't sound all that exciting but even though I know the pain that comes with the shots is fairly minimal, I still anticipate the pain each time.  Having a day without that anticipation and pain was quite nice.  Also, over the past week I have had to do a lot of blood draws and the fertility meds have seriously dehydrated me even though I am drinking more water then I ever thought I could.   This causes my veins to be a little lower and flatter then they should be and that makes the entire blood draw experience unpleasant.  Sometimes I feel like they just poke the needle in and hope they might come across a vein if they move it around enough.   And I am pretty sure that is exactly what they were doing yesterday when they looked for the vein in my hand to put the IV in.  I wasn't allowed to drink any water for 12 hours before so that only added to the party.  So, after they gave me the IV and prepped me for the procedure, I went into the little operating room where they had a stellar pair of stirrups much more advanced then the regular ones I usually get waiting for me.  There was also this cool looking incubator sitting right next to the table which is I am guessing where my future babies are growing as we speak.  Somewhere in the middle of my room exploration the anesthesiologist told me she would be giving me a mild sedative just to relax me while they got set up but I would get the good stuff later.   I don't remember anything after that.    The mild sedative was apparently not so mild.    The waking up part was very unpleasant.  It sort of felt like they scrambled my insides.   All the literature they gave me told me that I might experience some mild menstrual cramping afterwards.  They say that about so many female procedures.  I'm not sure if I am just a wimp about things or if these terms are being decided by men who have no concept of what menstrual cramps are in the first place so they just go with that as a description but put the word "mild" in front of it in order to downgrade it.  I would not use the word mild.  I would use the word spicy.  I have some seriously hot and spicy cramps.

And here is why.  In order to perform the egg retrieval they use and ultrasound probe attached to a needle.  Under the guidance of the ultrasound the poke the needle through the vaginal wall and suck out the eggs one at a time.   That means that aside from the discomfort already felt from the drugs and growing eggs inside me in much larger numbers then normal, they also poke holes in my vaginal wall and ovaries.  But just mild menstrual cramps to follow...right.
Walking was tough, shifting from one side to another in bed was painful, and to tell the truth just sitting still hurt.    I can walk around today but not much more then that and certainly not for a long distance.  Maybe I am just a wimp, though.  Now, I have heard that childbirth itself is also painful so I know that if this works, the pain of it will pale in comparison to that but lets remember that I, like any other person undergoing IVF, am going in blind.  We don't know if this will actually work.  We don't know why it hasn't worked.  We know nothing about why our conception process is broken so we don't know if this will fix it.  We just cross our fingers, pray, and hope it works.  In reality, though, I am happy to go through all of this and more if it really makes a baby.   And, for the first time in years, I really think it might!

I woke up with the number 9 written on my hand.
 That was to let me know how
many eggs they collected.
 It's also the number fertilized
if I turn my hand upside down;-)

     One of my biggest fears has been that my eggs were deformed in some way and that would be the reason why we haven't been able to conceive naturally.   I finally now know that at least on the surface my eggs are perfectly healthy.  They retrieved 9 and 8 were fully mature.  They performed ICSI on all 8.  (This is the procedure where they select the strongest and fastest sperm to inject directly into each egg.)   Of those 8 eggs, 6 were fertilized.  This is great news!!!  Now, it doesn't mean that I am going to have 6 babies.  Apparently there is some confusion about this.  Having 6 fertilized eggs at this point is still a small number considering a few might die off over the next few days.  There is also the fear that my problem is during implantation and we won't know that until we actually transfer an embryo into me and see if it takes.  Lots of trial and error here.  We also won't know until Friday if we are doing a 3 day transfer or a 5 day transfer.  The chances of us getting pregnant are higher with a 5 day transfer but we also risk the embryos not surviving in the artificial environment between day 3 and 5.   So much to worry about.  I wish there was a nanny cam that would allow me to watch over my embryos during the next three days.   I am not sure what I could do to save them if things go wrong but I would feel better if I could see them.

      For now, though, I guess we just wait.  I have been researching success rates and it looks like for my age group and my egg retrieval count, I have about a 40% chance at a live birth.  Considering my chances of becoming pregnant naturally were less then 20% and with IUI were only about 25%, 40 feels like a real improvement.   I am hopeful.   I'm nervous and full of anxiety.  I'm still feeling those mildly spicy cramps we talked about earlier but hopeful.   I hope he is on the train.   He has to be..

Oh please little baby.... please get on the train.