On Friday, we received the go ahead from our doc to do our last night of injections and add in the “Trigger” HCG shot at 8pm!!! The HCG shot helps your follicles to complete their final maturing process and exactly 36-39 hours later you ovulate. Everything is extremely time sensitive as you can imagine, so we were scheduled to be at Dr. Blohm’s office on Sunday by 0730 to prepare for an 0800 egg retrieval time.
We arrived at Dr. Blohm’s office a few minutes early (Ryan always has to be there 15 minutes prior to the 15 minutes prior) and got settled in. It was a little weird not having a coffee or water since I was NPO (nothing by mouth) from midnight the night before, but so worth it!
I was taken back to the pre-op area that was connected to the OR (all private for my Dr.) to get changed into a hospital gown and ready to go. My anesthesiologist was already in there waiting with my nurse and she got the IV started for me. After I asked when Ryan could come back she looked a little surprised and said he wasn’t allowed back at all. I was a little upset that I couldn’t give him a hug and a kiss before the procedure and give him my jewelry, but she gave me my phone so I could text him and even took a pic of me all ready to go. She was so awesome and constantly made me feel relaxed and in good hands. 🙂 Besides, he had a very important job to do himself! 😉 Finally I was taken back into the OR and transferred to the operating table for the procedure and the anesthesiologist got me started on the good drugs. LoL I don’t think I was awake for another minute after that and didn’t wake up until I was back in the pre-op/post-op area.
I was told that I did great, but my eggs were a little difficult to get out of my follicles in my ovaries. The procedure took at least twice as long as it should have normally, but we were able to get 13!!!
Again, after hearing that so many people get between 20-30 it seemed like a small number, but I was confident that they would all fertilize and we would have “Quality over quantity”. We were also doing a procedure called ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection) where the sperm would be injected directly into the eggs to up the chances of healthy fertilization.
I was still groggy, but ecstatic while I was getting changed. My nurse, of course, had to take me outside in my stylish wheelchair and Ryan already had the Xterra pulled around to get me. 🙂 I stayed on bed rest the next 1 and half days partly due to the doc’s orders and partly since I was so sore. Having needles jammed into you to get out stubborn eggs isn’t always the most pleasant. The most important part was that it worked and everything was all so worth it in the end!!
We would soon learn that the hardest part of the whole thing would be the wait between the Retrieval and the Transfer. We had to wait two whole days to find out if and how many embryos we had. With the procedure that we were doing (ICSI or Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection), the sperm would be injected directly into the eggs to ensure the best chances of conception and pregnancy. Finally, late in the afternoon on Tuesday, Dr. Blohm told us that we had 10 4-cell embryos left!!!!! 10!!!!!! We were so ecstatic that I just started crying…it was such a blessing. He told us “I’ll be honest with you, Melissa, I didn’t think you’d have any good eggs with as hard as it was to get your eggs out. It would be easier to pull your molars than it was to get these eggs. I’ve been doing this for 25 years and it’s an absolute miracle that you guys are here right now.” GOD IS SO GOOD!!!! He was also confident that we could do a 5 day transfer instead of a 3 day…which was also our prayer. It’s better to see how well the embryos survive in the lab to transfer the ones that will have the best chance of sticking. The next few days were spent in MUCH prayer and hope that we would receive more good news on Friday during our Embryo Transfer!
~Happily Grim~ 