Day 1

Egg retrieval was yesterday. It went really well. We arrived at CCRM at 8am and came up to the 2nd floor. Our nurse came out and brought us back to the pre-op room where we went through everything and she started my IV. I met Dr. Gustofson who seemed very nice, but I'm happy to have Dr. Schoolcraft as my primary RE. Dr. G did the surgery, so I can't say anything bad about him, just didn't have the same bedside manner as Dr. S. They gave me some "happy juice" which gives you amnesia and I immediately felt really drunk. They said people either get really quiet with it or really chatty. Apparently I was the latter. I remember being wheeled back to the OR and them telling me to scoot down on the bed and putting my legs in padded stirrups. I asked the anesthesiologist how long until the anesthesia knocks me out and he said about 20 seconds. I then told them how blind I was without my glasses when they took them off and asked the nurse what her prescription was and that's all I remember. Next thing I woke up in post-op. The anesthesiologist came over and told me I was really talkative and it took about 3x as much anesthesia to get me out as they thought it would!! That is surprising because I don't take strong pain killers or anything - the strongest I've ever taken is Tylenol with codeine, so I would think I'd go right out!

I was hungry when I woke up so they got me out of bed into a recliner and I got sprite and club crackers. I was having some pain on my left side, which wasn't surprising considering that side had about 3x as many eggs in it. The nurse brought me a heating pad which seemed to help. Embryology came up and told me they pulled out 31 eggs from me - holy cow. I had been guessing about 23. Good news and I was ready to go home.

When I got home I ate some soup and a cheese omelet that Brian made me. They told me to drink a lot of water and salt the next week to help prevent severe hyperstimulation. I then went up in bed to take a nap. I slept for two hours then took it easy the rest of the day. My mother in law stopped by with some flowers, which was so sweet. Ate some Chili's take out and headed to bed early.

This morning embryology called and said that of my 31 eggs, 27 were mature and were IMSE'd. Today, 20 of those had my Day 1 embryos! That is great news and gives us a lot to work with. If we assume about half of those will make it to day 5, I will have 10 embryos to choose from to implant, so that gives me great odds that some of those will be high quality embryos. It's crazy to think that our future baby/babies is in a petri dish right now dividing away.

The lab will call back on Monday with my Day 3 report. Then again on day 5/6 once they get to blast stage, and then they will freeze them. Happy thoughts :)