Lucky Number 7

Day 11 - Egg Retrieval Day!
Thursday, April 21

I woke up at like 2:30 in the morning in a panic. I woke to the sound our water softener doing it's monthly clean cycle, but thought it was the sound of Vance showering. If he was showering, that meant I had slept in, and I was so paranoid about being late to our very important appointment. I whacked my hand across where he was sleeping to feel if he was gone, and alas....slapped him awake. Luckily, he fell right back asleep. Me? I lay awake until after 5am.

When it was actually time to wake up, my ovaries seriously felt like they were going to explode! I was so nervous that I was already ovulating and that it would mess up my egg collection (typical worry wart). As we were driving to SLC, the early morning radio hosts we were listening to were talking about how they got new microphones that made their voices sound sexy. One of the male radio hosts said "Our voices are so sexy, we are making ovaries explode all across the valley!" Vance and I just looked at each other and laughed at the crazy coincidence of the radio hosts comment, because quite literally, mine were.

As we were pulling into the parking lot, I played "Let's Go" by Matt and Kim because it was time to go and get these eggs out!

Let's go!

I was so excited to find out that the doctor performing the procedure was going to be the head of the reproductive department. I had heard such wonderful things about him! I met him after the surgery, and was kinda starstruck. He's a very well known doctor in the infertility world, and I couldn't believe I was being treated by the head honcho.

The nurses showed me my charts and said it was likely that they would retrieve anywhere from 6–14 mature eggs. I was really praying for double digits! Long story short, I met with nurses and the anesthesiologist to go everything before I was whisked away to the procedure room. Within seconds of the mask going over my mouth and nose, I was out! 40ish minute later I was wheeled back over to another room to slowly wake up. I hardly believed I had really just had surgery. Vance came in shortly after to be with me. I was sooooooo tired! Vance tried to be sneaky and captured a loopy video of me.

I don't know why the video is so blurry :( and it doesn't play on my phone. 

Don't I look lovely?! (sarcasm)

The doctor who performed my procedure told me that they got 7 eggs, and sounded really excited about it. I was a bit disappointed with the news because I was really hoping for more so that we could have a greater chance of more fertilized embryos to use for future IVF rounds. But 7 is still an okay number, and I have to remind myself that it's about egg quality and not quantity. We will find out on Saturday how the eggs are doing and when we can have our embryo transfer.

I was wheeled to the parking lot, and we were on our way home. I was so sore and tired I could barely walk up the stairs to our condo, and could barely hoist myself up on the bed. I slept for a few  hours. When I woke up, it was hard to move. My ovary area was very sore and swollen, and my hand was really sore where the IV had been placed. And my boobs were sore! I went to the bathroom and found that I had been bleeding for a little bit. I wish they would have told me to wear a pad after retrieval so that I didn't ruin my clothes. (TMI for all of this....sorry!)

We started progesterone shots in the evening. I cried and had a mini panic attack because the needle is so thick and long, and I really didn't want Vance giving it to me. I thought we had a break from shots for a few days, and was sad that we were starting up again earlier than I expected.

Vance did great! It didn't hurt going in, but my hip/butt seriously hurt the rest of the night (and still hurts today.) If all goes well, we will be taking these shots for 2 months, which I absolutely hate thinking about. However, as much as I hate these shots and how painful they are, I really hope we do have to take them the entire 2 months because then that means I am pregnant! If I don't become pregnant, we will stop taking the shots.

Please keep praying for us and for a successful count of embryos.