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    11 follicles, 8 eggs, and 24 hours of waiting

    December 8th, 2007

    This morning was one of the most stressful days so far. I woke up with so many questions: Did I ovulate by accident too early? What if all my follicles are duds and there’s no eggs in there? If there are 0, is there anything I could have done over this last month that would have changed that?
    I also woke up with the worst cramps I’d had thus far. Not awful, but not great. They also got worse as the procedure got closer.

    We showed up to find the parking lot empty and the office lobby empty. It was 7:30am: exactly when they told us to be there. Umn… Ok. So we sit, and we wait. At this point my husband proceeds to the bathroom to work on his…. contribution 🙂 Now this sample you can either work on in the clinic, or gather up at home, provided that you can deliver it within 45 minutes. He decided to do it in the clinic. Now… the clinic doesn’t have a fancy room with low lighting, a cozy couch and posters of hot models up there. It has clinical tile, fluorescent lighting and for good measure a few Playboys: yep, we frequently refer to it as “the bathroom”, complete with stalls and all.
    Now… for those of you that haven’t had to provide “a sample” for clinical use, it comes with instructions. The instructions have fun statements like “please clean your hands and wash your penis”. As Hubs is telling me this I go, “So what did you do?” He says “Well, I couldn’t just walk up to the sink and dribble all over the place, so I suck it in the toilet and flushed!” Yep, my jaw just like yours dropped and my eyes bulged out. Then he started laughing and I realized this was one of his jokes.

    Now while my man considering hygiene in the fancy sample room (and lamenting the article to photo ratio of Playboy), I was escorted to one of the consultation rooms to go over the rest of the paperwork. Then I had to slip into one of the sexy gowns that tied in the back. Over the next 30 minutes I listened to the nurses prep for the procedure, until my anesthesiologist came in to put in my IV. He was pretty good — no popped veins, which I’m infamous for. It’s funny how the moment your IV goes in your body immediately starts to feel a wave of cold. Apparently, that’s the saline.
    The next part went pretty quickly. I was escorted to the surgical room and lied down on the table. At this point my body began to shiver uncontrollably. The room was cold, but I don’t know why all of a sudden I felt THAT cold. They kept putting heated blankets on me, and with each blanket I could hear my heart rate slow down (hearing the beeping in the background and all). As I looked up I saw a dragon fly mobile (kinda like the ones they put on babies’ cribs) hanging from the ceiling. It also had glow in the dark stars and cut outs of fairies. I was thinking to myself “Nestie dust” fairies (Nest.com reference here). As I sat there pondering this they turned off the lights. I don’t remember anything after that.

    I woke up about 10. I was thinking “Woot! My ovaries don’t hurt anymore. But dang my uterus is sore”
    Of course it is! They just took a needle and stuck me with it a few times on the inside. It feels like getting an immunization: you’re sore at the site for a bit afterwards.

    So here’s how the procedure works: the needle is guided by an ultrasound and is connected to a glass tube. As it punctures each follicle it extracts the fluid within and the egg. Once the tube is filled up they take it to the lab, which pours out the contents in a Petri dish and starts counting.

    I had 8 eggs! Now if you remember at my last ultrasound I had 9 mature follicles and a few stragglers. It is only 8 eggs, which isn’t a lot, but given the fact that I was preparing myself for 6 a few days ago, those two additional ones felt like a gift. Since there were so few, they’ll probably ICSI them all. I just hope they’re all mature enough to work.

    So now we wait. Tomorrow between 8am and 9am they’ll call us with the fertilization report. These next 24 hours will be hard. At this point it is all out of our hands and there is literally NOTHING we can do. After the fertilization report we wait another 2 days, hoping the embryos survive to transfer.

    And the chant now continues: “Fertilize, fertilize!”


    Is the Clock moving Backwards – this is a long wait

    December 8th, 2007

    Today is the day. Now is the time.

    I’m sitting in the waiting area of the doc’s office while Wifey is probably knocked out on the table. Each time a door opens I quickly look up expecting to see a nurse coming towards me with info – my logical mind says “good news” but my emotional mind fears that it’s “bad news”.

    Wifey gave me a task to do while waiting, create my holiday card list of names and addresses – as mind numbing as that is, I still can’t even focus on it. So hands jump to keyboard (you didn’t think I would arrive for a three hour wait without a laptop did you?) for the therapeutic release of a blog post.

    News Flash – I just heard our RE’s voice in the hallway. She was just checking on any waiting patients before she “went to retrieval”. An hour after our check-in at the clinic and it sounds like the doc is heading to Retrieval. That’s a good sign – things are on schedule.

    Back to earlier thoughts. I thought after the shots ended we would coast into the retrieval appointment. It was at that point that my mind fought off the negative thoughts – had I been giving the shots correctly, were we too flexible in the timing of the shots, did I really give 5 IU last night or was that 10 IU. I could also tell that Wifey was more uncomfortable – the noticeable cringe on her face when the cramps shot through her were more frequent, the stiff look when we hit a bump on the road. It made me appreciate the sacrifice she was going through for US.

    As much as it seems like a selfish reason, I’m glad I gave all the shots and attended most of the doc visits because I feel a part of this process. Otherwise I think I may feel more like an ingredient in a recipe – “Please produce a sample. Now wait here.”

    The clock ticks away. The procedure is probably starting now. In an hour, we’ll be on our way home. Then we’ll have the challenge of replacing any negative thoughts with hopeful ones while we wait for the fertilization report tomorrow morning.