The Retrieval!

Okay, I am finally awake and with it enough to write out the story of our egg retrieval.  Here we go...

So, on Wednesday night I took my Vistaril with a full glass of water as directed.

It's an antihistamine and it made me a little bit sleepy, which was good, so I actually got some sleep on Wednesday night.  I wasn't allowed to shower in the morning (apparently if my hair was even slightly damp, it could make me start to shiver once under anesthesia - who knew?!) so I woke up just about 15 minutes before we had to walk out the door to get to the doctor's office.  I took my morning Vistaril with a sip of water (since I had to fast starting at midnight) and we were out the door.

We got to the office with no drama (unlike the car ordeal the other day!), and we heard the receptionist page our nurse - apparently she asked to be specifically paged as soon as I walked in the door - seriously, she is AMAZING.  She came in to get us and took us over to the surgical suite at the office and had to ask me silly questions like, "who are you?" and "is this you?" as she put my hospital bracelets on.  She instructed me to put my clothes in a locker and put a hospital gown and the cozy socks I brought with me on, and to wrap the sheet she gave me around my shoulders like a cape.  Are you ready for the hotness?? (I don't think you are)

Heather minus shower plus awesome socks, hospital gown, bracelets, and a sheet!

I was ready to go!  The room behind me in the picture was a bathroom and I had to empty my bladder on the way through.  After I did that, our nurse settled me into what I referred to as my "corner office".  Jonathan and I were situated in the partition in the corner, he had a regular chair to sit in and I had a recliner.  Our nurse came in and went over my post-op instructions, had me sign some paperwork, and took my vitals.  She made me take 2 tums (yum - or not) and then started my IV.  I was terrified of the IV, but she did an awesome job!  It barely hurt going in, and looking at my arm today, you can't even tell I had an IV in yesterday.  The funniest part about getting the IV was that she gave me something to squeeze to help my vein pop out.  Here's what I held - can you tell what it is?

Yup! That's a beanie sperm, covered in rubber ducks.  Wha?!?!

After I was all prepped and ready, we had to wait for the woman next to me to come out of surgery - I was number two in line.  I think she might have had some complications because it took much longer than they kept saying it would and she was in quite a bit of pain when she came back.  I tried not to listen to her, but these fabric partitions only block out so much sound, but she was freaking me out just a little bit.  I passed the time some more by taking pics on my phone... like this one:

My fun socks, feet up in the recliner, with my IV running.

Because of the IV fluid, when my turn to go to the OR came, I had to go empty my bladder again.  That was fun - especially with IV bag in hand! :)  After that, I walked myself into the OR, got down on the table and they started the anesthesia.  After that, things went pretty quick.  I told the nurse (whose name was also Heather - I do remember that) that I felt like I had just had an entire bottle of wine to drink.  I remember them starting to prep me - putting my legs up, etc. and then the next thing I knew, I was back in my recliner in the recovery room.

This is where things start to get a bit funny.  I kept asking the nurses if they had gotten my eggs and telling them that I thought they forgot to get the eggs.  In my mind, since I hadn't seen the doctor or felt the procedure, clearly they forgot to do it!  After asking that for a few minutes, I seemed to accept that they had done the retrieval, so I started asking how many eggs they got.  Each time, the answer was 13.  I was in shock - we had only ever seen 12 follicles on the ultrasound, so I was confused as to how we got 13 eggs.  As a result of this, I started asking if they were sure they were my eggs.  At this point, I'm pretty sure they kept telling me to go to sleep!  Haha!

At some point, the doctor came in to see us - and I babbled to him about wondering if they were my eggs or not, blah blah blah.  I think he felt a little sorry for Jonathan having to deal with me for the rest of the day!

A little while later (who knows how long) I started to feel a bit of pain, but I was so groggy, I just kept saying "Owie, owie".  Jonathan did his dutiful husband thing and made sure I got some extra pain meds, which knocked me back out.

After an hour or so, I woke up and they sat me up slowly, had me go to the bathroom, took out my IV, and let me get dressed.  The nurses kept remarking how good I looked for just waking up after surgery and my nurse told me how happy she was that we got 13 eggs.  She admitted that she was just as nervous as I was that I wouldn't respond to the meds.  She explained to me that I wouldn't know the quality of the eggs or anything until the next day, but that she was very hopeful!

They gave me a baggie of Ritz crackers and a ginger ale and sent me on my way!  I was supposed to nibble the crackers but I was so hungry I had eaten them all a few minutes later - oops!  Nothing had ever tasted so good to me!!  Jonathan stopped at the drug store on the way home to get me more Ritz, extra-strength Tylenol, and pads since I was told I'd be bleeding for a day or so after the surgery.

We got home and I got into bed.  Jonathan made me some ramen noodles for lunch, and gave me more crackers (yum!).  I fell asleep for a while after that, and that's pretty much how the day went.  I would wake up for a bit, eat something, then sleep.  At some point in the afternoon, Jonathan brought up an edible arrangement that Amy and family had sent over - YUM!

Chocolate dipped bananas are my favorite! YUMMMMM!

Eventually, I took some Tylenol PM and went to sleep for the night - after taking my two new meds that I have to take for four days (Cipro and Medrol).  When I woke up this morning, my first thought was "how are my eggs?"  Followed quickly by "ow, I'm a little sore".

I took some extra-strength Tylenol and decided to lounge in bed for a while.  Fortunately, the embryologist called at about 8:40 (waaaay earlier than I was expecting the call) to tell me that we had EIGHT fertilized eggs!  Eight embryos of our very own. :)

Apparently, 11 of my 13 eggs were mature, and they attempted to fertilize all 11 of them using ICSI, which stands for Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection.  What they literally do is take one sperm and inject it into the egg.  This is risky because the needle puncturing the egg can ruin the egg, but it is a very precise way to ensure that fertilization occurs.  We are very fortunate that 8 of them were successfully fertilized!

The embryologist further surprised me by telling me that they thought they'd aim for a Day 5 transfer for us.  We had been prepped to do a Day 3 transfer because we didn't expect to have this many fertilized eggs!  So, unless they call us by 9 AM on Sunday morning, we are planning to have our transfer on Tuesday morning at noon - we have to be there at 11:15.  There are two reasons why we might have a transfer on Sunday instead - if two embryos seem to be stronger than the others, they might want to just get them back inside their natural habitat sooner rather than later, OR if the embryos seem to by dying off and they want to get the embryos inside the uterus to give them a better chance to survive.

After I got off the phone with the embryologist, I literally ran downstairs to tell Jonathan that we had 8 fertilized eggs - that was not such a good idea!  After we finished being excited together, I realized that I had surgery and was still a bit sore.  We went to my PT appointment for my foot then I came home and snuggled back in bed with my heating pad.

We're trying not to stress too much over whether we will end up with a Day 3 or Day 5 transfer... we're just so happy that we got this far!!!  We are very thankful that God has provided the science and technology for us to be able to be doing this right now.  Our doctors and nurses are so skilled, but we know where the skills come from! :)

Tonight is the first of the dreaded PIO (progesterone in oil) shots - the one in the tush!  Once we get past this hurdle, we'll be unstoppable! :)