A dozen and a Half

We got a call this morning from Dr. S, the IVF lab director, with our fertilization report.  Of our 46 eggs, 28 were mature and 18 fertilized!!  We are so excited!  We never expected this type of number to work with!!  Dr. S said that we are still planning on going forward with a 5 day transfer on July 27th.  He will, however, keep an eye on things and can change it to a day 3 of growth slows, which would be on Monday. 
I'm feeling better today- not quite as much pain.  Matt did his first progesterone oil injection on his own this morning as well (he helped give it to me yesterday).  It wasn't as bad as I expected and he did a good job!  My plan is to just take it easy the rest of the weekend and enjoy some relaxation, movies and time with Matt and Lucky.

Retrieval

The retrieval went quite well this morning. We drove to Rochester last night and got to the office at 7 am. I went back and got hooked up to the IVs (and bled all over the place but at least she got it in). The waiting/recovery area had places for a few patients and Matt got to be with me for all but the actual procedure. After meeting the doctor, Dr. G rather than Dr. H, I walked back to the procedure room and got my nap. According to Matt I was out for about 20 minutes. He heard me blabbing with doc and nurses, then I got silent. Then they were saying my name, waking me up and got me back out to the recovery.

I have no memories of any of this! I guess I kept asking how Lucky (my dog) was doing (we left her alone last night) and asking about the number of eggs. So here is the big news...Dr. G retrieved 46 eggs!! I am in complete shock right now. I thought Matt kept saying 4 until I was little more with it. I still can't believe it. I'm paying for it some now with quite a lot of pain. I was able to get a prescription pain killer, so that has been helping some. We got discharged at around 10:30 ish so it was a fairly quick morning. Dr. G insured me that the lab was going to have a busy morning doing ICSI on those eggs!!

Now I'm just waiting for my call tomorrow for info on fertilization. The hope is that they will have a good deal of eggs fertilize and in good quality. If that happens, I'll be doing a 5 day transfer and hopefully go in on Wednesday. I'm hoping that the quantity of the eggs doesn't hurt the quality of the eggs and we get some great embryos.  Thank you to all of the wonderful messages of support that I've been getting. It means the world to me!

Time to Trigger

Holy crap!  My folicles are good to go!!  I take my trigger shot (Ovidrel) tonight at 8 pm.  Tomorrow will be a joyous day of no injections and Friday will be my egg retrieval!!  I have so many emotions whipping through my brain right now.  Excited about the real possibility of getting pregnant.  Nervous about not having enough eggs or something going wrong.  Overwhelmed on the possibility of it not working.  That's the part that scares me the most.  It's crazy to think that we are actually ready for this.  I am going to try and remain calm and not freak out when this all goes down on Friday!  By the way, here is a picture of my follicle sizes as they measured this morning.  The nurse had a tough time getting some into focus so who knows what will actually come about on Friday. 

Update

My estrogen level is now at 3297- I guess that is good!  There were too many folicles to keep track of this morning (at least for me) and my biggest was almost at 15.  Ahh I can't believe how close we are to the retrieval!!  It could be by the end of the week!! 

Just keep growing

Today brought on another ultrasound and blood work.  Dr. H did my ultrasound today and said that everything was looking great.  I had 11 follicles on my left side (13 was the biggest measurement) and 4 on the right side.  My blood work level is now at 1200.  I'm continuing on the same doses and return for a repeat on Monday morning.  Dr. H is thinking that my retrieval will most likely be either Thursday or Friday of next week!  I sometimes can't even rationally imagine in my head that we are actually doing IVF.  I never would have, in my wildest of dreams, imagined that we would be here.  And now here we are- a week away from the retrieval and a few days further from transferring real embryos.  I hope that we get lucky this time around- I can only hope for a miracle.

First Ultrasound

Everything is looking good so far.  I had my first round of blood work on Tuesday and my estrogen level was at 72.  At that point my Gonal-f was upped to 225 IU and Menopur remained at 150.  I had my first ultrasound this morning.  I have 12 follicles (9 on the left, 3 on the right) - all below 10 right now.  My estrogen is now up to 461!  My meds are staying the same and I go back in Saturday morning for another round of blood work and another ultrasound.  Other than a nasty headache the last few days, things are going well.

I did have a slight mishap last night.  I drove to stay with my sister at her apartment closer to the doctor's office.  I did well with remembering all the meds but forgot the QCap for the Menopur.  So I improvised and used the needle to draw up the meds.  I had a slight panic attack with that!  Hopefully it will all be done by next week at this time!

Three Shots a Day

Tonight I added in Menopur to my nightly routine of shots.  As I somewhat expected, it stung some going in.  Other than that, I'm doing ok.  I also had my Gonal-f shot, which was definitely easier than the Menopur.  The damage from tonight is shown below in a photo.  I have a 6:40 am blood work appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning. 

I'm feeling hopeful tonight- a dear friend in my support group found out she was pregnant today!  We needed some good news!  I know I call them the support group but they are dear friends to me now and I couldn't be happier for her and her husband!!  I can only hope to be so lucky with our upcoming IVF!