All our eggs in the embryologist's basket

I don't think I could possibly happier than I am right now. After 12 days we had our egg retrieval. It's funny, it reminded me of when I was pregnant with Scarlett. I was terrified of giving birth, but I wanted her out so bad that is outweighed my fear of child birth. That's how I felt today, I have been so uncomfortable and waddling around (when I wasn't horizontal) that I didn't care how we got the damn things out, they just needed to come out.

I had my trigger shots on Saturday and Sunday, this consisted of two 80 unit doses of lupron. Essentially what it does it halt everything. It kills you estrogen (mine was 2,700 prior to the trigger shot). Nurse Barb described it as "forcing menopause" and let me tell you, I don't want to do that again. I had horrible hot flashes, nausea and abdominal pain. Except that it didn't hit until 3 hours after I had given myself the trigger. Also with all this crazy flux in hormones I couldn't stay awake. I think I was averaging about 3-4 hours awake in the last 3 days. Luckily my mom and dad jumped in and took Scarlett for us this long weekend. She had a blast with them, a lot more fun than she would have if she was home with me sulking. She saw My Little Pony Movie, went to my cousin Zack's 18th birthday party and had a Gigi & Scarley day that included the park, lunch date, crafts and snow cones. Talk about awesome day!

rainbow snow cones

Spooky Halloween masks

So while Gigi and Scarlett were out having a blast, Matt and I were up early to get to Highland Park Hospital. It's about an hour trek from our house, but it's better than having to go to Riverside in the city, plus, we had Scarlett at HPH so we're kinda partial to them anyway. We got there at 8:45 and I essentially had to sign my life away. I got to hang out in this little box while we waited. I figured we would go back and be done by like 10, we didn't leave until almost noon. After going over all the paperwork and signing a thousand consents we discussed our plan to do a fresh transfer. We went into it with the mindset that if it worked out (lab and time wise) we would go forward with it, if it didn't we would just freeze all and have our transfer in November. My labs have looked great, the only hitch I guess was that my progesterone was 1.04. The cut off is 1.0. The first nurse told us that it wouldn't be possible then to do the fresh transfer, which I had prepared myself for. When our nurse (Barb) came back in and was discussing dates in November, we found out that Dr. Jacobs was essentially full that month and we would have to push back until December. I explained again that our goal was to get in as many transfers as we could before the New Year as our IVF is covered 100% AND I hit my deductible. I told her if we couldn't do the fresh transfer, which was fine, then we would like to be able to do November. When she asked why we decided against doing the fresh, I told her what the previous nurse had said and Barb said no. That my progesterone was BARELY above the cut off...by .04, and that the rest of labs were perfect. So after some finagling to get ahold of the right medications we are all set for our fresh transfer next Saturday! We're cautiously thrilled, as you can imagine.

vitals looking great

Super thrilled about being tethered 

The procedure itself went smoothly. I had a super lovely anesthesiologist who knew I am an ER nurse so she told me the medications and doses right off the bat. I really appreciated that. For me I do better when I have some kind of control, whether that is being able to choose my care or just knowing what is happening and when. She gave me propofol, fentanyl, zofran and toradol. I've never had propofol before so I was nervous about how I was going to feel coming out of that, in the past I've gotten really sick to my stomach and that's a crappy way to feel all loopy and out of it. But I digress. I went back to this freezing cold room with my legs in the air (which didn't help with the whole being cold thing), the anesthesiologist told me she was going to give me the meds and the next thing I knew I was being woken up back in my little box being force fed ginger ale and peanut butter cookies. Waking up was a breeze overall, I was a little out of it, but not nearly as out of it as I have been under general. The whole procedure (when I finally went back around 10am) lasted only 15 minutes. I met with the embryologist who told me that they were able to get a ton of eggs....a grand total of...

That's a great number. We wont know how many were fertilized until tomorrow. My hope is that we will have at least half fertilized and grown to 5 days blastocytes. For whatever reason some just don't fertilize and grow, but if we could end up with a handful to freeze we would be so happy. My hope is that we have enough to complete our family. I really really really don't want to do another stimulation. That was rough. I think the retrieval was the easiest part of the whole damn thing. Mostly because I was unconscious. 

On the whole it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I was excited to not be poked anymore, I'm starting to look like a drug addict. But unfortunately I'm going to start doing PIO (progesterone in oil) once a day for God knows how long. It's an IM shot, meaning that it goes in my ass and Matt will have to do it. I don't think he has ever been more excited for anything in this entire process. I'm really really sick of needles. Like really sick of them. 

I felt pretty good when I got home, I was told to eat french fries, which I gladly did. I took a nap and when I woke up I felt awful. Bloated like I'm 6 months pregnant and horrible crampy pain. I took some tylenol with codine with helped a little bit, I'm hoping getting a good night sleep tonight will help just level all of these hormones out. I'm off now until Wednesday so I know that I'll be back to my normal by then!

Here's a video that I made right after the procedure, I will try and do another tomorrow!