Egg Retrieval Complete, now need to survive until THE CALL tomorrow morning…

Here is a picture of my happy socks from Megs at Work is for Suckers – had these bad boys on my feet in the little room they put you in when they prep you for the procedure and all that jazz and then wore them throughout the procedure.  We got to the clinic at 7:15 for our 8 am slot, we were definitely the first ones there in the clinic, and in line for retrieval this morning.  When I had gone on Thursday for my monitoring the building had screwed up and locked the doors and elevators, so it was a bit of a mess trying to get up to the office.  I didn’t want any chance of screwing this up today so made my husband be ready super early and we got there and the security guard let us in and we were able to get up to the 10th floor.  I also brought a few slices of pumpkin pie for the nurses and the doctor doing my retrieval – figured a last ditch karma effort wouldn’t hurt at this stage.

Next we sat in the waiting room and had this fun conversation:

Him: ‘I want to go to Top Pot (donuts) after I do my sad business in the sad room’

Me: ‘Ok, but make sure you get your ass back here before I wake up, they had to look for you last time’

Him: ‘Yeah, it took me longer to finish the last time, I was nervous, so I wasn’t done in the sad room until you were already in recovery’

Me: ‘Try having a giant needle stuck up your vag and the eggs sucked out, sorry, but I don’t feel bad for you’

Him: ‘That’s why I have my backpack, it has my personal porn all ready to go’

Me: ‘This is a conversation I never thought I would have… thank you IVF for precious moments such as these…’

By the end of it we were laughing pretty hard, I’m sure the receptionist wondered what the hell was going on.

So they took me back, I got undressed and took the picture of my socks and we were ready to go.  Got into the room, and I had a different anesthesiologist than the last time.  The first time I just remember a sharp stick and I think she said that she was numbing my hand so I wouldn’t feel anything else.  This time I am pretty sure he didn’t numb it.  Both the lovely drug to make me relax, and then the beautiful, beautiful propenhol (sp?) – seriously, I can see why Michael Jackson was addicted, that shit is good stuff, but I digress.  Anyway, they both burned and hurt like a motherfucker.  But then I was lights out and woke back up in recovery.

So the end result is that they got 20 eggs, which I realize sounds fantastic, but we had 8 last time and all of them were crappy, none of them even made it to fertilization.  So I am not ready to celebrate that number, I am happy it was double last time, but until I get the call tomorrow that we at least have a chance at some viable embryos I am trying not to think about it.  The doctor even came in and I tried to see if she could see anything already about the quality, which of course she couldn’t at this stage, and then I started crying, which was embarrassing.   So now I am chilling in bed, with a large heating pad and taking tylenol.  One of my friends who has been through the IVF roller coaster said that her number one advice was to skip the vic.odin if possible and have a nice large glass of wine at the end of retrieval day.  So that is what I am going to do (well, I am going to have my husband bring me one) – cheers to Infernal Infertile who also had her ER today, and all you other ladies who are in the throes of stimming.  Will let you know if tomorrow brings happy news (please, please) or me moving onto bottles of wine and perhaps a slight nervous breakdown.