Timer’s set!

Eight am we arrive at ARMS. Sign in. Sit down. Bathroom break for both of our nervous bladders. The wait to go back felt like forever. This is the day we have been waiting for. How many eggs will they actually retrieve? Will they be healthy? Will they fertilize with Brandon’s sperm? Will they survive their first day?

How will I do? Will I get to be put under? Will I have to be awake? How bad is it going to hurt? During, after, days after? Am I having a heart attack, no, just a minor panic attack starting. No big deal. Just getting those weird numbing/tingling sensations in my chest and arms. Ugh. Take me back already and let’s do this. I can hardly walk as it is. I feel bloated, swollen and over all like a fat cow.

They call my name. Thank goodness! Brandon and I both go back to the pre-op room. Three beds are set up and separated by curtains. I will be in the middle one. Oh my goodness do I have a nervous bladder and stomach. Bathroom break again please? The nurse is very sweet and is talking to me about all kinds of things, I know she knows I’m nervous. I’m pretty sure even a little kid could look at me and tell that I am. She explains how the whole morning will go.

I will go to the bathroom (thank goodness), get dressed in my beautiful gown, hair cap and footies. Then jump back into bed, have my vitals checked and get my IV started. My vitals were a little off, but with being so nervous I was actually impressed my blood pressure wasn’t as high as I figured it would be. Time for the IV. Ok, being a nurse I know where all my bad, good and great veins are. I’m sure I would be dubbed a “hard stick” in the hospital. Except for two locations where you’re guaranteed to hit a winner. I showed her both places and she went with the first. She did a great job and I barely felt it.

Next we will patiently wait to speak with Dr.Moffitt and the anesthesiologist. While we wait there is another lady having her retrieval done in the room just in front of us. We are separated by just a door. I can hear the beeping of her heart rate on the monitor. You can also hear muffled voices but can’t quite make out what they’re saying. Again my nurse is making excellent small talk with me to keep my anxiety somewhat at bay. They finish the case before me and wheel her to the spot to my left. She sounds happy it is over with (I cannot wait to feel the same way here shortly). We hear her complain of some pain, warranted, and she is able to get a little extra meds to make her comfortable. That’s good.

Dr.Moffitt comes in, says hello and asks if we have any questions. We both say no and I let him know that I’m ready for him to get these guys out! Then walks in our anesthesiologist. He is very kind, gives a warm smile to us both and introduces himself. He informs us of the risks that could happen if I am put completely under by propofol and he mentions that the previous anesthesiologist that we saw for our consult recommended just conscious sedation. I told him that I completely understand what the latter would be a better choice, but that I am just worried for the pain and my anxiety level. But I trust whatever his decision may be and I will go right along with it. After some more talking the doctor says my favorite words ever, “We will give you propofol and put you under, in the case that you’re having difficulty breathing we will wake you up and have you do conscious sedation.” In that moment he was my best friend. I instantly was put to ease when he made that decision. Ultimately he wanted us to have a successful retrieval and he believed the only way to ensure that was to have me completely under.

Time to send Brandon out and for me to make one last bathroom break and walk into the  procedure room. Let me tell you, that was the weirdest looking chair/bed and stirrups ever. Thank goodness they did put me out because I was in a position I don’t care to remember! The anesthesiologist was the sweetest, I do remember him telling me he was giving me some medicine to calm me down. And although I didn’t quite feel more calm, I did have a weird numbing sensation to my brain. I guess the meds were working at that point! I also remember him petting my forehead and telling me to keep taking deep breaths and asking if I was alright. Yeah, I’m great. I literally feel numb to the world. He then proceeded to tell me goodnight and I can’t remember a single thing after that!

Coming to is also a very strange sensation. I remember bits and pieces of people talking, but that is about it. Once I really started to wake up I was back in the pre-op/recovery room. I was little miss Chatty Cathy, which for my family and friends, this isn’t hard to believe, cause homegirl loves to talk. I remember the first thing I asked my nurse was “Did I cry??” and “How many eggs did he get?” To which she had a good laugh and told me that I actually did not cry at all. (When I had my wisdom teeth taken out I was put under and when I woke up I was literally bawling for no apparent reason) To be able to answer my second questions she had to go ask the final number, but she thought it was around twenty-four.  When the anesthesiologist came in the first thing out of my mouth was “How did I do? Did I get to stay under the whole time??” He told me I did wonderful and the only assistance I needed was at one point he just tilted my chin up a bit to help me breathe. I was so relieved.

Once I talked the nurses ear off enough she went and grabbed Brandon to come on in and give her a break. As he walked in the nurse told me the final count for the eggs, she had been off by a few. It was twenty-six!! Now twenty-six has forever been my favorite/lucky number. Do you remember when you were in grade school and you were assigned a number each year in class? Well my number always ended up being twenty-six and from there on I deemed it my special number.  So to hear that is how many I was able to make definitely felt like there was a higher power involved.

From this step now, the eggs would be incubated and checked to see when they each got to their own perfect maturity. Once this happened the embryologist in the lab was going to perform ICSI. Which is where they take an individual sperm from Brandon’s donation (hehe) and place it inside the egg. This guarantees that the eggs will for sure be fertilized by sperm. Because there was male factor issues, we had decided to just go ahead with this method. If not, they would have all the eggs in the same petri dish and place the semen sample in the dish as well and hope for all the eggs to become fertilized. But we figured we already were spending the money on doing IVF, we might as well guarantee that our eggs are getting fertilized by doing ICSI.

I couldn’t believe that I felt amazing. Seriously, I was awake and excited and happy. They were out of me! Thank goodness. I did have some pretty bad pain on my left side and so I had asked for some more pain meds, in which two doses later it was manageable. Brandon sat there and laughed at me as I kept chatting away. About an hour passed and the nurse asked if I felt well enough to go ahead and get my IV out and start getting dressed. I told her “let’s do it” and she just laughed.

Here I am all smiles and some half closed eyes after the retrieval. But I felt wonderful. I was actually shocked by this. Until the Fentanyl wore off and we got home. Then I started to feel like crap.

The pain in my pelvis was unreal. I also got this wicked headache which then turned into a full blown migraine. At one point the pain of my head was actually worse than that of my pelvis. Not to mention that the pain meds I took made me completely nauseous. So I decided to not take those ever again. Tylenol was the only pain reliever I was allowed to take. I also tried icing the base of my neck and top of my head, as sometimes it really helps. But there was no stopping this one. I did great with advancing my diet and got to actually eat for dinner.

Collectively throughout the day I dosed in and out of sleep. Bed time rolled around and the sleep was terrible. Which honestly I figured it would be since I was pretty much sleeping all day. I tossed and turned, couldn’t find a good spot. I slept with my knees up and bent, flat, on my back, sides, etc. Every time I tried to move in bed it would hurt and it was just a big ole mess. When I officially woke up in the morning I felt like I was hungover. My head was foggy, I was dizzy, there was so much pressure and I couldn’t quite see right. I was nauseous and my head was still killing me. I literally sat on the couch all day with no TV or anything and was miserable. My mom was my saving grace as she reminded me about some migraine medications I had. I took one of those, fell asleep for three hours straight while Brandon went to the gym and when I woke up I felt like a brand new person.

This was also the day that the embryologist was going to call and let us know how many of our eggs fertilized and turned into embryos! I was so excited to hear from them. We really had no clue what it was going to be. I prayed so hard that we would have at least a few. We really didn’t know if I had any issues with my eggs or not. So it could have been possible not to have any fertilize. Throughout my napping I woke up to my phone ringing! AAHHHH! It was a number I recognized from the doctor’s office! Sure enough it was the embryologist calling. She said that they were able to look at all the eggs and out of the twenty-six retrieved, twenty-one of them were now embryos! We have twenty-one babies!!! Two of the embryos were not multiplying correctly, so they removed them from the group. Three of the eggs and sperm had not quite yet formed into an embryo, but she had said that they could still do it and just might be late bloomers. But hey, we have twenty-one! That is amazing.

Now you ask, what is the next step? So the embryologist will continue to incubate our embryos for the next five days. They won’t take them out at all during this time to look at them. They want the environment to mimic being inside my body this whole time. Each day the embryos will continue to multiply and divide the cells. By day five if all goes correctly in each one, they will be considered blastocysts. This is when they are able to adhere to the uterus’ lining and implant.

The embryologist will take each embryo and look at it under the microscope to see if it successfully got to this stage. Now unfortunately, there is a good chance that many of the embryos will not make it to this stage. That is just the way of life. So we are thankful that we are starting with twenty-one! Once they see how many we have left, they will call us with the final number on Wednesday.

We are also choosing something called PGS testing. This is where they will take a biopsy of each of the healthy blastocysts and send them out for genetic testing. They will then keep the embryos/blastocysts and freeze them for us at our doctor’s office until we get the results. The genetic testing is just specifically looking for any trisomies in the embryos. Thirty to fifty percent of embryos have a trisomy. What does this mean? The baby would more than likely not be compatible with life and would be miscarried at some point during the pregnancy. So at this point we are also expecting to lose some of our babies due to trisomies. But again, we are staying positive and are just so happy that we are starting with a high number!

From this point on we just sit and wait to hear back. Once the PGS testing is done we will have an appointment with Dr.Moffitt and go over how many embryos we have that are healthy and we can work with. Then we get to have our transfer date scheduled and hopefully one day soon have our little one featured in this book that lies upon the waiting room table at ARMS.