Hey Sperm, Meet Egg

The last few days have been c-r-a-z-y in the Bachman house! 

Thursday was my egg retrieval. Feeling full and anxious to get this procedure out of the way, I bopped into the surgery center around 9 a.m. Totally determined not to get sick, I came in prepared with acupuncture buttons on both wrists to help combat nausea. The actual procedure went smoothly but I did get super sick afterwards and ended up being rolled out of the restroom on a stretcher. So, they kept me an extra 2 hours for monitoring and pumped me with more IV fluids. A total of 28 eggs were retrieved.

I wanted to share the following website: http://www.advancedfertility.com/aspiration.htm  It gives a great explanation of the egg retrieval procedure and even includes a short video clip of what it looks like on ultrasound.

Yesterday, we received a phone call with a fertilization update.  Of the 28 retrieved, 22 of them were mature, meaning they were able to attempt fertilization via ICSI. However, only 7 actually fertilized. Initially, it was hard not to be discouraged by these stats but we are reminding ourselves that it only takes one. The growth of the 7 embryos would then be monitored over the next 24 hours to determine whether we will have a day 3 or day 5 embryo transfer. There are higher success rates with a day 5 transfer, since the embryo has developed into a blastocyst at this point.

Let's fast forward 24 hours...bringing us to today! We checked our IVF voicemail box about an hour ago and had a message from the embryologist. We both took a deep breath and pressed play. We were told that all 7 of our embryos are still growing!  So, we are scheduled for a Day 5 transfer on Tuesday.   Praise God!