The Eternal Guest Room

We got to the clinic this morning in record time and watched the sky lighten while we waited for the doors to open. One thing I like about our clinic is that everything is on-site; we don’t have to go to the hospital for retrieval or transfer. I hate hospitals. It’s nice to go somewhere familiar and not as hospital-ish.

My favorite nurse brought us back and I went through the normal pre-surgery stuff – pee, change into a flimsy gown, sign some consent papers about something. The nurse came back to attach my wristband and put in my IV. She’s super sweet and knows I’m terrified of needles, so she tried to be quick about it. Unfortunately, she tried to put it in my left arm, and that didn’t work out. I learned from donating plasma in college that my left vein is sub-standard, and today I learned that that extends to IVs. She had to take it out and start over; we could tell she felt really bad about it. Finally the IV was in.

It was a welcome relief when the anesthesia got going. They rolled me into the OR and I transferred from my bed to the table. My doctor could tell I was nervous, and he was very comforting and reassuring. His wife went through 5 or 6 rounds of IVF so he has a lot of compassion and can relate personally – one of the reasons we chose him to be our doctor.

Then I woke up in my room.

They got 23 eggs, which is good. They had to do ICSI, which was a little disappointing. We find out tomorrow afternoon how many eggs fertilize – the doctor said it’ll probably be about half. After that, we wait to see how many become embryos.

Hopefully we’ll do a 5-day transfer on Monday. But in the meantime we wait to hear how the eggs/embryos are doing.