Stop. Retrieval Time

Now that we’ve covered how ridiculously large my belly was during the creation of what felt like 42 dozen eggs, let’s talk about what came next… the egg retrieval.

The days prior I had to constantly stop in to the clinic to have an ultrasound to make sure I was progressing, and I continued to inject myself in the morning and evening. The last injection is the “Trigger” shot, which is timed to the exact minute based on the time of your surgery. I’m sure it does some magical shit, like send your ovaries a singing telegram to release the army of eggs, but to be honest I am not quite sure what it does and I’m too tired right now to google it. 

I got up in the middle of the night, something like 12:42am, and took my trigger. Then we waited the 36 hours to have the surgery, which was a complete mind fudge. I spent the next 36 hours thinking everything I did would impact the outcome of the egg retrieval. As I sat eating my greasy spoon diner pancakes I wondered if the sugar would somehow tarnish my eggs. Would the smoke I inhaled by walking behind the guy on the street ruin everything. 

So I did what any sane person would do, I went home and googled all the ridiculous stuff I should have been doing all along. Let me tell you, us infertile ladies are batshit crazy with the IVF old wives tales. Some of the things these chicks sweared by was eating pineapple core, chugging pomegranate everything, McDonalds french fries on the way home, wearing crazy socks, bathing in cat piss, and hanging upside down while showering. Ok, maybe not the last two, but there were some doozies. I had to step out of the crazy zone and stop reading what everyone else was doing. If these eggs didn’t like pancakes, then I don’t want anything to do with them!

So the morning of November 14th, 2016 my husband and I stepped foot in our clinic hopeful that this surgery would provide us with a load of eggs that would we could use to build a loving beautiful family. We truly both thought this was going to be one of the most pivotal moments of our life. The surgery went well.. at least I think it did because they knock you out with an IV sedative, Now I totally get why Michael Jackson loved the same medication; a truck full of Ambien couldn’t give you sleep that good!

I look fab in blue!

What we didn’t know is that the days following would be full of nail biting emails with our egg/embryo count getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller. 

• 11/14: Retrieved 8 eggs via surgery

• 11/15: Given update that 6 were able to undergo ICSI (assisted insemination)

• 11/17: Email saying all eggs fertilized, and 3 were moving along as expected

• 11/19: Email saying 5 embryos continued to grow, but moving slowly 

• 11/20: All 5 were frozen

We started with 8 eggs and ended with 5 embryos, not too shabby but still a roller coaster. Many, and I really mean MANY, women I know started with double digits in eggs and ended up with just a couple good embryos, so we were riding high on our numbers.

Powers, party of seven!

Over easy with toast, please

A perfect muumuu specimen; I would prefer a bit more color though.

As we geared up for our first egg retrieval I was taking up to four injections a day. These meds caused my ovaries to go into overdrive, making 10+ eggs each, instead of the usual one total. With that came a ginormous buddha belly that had me contemplating the purchase of maternity pants for work. I’ve heard that maternity pants are made of unicorn tears and threads from Beyoncé’s favorite outfit; in other words they are stupid comfortable. With that and knowing I value comfort over all else, if I put a pair of these magical pants on there would be no turning back… with or without a baby on board. So living in yoga pants and stretchy work skirts would have to do. I also contemplated moving to Hawaii so I could wear a muumuu for all of eternity, as it’s acceptable there (at least I picture it to be).

Fat pants aside, I was a freaking emotional mess. I’m still not quite sure if I scream cried a lot because of the meds, the stress, or both. Either way I blamed it on the meds.

If memory serves me well, I was on all the stimulation meds for about 3 weeks, and the closer we got to the egg retrieval surgery the more often I required to be in for labs and Wanda time (the transvaginal uktrasound) so we could count the follicles (egg sacs) and make sure I wasn’t overstimulated. Overstimulation results in about 2-10lbs of fluid ending up in your abdomen, a nice trip to the hospital, and sometimes a drainage or surgery. Thanks, but no thanks.

“So you’ll need to come in three days this week”, says Dr. Babymaker. Ok, cool. Sure. No problem. If you recall, I travel to clients all over the country each week and working remote is frowned upon. Of course I didn’t tell my boss or coworkers about our treatment, so I had to juggle the work, the meetings, my schedule, and the lies. I truly hate lying, and I’m pretty effing terrible at it. Stress atop of stress, heavily caked on stress. Sure I was a treat to deal with home.

It wasn't until my second round of IVF that I told my boss, and I only told him because he assigned me to a project in Miami during the Zika frenzy. Essentially I was forced into telling him, and let me tell you… that shit wasn’t remotely as hard I thought. He said, “in the grand scheme of things, this project doesn’t matter”. From then on I was able to let them know I had appointments, surgeries, and some time alone with Wanda. A weight was lifted and I was able to focus on work and pissing on pregnancy tests in airport bathrooms.

Thought I would share this little checklist, and let me tell you this shit is as accurate as ability to guess who the killer is in every episode of Castle. If you don’t think so, just check out the Bad Advice column…. BOOM!