Bountiful Harvest

I meant to write about retrieval yesterday but I felt fairly, um, "intoxicated" until about 7:00 PM.  It was honestly a breeze and my drunk-like state was just the side effects of the anesthesia wearing off.  I was lucky: no bleeding, no nausea, just a background headache, but no cramping or pain.  Amazing!  I know there are women who are doubled over for days after retrieval but I made it through with no trauma whatsoever.

Now comes the hard part: waiting.  It's our favorite thing to do!  We're such pros at it now. 

We should get the call before noon telling us how many of my eggs fertilized.  With 18 to work with, I'm not terribly worried but there is always the chance that some aren't viable and don't survive to embryo status.  I had nightmares that none made it so that didn't help my sleep.  Silly, I know, but we've come so far that we just want the best shot possible at making it to Thanksgiving transfer.  With a starting number like ours that was completely unexpected, I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.  There's nothing left to do.

The procedure itself was brief.  Rhett said I was in the OR for all of 10-15 minutes and I got a pretty good look at the table and the equipment before they knocked me out.  The table had a hole for my bum and the typical gyno stirrup but these were hardcore strap-you-in-with-velcro.  I couldn't move at all.  I wish they could just numb you and leave you awake to watch.  I think it would be so cool to see your eggs getting sucked up into the incubator but I'm sure some women would absolutely flip over the size of the needle they use.  It's the length of a sword but very, very thin.

 Rhett says I was awake when they wheeled me back into my recovery bay but I don't remember anything before telling the nurse that I was going to Fuddrucker's for lunch.  bahaha.  Yeah, I don't think they hear that one very often.  I went on about eggnog and tree decorating for a few minutes - no memory of this - and then Dr. Forman popped in.  He held up a sign like he was judging a sporting event and said "this is your number."  I remember being super confused and then it dawned on me that he was talking about eggs.  18?  18 eggs from me? Are you sure? 

(Look, I got all ambitious adding photos to my posts now...)

Now we're off to Wegman's to kill the time between now and noon and probably buy a lot of festive seasonal products we don't need just because we see them.  It's our weekly pilgrimage and the running joke is to sneak things into the cart and wait for the other person to pick them up and say "Really?  You want to buy salted dark chocolate Marcona almonds for snacking?"