November 17, 2009...Egg Retrieval

I just want to clear up any confusion as to what is happening tomorrow. Tomorrow we are doing our egg retrieval only. Cody and I have to be at the lab at 6am where Cody will give a semen collection and I will get ready for the retrieval. The procedure will actually start at 7 oclock. They will put me to sleep and then Dr. Hansen will insert a long needle through my vagina and into my ovaries. He will aspirate all of the liquid out of every follicle on each ovary. When he is finished, he gives everything to the lab who then have a long day ahead of them. They will wake me up and hopefully I will have a quick recovery and we will be on our way. As long as I am feeling fine, I should be able to go back to my regular routine on Thursday. Throughout the day tomorrow, the lab will be removing my eggs from the liquid aspirated and place them in a dish. They will then look through Cody's sperm and pick out the "best looking" sperm and prepare them. Once everything is ready they will be doing the ICSI procedure, where they will be inserting a single sperm into each egg. This is obviously an extremely delicate process. Once the sperm is inserted into the egg, we then have to wait to see if fertilization occurs. Tomorrow, before we leave, we will only know the number of eggs that were retrieved. We will then receive a call on Thursday from the nurse telling us how many of the eggs actually fertilized (which we will then call our embryos). They very rarely get 100% fertilization, but we are hoping for a good number. We will also find out whether or not we will have a 3 day transfer or a 5 day transfer (that is the time when they will transfer the embryos back into my uterus). This will be determined by how many eggs were retrieved and how they look once fertilization takes place. The embryos then have a few days to "grow" before the transfer takes place. This will happen on either Saturday or Monday. So yes, tomorrow is a big day. Please pray for peace, comfort and success....I am VERY nervous.