I have taken up residence at my local fertility clinic.
Early last week, I was going every other day for monitoring--a little prick for some blood work, maybe a little rooting around for the internal ultrasound, and back home. Then toward the end of the week, things started moving a lot faster than anyone had expected. My follicles (which are being stimulated by the Follistim to create and mature eggs) started growing at warp speed, and from Friday through today, I've been going in every morning for monitoring to ensure that I don't over stimulate and we can administer the HCG trigger (the drug that will signal the eggs to prepare for release) at the right time.
I am absolutely covered in stick marks, from my thighs to my abdomen to my arms, my lower stomach is slightly achy from my ridiculously overworked ovaries, I've been off and on nauseous for the last couple of days, and I am so tired that I've been falling asleep around 8:30 or 9 almost every night and sleeping 10-12 hours. But the good news is that we are finally moving from making progress to actual action, and pending a confirmation call from my nurse this afternoon, Colby will administer my trigger shot tonight, and we'll go in for egg retrieval on Wednesday morning.
From there, the embryo transfer will take place some time between Saturday and Monday depending on how the fertilized eggs develop. If there are a bunch of eggs and they're looking great overall, the technicians will push them for as long as they can (through day five) to see which embryos are the absolute best quality. If there aren't so many eggs and the quality is so-so, they'll transfer the ones that look the best on day three, and hope that in the comfy, cozy uterine lining they'll continue to develop properly.
Between the exhaustion, soreness, nausea, and hormones, I've been feeling extremely emotional and on the verge of full-on tears at almost all moments. Talking to my mom yesterday and explaining the slight concerns the nurse had about the fact that my follicles are maturing at wildly different speeds, was the only time I've actually cried, but the rest of the time I mostly just want to curl up in bed and be alone to decompress and avoid any and all thinking.
My main concern is that I'll have too many eggs that are overcooked or undercooked, and not very many at the right level of maturity. Since my main issue is producing good quality eggs, I was really hoping that we'd have more at the right age to choose from. But there's really no way to know for sure until they get in there and suck all those little guys out of the follicles.
Meanwhile, our house went on the market on Saturday, and we already had our first showing on Sunday. The buyers expressed interest and may come back by for another viewing, but we're trying not to get our hopes up as we're still very early in the game. But as for today, it's dreary and rainy, I have hours and hours of backlog on the DVR to catch up on, and a cup of hot tea calling my name.
I'll probably also try to fit in an inspiring egg pep talk at some point before we release them into the world later this week. All I could think when I was watching the ultrasound monitor this morning was, oh my god, I might be looking at my future baby right now. And yep. There go the waterworks.
