hello friends!!!
first, i want to start off by saying i’m sorry to every single person that has talked to us about IVF in the last month or so. we’ve lied to you. basically to your face (or via message). so sorta sorry about that. but we decided early on in our journey that we would only share things when we felt ready and at our own time. so some of the answers that we’ve given to questions over the last few weeks have been… well, mostly half truths. and mostly not the full truth. and honestly, i don’t really feel bad about that simply because IVF/infertility is a very personal thing. that being said, we feel ready to give a big update!
we actually started our IVF journey the second to last week of february! (i pinky swear i won’t go into details about cycle days or anything like that, because gross.) but anyway. as soon as my cycle began we called our fertility clinic to let them know and then three days later we had our very first baseline ultrasound and blood work done. because we are a part of a clinical study i had to have more ultrasounds and blood work done than normal. at that appointment we were given my follicle stimulator (shots). and that night i gave myself my first shot. (i did it guys!! i gave myself all of the shots!!!) we had to do follicle stim shots for 9 days. for 6 of those 9 days i had to go to the clinic every single day to get an ultrasound done and do some blood work to make sure that my follicles were growing. at this point, due to the study protocols, we weren’t allowed to know how many follicles there were or see any of the ultrasounds. (usually they walk you through everything on a TV monitor as they go). my estrogen levels were pretty high and i was getting pretty swollen in my belly (i legit looked 4 months pregnant), so we were taking that as a good sign, but we still weren’t sure how things would go.
on day 7, i began another shot called ganirelix which basically stops your body from ovulating (because they don’t want you to ovulate on your own and not be able to retrieve the eggs in time). then on day 10 we did our trigger shot to prep my body for our egg retrieval!
on saturday, march 9th we went in for some more blood work, to see if my body was producing an LH surge (aka ovulating) and then sunday, march 10th we went in for our egg retrieval!!!
now, remember, up to this point we didn’t know how many follicles we had or anything like that. so parker and i decided to make guesses on how many eggs would be retrieved! parker guessed 27 and i guessed 42. (which are both kind of high guesses, because a typical egg retrieval usually produces about 15-20 eggs retrieved)
i was soooooooooooooo nervous yesterday for the egg retrieval. for the retrieval, they put you under general anesthesia, which isn’t super scary to me because i’ve done that before, but i just really didn’t know what to expect with the procedure or recovery. (and everything i read online was a little terrifying) but everything went so great! the procedure was about 40ish minutes long (i think…) i don’t know how i got to the recovery room (haha) but i got there and our doctor told us that we had SIXTY-THREE (yes, 63) eggs retrieved!! he said that they were recounting just to be sure, but that it was most likely 63. he also told us that because our number was that high that i would need to take it easy for the next few days because i’m at risk for OHSS (basically overstimulation of the ovaries). but things have been pretty good. i took the rest of sunday pretty easy, we went and watched a movie at parker’s sister’s house and then went and had family dinner at parker’s parent’s house. and then i’ve basically rested all day today. i literally showered and got dressed for these pictures. (hahahah) BUT we were expecting a call from our clinic to let us know how many eggs were mature (aka big enough to possibly fertilize) and how many eggs were actually fertilized from those mature eggs. we got that call this afternoon and found out that we did, in fact, have 63 eggs retrieved. we had 50 mature and 47 fertilized!!! in a few days we will find out how many of those 47 embryo babies have continued to grow and will be able to be frozen for us to try to use to get pregnant with!
we are so, so happy with these numbers! they give us so much hope & we are so excited for the next steps!!! due to our study protocol we have to do a frozen embryo transfer in the coming months because we had so many eggs retrieved.
so the next steps for us from here look an awful lot like more waiting, more shots (this time in the booty… *crying emoji*) and then transfer (aka putting a fertilized embryo back in me) to hopefully get pregnant!!! we aren’t sure when those next steps will be. and here’s where the bummer news (for you) comes in: we won’t be updating again until we are ready. like i said earlier, this is pretty personal stuff and we want to be able to announce things on our own timeline. we’ll answer questions about steps that have already happened, but as for upcoming steps we will be keeping that information to ourselves. we are so, so grateful for your support, your love, your kindness and your prayers! we hope that our little embryo babies keep growing and that soon we will be able to give another update. but until then, i hope you have the best monday night ever. i’ll be chillin in my bed, watching a movie, drinking gatorade + eating ramen and the potatoes i’ve been CRAVING, and just resting with my heating pad on my belly and cuddling parker and mozzie (but mostly just mozzie because parker’s love language is NOT physical touch).
