Lucky number 7?

Yes, egg retrieval was today. Fun.

So where do we start? Got up at 5am, finally got yesterday's blog posted, and hit the road around 6. Managed to find street parking in front of the clinic, and made it up to the 18th floor in time for our 7am check in.

Where we, of course, waited 20 minutes for anything to happen.

Finally they called my name and the real fun began. Got into the gowns, put on my cute socks and in came the nurse to put in my IV.

Backing up for a minute, let me tell you about last year, when we did our last retrieval. I was greeted by a nurse who was new to the clinic, and tried to do my IV. Long story short, she butchered my arm, blew my vein, then pushed insanely hard on said blown vein to 'prevent bruising'. It hurt like a mofo and my blood pressure was through the roof by the time we finally got the IV in.

Well, you can imagine my delight when that same nurse tried to come at me with the IV again. Argh.

I figured alas, she's been here for at least a year now, doing nothing but this - so she has to be better at it now.

Yeah, not so much.

She was flicking my veins and tried a crazy one on the side that, again, hurt like a mofo. Finally, she decided to go get someone else, and soon we were off and running.

Hubs was able to come in then, gown up, and we were off.

Up onto the table I went. The blood pressure cuff and pulse ox went on, the doctor came in, and the drugs went into the IV. And things got a little blurry after that.

As they're draining the follicles, the nurse called out something - like drip, dripping, stop - while the embryologist on the other side of a little window counted the eggs as they come through. Last time, they counted to 15. I was delighted. This time I heard them say three...then stop. For a while.

Then I heard 'four, five, seven so far'.

And Dr. H stopped.

I was relieved to hear so far, but then I realized that he was done. I asked if there were only seven, and he repeated, so far.

I closed my eyes and hoped beyond hope that there were more.

Then I heard it - seven eggs total.

And I started bawling. From 17 follicles, to 7 eggs. Quite a drop from the 15 of last time. But as I keep telling myself, last time didn't work.

Dr H came up to me and said we got five good ones from the left, and two from the right - that for some reason it didn't give us much this time. He figures we'll have enough to get two for transfer, but likely will have nothing to freeze.

I just kept crying.

Right after that they got me up and we shuffled me back to my little cubby space. I just sat in the chair and cried, while Hubs kept trying to tell me it would all be okay.

Eventually they came back, told us Hubs' sample was okay, took out my IV, and sent us back down to the 11th floor for our instructions. I tried to hold it together.

Back at Hannam, we went in to chat with nurse Jenn. She handed us the progesterone in oil which I start tomorrow, and reiterated that we'll get our first phone call saying how many were mature and how many fertilized tomorrow. I told her we got seven and that I started bawling on the table - and she said she knew, Dr. H had told her. But she reiterated that the estrogen supports the follicles we got so that should bode well for having the max be mature.

Hubs and I hopped in the car and headed home, hitting McDonalds and just making the breakfast deadline. I updated Facebook and some message boards I frequent, then passed out on the couch. I finally got up around 5pm and told Hubs I was hungry so he made a super yummy dinner and we watched a very bad movie. But there was ice cream, so all was not lost.

And now, I'm spent. Totally spent. Emotionally, physically, financially spent. I've been up super early every day for the past seven days. Tomorrow will be my first chance to sleep in in what feels like forever. And I can't wait.

I'm still pretty sore from the whole process. Again, I'd forgotten just how much it can actually hurt. Thankfully there's Tylenol, and hopefully sleep will work its magic and I'll be on the road back to no pain shortly.

But for now, I'm off to bed. I know it's early, but I figure it'll take me a while to even get upstairs, so might as well get a start on it now.