Here we go!

It's here.  The ER, or TVOR (Trans Vaginal Oocyte Retrieval - gross!) as it's "officially" called on my paperwork.  It's tomorrow!  I go in at 6:30 am and the procedure will be at 7:30.  Holy crap, I'm nervous! 

Some things are just better left to the imagination and this is definitely one of them.  Stupid me, I asked one of my nurses "So how do they do the retrieval?" and then almost immediately wished I hadn't.  She replied "Oh, they go in with an ultrasound probe with a long needle attached.  It goes through your vaginal wall, into your ovaries and then he will aspirate the follicles out."  Yea.  That shouldn't hurt at all!

Luckily my mom is coming down to keep M so we will be able to let her sleep in and just stay at home.  I feel like we've disrupted her schedule enough....although, if the IVF works and she gets her brother or sister, she ain't seen disruption yet!  Hopefully I will be home by lunch time and can just take it easy for the rest of the day and get back to work on Wednesday. 

However, as of yesterday I had 22 mature follicles - that's a ton!  The nurse estimated that probably 85% of those would produce eggs, which is great news for us.  The more eggs to work with, the better chances of getting a few good quality ones to fertilize (or freeze to use if this round doesn't work).  Right after the procedure, we will know how many eggs they actually retrieved and how many are good enough quality to try and fertilize.  Wednesday we should know how many actually survived fertilization and are growing.  By day five they will be able to differentiate between the baby and placenta on this tiny little embryo.  This is all still so crazy to me! 

Five days after the retrieval, we'll go back in for the ET.  Hopefully at least a few embryos will have grown into healthy blasts...if so, we will have 2 transferred back into my uterus and freeze the rest (just in case). 

Then a 10-day wait, which is the WORST part of this whole ordeal!  All of the shots, blood work and doctor visits have nothing on that wait.  It is torture.  But on December 14th, I will find out if we get a little pre-Christmas gift and hopefully the torture will be well worth it!