Day 14 - eggs, eggs, everywhere

Its a few hours after my egg collection and I'm just reflecting on the amazing result - we got 19 eggs! Yes, that's right - 19. I can hardly believe it. Lovely husband, in his own inimitable way, has described me as a 'good layer'! The embryologist said he was expecting 10-15 before we started.

Everything went really well today. We got to the clinic on time at 9am and were shown into the patients change room, where I took off my bottom half and put on a gown, robe and covers over my shoes. Lovely husband also put on a gown and shoe covers.

Then we went into the recovery room to wait to get started. The nurse took my blood pressure - 104/66 so down around its usual low level. Dr A came and explained what would happen and then the embryologist came through and asked a few questions and got us to sign the consents for freezing etc.

Then it was time to go through to the theatre. Once I was sitting on the table, Dr A gave pushed a needle into a vein in my hand with a tube of fentanyl attached, which is an opiate sedative. She explained I would feel light-headed and it took effect pretty fast - within about 2 minutes. They also put a pulse monitor on my hand.

I lay back and then Dr A inserted the speculum and gave me a local anaesthetic on both sides of my vagina. It really didn't hurt at all and I barely felt it. By that stage I was feeling very relaxed and she inserted the ultrasound probe to start looking at my ovaries.

Next she pushed a really long - like 30 cm or more long, thin needle into my vagina and through the wall into the ovaries. I could watch it all on the monitor that was right beside me. She inserted the needle into each follicle and sucked out the contents until it shrunk down to nothing, then moved onto the next one. Meanwhile the liquid was flowing into test tubes that the nurse was then handing to the embryologist as each one was full. The liquid was pink with blood.

As soon as the embryologist had looked at one tube, we could see the eggs on the screen on the other side of the room. It was really amazing. We could see the corona shape that we've been shown so many times in pictures. He was calling out the numbers as he went along.

The whole process wasn't painful at all and took about 20 mins or so. Once it was over, Dr A and the nurse helped me to the recovery chair. I would have fallen down if they weren't holding me, I was so relaxed. The fentanyl is trully amazing stuff!

They then wheeled me out into recovery and I had a cup of tea. The embryologist came out and told us we had 19 eggs, although some are not mature and some may be over-mature - some children and some grannies, as husband chose to express it. He said that we shouldn't expect all of them to fertilise because some of the smaller ones had been collected.

Then it was time for lovely husband to go off to do his bit. He came back before long and said it had gone fine but the TV screen in the collection room was broken. Not to worry, he of course had bought his own 'travelling porn collection' :-)

The scientists made us wait until they had a look at his semen to check it looked ok and then we were free to go. I've been given a box of Crinone progesterone but told not to use it until instructed by the nurses tomorrow.

After the sedative started to wear off, I felt very sore and crampy but two panadein tablets fixed that and since then I have been feeling fine, but definitely bed rest is a good idea and I feel a bit uncomfortable walking around. I've also got a bit of bleeding but nothing worrying.

Tomorrow at 9 am we will find out how many eggs have been fertilised.

We had a friend staying last night so had to let her in on what was going on. She was quite excited for us but we wondered if she felt a bit sad as well, since she is 41 and doesn't have a partner or children and maybe was wondering about her own fertility. I probably wouldn't have chosen to tell her about it, but we had to leave her in the house on her own this morning, so had no choice really.