Egg pick-up - 6 eggs

This morning I had my egg pick-up for this cycle, and hopefully my last. We got six eggs and the embryologist thinks most if not all are mature.

That was a pretty good result and not far off the 8 or 9 I had predicted. Its a fantastic result considering I'm 43. Dr G reckons many younger women would kill for as many follicles as I had.

Now we just have to wait for the fertilisation report tomorrow. Based on my first two cycles, it would be around 3 that fertilise. But there was another unexpected change. The embryologist had a chat to us before the procedure and said it was in our file that they would be doing ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection). We said this didn't sound right - we'd only marked ICSI if it was needed, and at the embryologists discretion.

But then Dr D came in for a chat and said Lovely Husband's sperm wash had shown the sperm had a slightly lower than normal motility, so we should go ICSI. She said the benchmark for doing ICSI is pretty low and it was worth doing if needed. She said there were no risks and most of the adverse outcomes were in men who had male factor fertility, and therefore probably some other issues with their sperm.

It was unexpected, but not really too concerning. The good thing is that at least all the eggs should get a chance to be fertilised with ICSI, and then its just up to their chromosomes to match up properly to get fertilisation. There's no real explanation for why the sperm were a bit less motile, but Dr D said it can change from one sperm wash to another.

Anyway, its good to have it out of the way. I'm trying to keep my expectations low for the fertilisation report tomorrow and as I thought when we started this cycle, if we get one embryo for freezing, I think it will be a good result.

And Dr D also did another endometrial biopsy, so we should know next week if I am finally free of the dreaded retained placenta. I'm feeling more confident now, since it didn't look like there was any chunk of placenta on the ultrasound, just an area of (hopefully) healing around the site where it was taken from.

I asked Dr D about how my lining hadn't thickened up very well but she seemed to think it had come good in the end. That wasn't how it looked on Monday but maybe it was ok after all. Anyway, I guess we'll know about that when we next attempt a frozen cycle, which fingers crossed, will be after my next cycle.