two

After pushing it another day, we finally had our retrieval yesterday. We got 5 eggs -- they warned us right away that not all of those were likely mature, but it exceed everyone's expectations and made me feel secure that they did everything they could in there. The note on our post-op instructions even had an exclamation point and smiley face following the note of "5 eggs! :)."

  

Got the call from the embryologist this morning, and we have two fertilized embryos. A third embryo didn't look like it fertilized but they're going to let it continue to culture just in case. The fourth and fifth egg weren't mature and arrested overnight. 

  

We made the decision to push the embryos to Day 5 blast testing, even though their protocol is typically to only do Day 1 polar body testing and freeze on Day 3 if less than three embryos. I'm feeling good about the decision, and now we wait. They don't do daily updates, so won't be until next Monday that we'll get word about where we stand (unless of course all goes bust before then). Assuming our 2 precious embryos make it that far, then we'll wait another 2 weeks for the testing results. 

  

I'm doing okay, feeling pretty unemotional right now. The initial news of having so few follicles totally knocked me on my ass last week, but since then things have gone pretty much the best we could have hoped for, so I'm at peace with that. I'm really glad to be done with the shots and the schedule, and relieved to be on our way home. I felt a little funky from the anesthesia and sore yesterday, but it was a good day of laying on the couch and watching net.flix on the i.pad.

  

I must add that we've had an excellent experience with the Sunshine Clinic. Every single person we've dealt with has been kind and competent. They call when they say they're going to call, they are patient and able to answer all my questions. They kept our confidence, and we didn't have to waste an ounce of extra energy worrying about our care. So at least there's that. I don't know if we'll keep trying to work with them, too many unknowns in what our next steps even are, but the time and expense of traveling out of town and being with an out-of-network clinic probably shouldn't be taken too lightly. Even though we have insurance coverage for IVF, this clinic is expensive and I have a feeling we will get hosed with out of network reimbursement and end up paying most of it out of pocket. Not to mention the thousand bucks spent on 11 days in a hotel. We barely stayed that long on our honeymoon!

  

Thanks once again for all your support and encouragement. Next up, staying heavily distracted til Monday!