Egg Retrieval

We managed to find friends (generous, wonderful friends) to stay at our house with Mini-Wheat last night, and I did the egg transfer this morning. I had a wonderful intake nurse: she covered me with pre-heated blankets and spoke in soothing tones. The anesthesiologist, on the other hand, was curt and humorless. When they strapped my legs into the stirrups I said I felt like I was in a Terry Gilliam movie (futuristic dystopia with Medieval-looking technology), and the best he could do was smirk. Fortunately he did his job and the procedure was quick and painless.

Now, though: cramp ci-tay. They gave me Darvocet, and I got the obligatory "use it only if you need it" speech. Define need, please. I've just received prescription painkillers legally; you think I'm not going to use them?

So what really matters, and it's good news: I only had 8 follicles, and the reproductive endocrinologist was able to get 7 eggs out of them. It could have been a lot worse. I'll find out tomorrow how many fertilized.

The bad news is, Mr. Wheat's sperm count just keeps dropping (only 2 mil today, normal is 20 mil) so we decided in consultation with the biologist to do TBS (to-be-sure) ICSI (don't ask me what ICSI stands for -- basically it means injecting a sperm right into the egg), meaning they'll try to fertilize 4 of the 7 naturally and do ICSI on the remaining 3. (They originally weren't going to do ICSI at all because we had a natural conception with Mini-Wheat.) Mr. Wheat and I were trying to figure out what we were doing 3 months ago when those sperm cells were developing, and we realized it was around the time of our trip to Australia. Nothing like 36 hours of straight cattle-car travel to stress a person out. Mr. Wheat is the happy-go-lucky type, but we all show our stress somewhere (stomach ulcers, back injuries, etc.). Apparently his stress-expression locale is his bag. Poor guy.