Growing the eggs!

This has been a very crazy week for us during our IVF process! We had an appointment on Monday, Wednesdays, Friday, and Saturday. So far everything has been going great!

Monday we had labs to check my estrogen level which was at 69 and they checked the level at every appointment. They wanted to get the number to start going up a lot higher which was slow to raise at the beginning of the week but by the appointment today it was at 1141. Not exactly sure how high they are wanting it to end up but I do know he was very pleased with the number today.

Wednesday I had my first ultrasound to check the growth of the follicles and my lining. And he said there were a lot of follicles evenly spaced. At that point there were 3 at 10mm and 8 or more less that 10mm on one ovary and 2 at 10mm and 8 or more less than 10mm on the other. My lining was 6.0 They have been raising my dose of Gonal F to help give me a boost and it seems to have worked. Today on one ovary I had a 17mm, 16mm, 3 at 14mm, 2 at 13mm, 2 at 12mm, 2 at 10mm, and 4 less than 10mm. On the other ovary I had a 16mm, 3 at 14mm, 3 at 12mm, 2 at 10mm, and 5 less than 10mm. The doctor said my lining was looking great and it was at 10.0 today! The doctor said the goal for retrieval is to have the leading follicles in the upper teens and the rest to be higher than 14 because anything below that most likely does not have a mature egg. This picture is not on my ovary but it resembles what it looks like right now with the follicles growing!

Next week on Monday I have one more ultrasound and labs to check the status of everything and as of now I am scheduled to take my Ovidrel shot Monday evening! The Ovidrel is supposed to trigger ovulation. Then the egg retrieval will be on Wednesday and implantation on Saturday! They will have me take Xanax the night before retrieval and the morning of to help my body to relax. I will be put under general sedation for the procedure but I have heard it only takes 15 to 20 minutes for the retrieval. We will know how may eggs they collected before we leave.

Once they have collected the eggs they will have one of the vials of sperm they have taken from the TESA procedure unthawed and perform the ICSI procedure to create the embryos. Not everyone with IVF has to do this step but since the sperm taken through TESA is less mature they have to do this. But the diagram below shows that they will insert a single sperm into the egg using a needle.

We will get updates from the lab everyday up until implantation on the status of our embryos. Typically not every embryo they make will develop correctly but we will give more info on this part after we have the egg retrieval. 

We will update the blog again Wednesday after the retrieval but please again keep us in your prayers this week!!