My black and white furry alarm clock woke me up earlier than usual for her walk as if she knew that it was a special day. As I struggled to pull myself away from the freshly washed sheets and slight breeze that the ceiling fan so nicely offered up, I couldn’t help but to feel uneasy. The “What Ifs” encased my every waking thought as I tried to picture how I was going to feel if the outcome of today’s procedure was without significant reward. Today was egg retrieval day. 

I’m not sure if it was being alone or the overwhelming cloud of unknowns that hung uninvitingly over my head, but I cried. I ugly cried the entire way to the Winston-Salem office about a good half hour from my house. Can I blame this on the hormones or was I losing it? I had given fair warning to Dr. Y the first day I met him that I was crazy enough without extra hormones being pumped into me, so I felt like I had done my part. I managed to compose myself enough to go inside and before I knew it I was sitting in a small prep/recovery space being handed a gown, booties, and headcover. I reassured the nurse that a friend would be coming to pick me up before being handed a stack of papers to fill out and medication to calm my nerves. 

Each prep/recovery space was only separated by a thin curtain. I could hear conversations of other patients who were either preparing for their own egg retrieval or recovering after it was over. The woman directly next to me sounded like she was in quite a bit of pain and hearing her express this to her partner most certainly did not ease my shaken nerves. For a slight moment I felt sorry for myself for not having a partner or someone there with me. But you know what? I set up the appointments. I gave myself the shots. I paid the 26k total to have the privilege of sitting at one of the most well-renowned fertility clinics in the country. I wasn’t about to let feeling sorry for myself win the moment. 

  After wrestling with my uncooperative veins, the nurse had managed to finally insert an IV line. I quite enjoyed the nurse’s bedside manner as she joked and talked to me before taking me back to the procedure room which closely mimicked a gynecologist office. As I hoisted myself into the chair with my legs up in the air, the nurses draped a covering over my bare legs and told me to relax. Dr. Y had told me that they were expecting to get around 5-6 eggs. If you know anything about IVF, that is not a large amount, but with only one ovary I was just hoping it would be enough.

I can’t quite blog about what took place during the surgical procedure as I was thankfully under anesthesia, but my next active memory was being wheeled into the recovery room. My brain was still a bit foggy from the anesthesia when Dr. Y entered back into the room and told me the good news that they had retrieved 8 eggs! A heating pad, Gatorade, and my couch were all a part of my immediate future for the next few days. A good friend had also DoorDashed me some recovery essentials which was a nice unexpected surprise.

The embryologists were slated to call on day 1, 3, 5, and 6  to give updates on my embryos. Waiting for these calls was one of the most difficult parts of this entire process.  The day 1 call came and it was not what I wanted to hear. Out of the 8 total eggs retrieved only 2 were mature and out of those 2 only 1 had fertilized. One! In the matter of 24 hours my chances of getting an embryo went from 8 to 1. I was devastated. It was over. I convinced myself that there was little to no chance that the one fertilized egg would make it to the blastocyst stage. On average only about 30-50% of embryos make it to the blastocyst stage (day 5 or 6) when they can be frozen and sent for testing.

The next 2 days were torturous. Thankfully the day 3 call came early in the morning. The embryologist had better news! 3 other eggs had matured in the lab outside the body (which I didn’t even realize was possible) and had fertilized. I now had 4 embryos in the game! She explained that 2 were on track and had between 6-8 cells each and 2 were behind. I prayed that by day 5 at least one of the embryos would be ready to freeze so I could breathe a sigh of relief that there was still a chance. 

The day 5 call came a bit later. None of my embryos were ready to be frozen. I regret to say that this rollercoaster of emotions was not on the original itemized price list presented by the clinic and nothing could quite prepare you for these phone calls. On day 6 I finally had an embryo that made it to the blastocyst stage and was ready to be biopsied and froze! They continued to watch one more of my embryos until day 7, but it unfortunately did not grow enough to make it. Cells from the trophectoderm (which forms the placenta) were removed from my one embryo, little green, and sent for PGT-A testing to assess if it had the correct number of chromosomes and could be determined to be an euploid embryo viable for life. At the age of 39, statistically about 46% of embryos sent for PGT-A testing come back normal. Since I only had 1 to send, the odds were not in my favor. 

In the days that followed I decided instead of sitting on my couch obsessing over Google statistics that I would drive myself to New York and buy myself a plane ticket to join my sister and mom on a trip to Vegas that they had already planned. I still felt bloated, sore and exhausted from the 10 days of stim shots and the egg retrieval, but was thankful for the family time and temporary escape from reality. 

On my drive back to North Carolina, I received the best phone call of them all. Little green was an euploid embryo!!! The phone call had come a week earlier than expected as if the universe truly understood that I needed that news to get me through the rest of my drive. I felt blessed, lucky, happy, and proud that I had made it this far. I had one perfect little embryo that was willing to stick around and give me the chance to continue forward on this journey towards motherhood.

“A strong woman looks a challenge in the eye and gives it a wink”