Saturday, 25 August 2012

Egg Collection


I didn’t for a minute think I’d sleep last night, but I fell asleep at 8pm on the sofa!!!  Hubby woke me up and told me to go to bed, and I slept right through until it was time to get up this morning to go to the hospital!!  Probably a good thing anyway as I had to fast from midnight and not being able to have a drink of water is torture for me!

We had to be there at 8.30am, which is a bit of a nightmare as the hospital is just off the busiest motorway in Scotland and the traffic can be awful!!  Add into that hubby having to get his sample to the lab within an hour and you’ve got a recipe for a pretty stressful morning!!!  There is a room you can use at the hospital for hubby to do his thing, but like most men I’d imagine hubby was worried he wouldn’t be able to “perform” there so we decided it was better to do it at home and take it in with us.  That still put a lot of pressure on him though as he was very conscious of the time and us having to leave, but I’m delighted to say he managed it and with his sample lodged firmly in my cleavage (which the lab staff found really funny) we set off to the hospital.

Thankfully the traffic wasn’t bad and we made it into the admissions desk before 8.30am and were booked in.  Then we headed round to the ACS suite and sat in the waiting room until we were called up to hand in the sample.  After that it was back to the waiting room, then the anaesthetist called us into a room to have a chat about the sedation and to ask health questions.  That done, we then went into speak to the doctor who would be performing the retrieval, Dr Medina, and she went over what would happen and really put us both at ease.  Next, it was into see the nurse (it just happened to be my favourite nurse in theatre that day which I was delighted about!) and she went over things again and gave me two paracetamol to take.  There was another girl in font of me and she was already in theatre (we’d seen them in the waiting room) so she got me to change into a gown and just sit and read my kindle until they were ready for me. ( At this point hubby had to leave me, which I hated, as he wasn’t allowed to come into theatre with me.  He went and got a coffee and a paper and after calling his friend for a chat he just sat in the waiting room for around an hour until he was allowed through to see me in recovery)

I sat for about 10-15 minutes until the other girl was finished, then it was time for me to go to theatre.  I had to go to the loo en route (the recovery room is just across the corridor from the theatre and you just walk over) to make sure I had an empty bladder then it was into theatre and I had to confirm my name and date of birth with the anaesthetist and the embryologist.  The ACS lab is connected to the theatre by a hatch, so you could see into the lab and the people working there which is fab, although I was tempted to tell them to remember to look after my babies-to –be well once they got them!! Lol    I then had to lie up on the bed and the nurse in theatre put on all the monitoring equipment (blood pressure, pulse, oxygen sat, heart monitor) and the anaesthetist put the cannula in my hand.  Then they put an oxygen mask on me, and said she’d be starting the drugs and I’d start to feel lightheaded and after 10 minutes they’d start.  In actual fact      I remember feeling like I was drunk and talking to the nurse about tattoos(?) then I don’t remember a thing!!!  I don’t even remember putting my feet into the stirrups, anything of the procedure of moving over onto the trolley when they were finished, and the first thing I remember very vaguely was someone telling me how many eggs we had and then waking up in recovery.  I had to stay in recovery a while, and for the first half an hour I was asleep (and a fab sleep it was too) then I was talking to the nurse.  After another twenty minutes she gave me a glass of water and sent hubby in while she was away getting me a coffee and a biscuit.  Before she left I’d asked her if I heard right with the number of eggs we had, and she said I had, so I was so happy to be able to tell hubby that we had 18 eggs retrieved!!! 

After I’d had my coffee and biscuits (the make you eat something) I had to get up and go to the loo before I could get dressed.  Then we had to sit in the waiting room a while so they could make sure I was ok on my feet before the nurse came to take my cannula out and give me information on what happened next.  She explained that the eggs would be injected that afternoon, then I had to call the lab at 10.15am on Friday to find out how many had fertilised.  She said I could take paracetamol or co-codamol for the pain, although I didn’t think I’d need to because I felt ok (how wrong was I going to be proven) but she said to take them anyway as the next day is always more painful.

After that it was home time, and a very slow walk to the car!! Lol  I spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa or in bed, and by around 5pm I was in quite a bit of pain so took painkillers and had the hot water bottle on my tummy to try and ease it.  I tried a bath too, but to be honest it didn’t do too much to help the pain. 

Now it’s onto worrying about the next part – will any of the eggs fertilise?!?!!?!?  It feels like you just go from worrying about one thing to the next with this whole thing!!!

S x

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