IVF Stories: How I felt after retrieving zero eggs
Here’s the short version of the update. Egg retrieval attempt #1 was a bust, and it was frustrating. Now we’re about to start round 2!
IVF Stories: How I felt after retrieving zero eggs
The upside of having little response to the stimulation meds is I felt pretty fantastic the whole time. Not like run-a-marathon fantastic but my brain felt sharp and I almost felt my hormones were balanced. I recovered super quickly from egg retrieval and was hiking/ jogging Jackrabbit Mountain with Bailey two days later (with RE’s blessing by the way). The downside being.. the reason I felt so great is because the process was a bust. Zero eggs retrieved.
Hopefully we will do better this time on a different drug protocol. And, just in case it makes a difference, I ordered #allthethings from it starts with an egg and am now eschewing the evils of BPA and taking most of the supplements recommend in the book. Our RE is very smart and I trust that he’s doing the best he can with a challenging case.
Here are some random thoughts I had about freezing your eggs. As it turns out, many women I have met froze their eggs years ago which keeps them the same age, aka cryogenic stasis. I feel like I had heard of this phenom in passing but I had no idea it was such a huge thing. Of course, there are risks, but if you are a female who doesn’t want to procreate now, but may later, you should totally look into it.
The 12 Stages of Freezing Your Eggs
Whether you’ve decided to freeze your eggs to pursue future fertility or you’re entering the crazy world of IVF, it’s never a decision that happens overnight. Sure you have to fork over all your money and inject some drugs, but the real journey is the one that takes place in your mind. Here are the 12 stages of freezing – from blissful unawareness it’s even a thing to forcing all your friends to sign up.
- Hearing the words “egg retrieval” conjures up images of a swedish milkmaid putting chicken eggs in a basket. Ah, the stage of blissful unawareness.
- Experiencing JOMO when you realize that egg retrieval and IVF are indeed a thing. Thank goodness you don’t have to worry about that sort of thing.
- After you learn that egg quality declines after age 35, you assume that you will be the rare, bright exception who has perfect eggs at any age. After all, Janet Jackson.
- When you hear more about aging’s impact on fertility, you know it’s the archetypal man trying to keep you down and force you to conform to society’s standards of having 2.5 children
- After you yourself become a woman of a certain age, you have an epiphany that your eggs are not actually special snowflakes. Oops.
- You’re salty no one told you to do this five years ago
- You discover and become low key obsessed with forums and #ivfbloggers
- You sign up and fork over (all the) cash
- You’re mildly panicked that you’re entrusted to this gigantic pile of syringes and vials without adult supervision. You lament your lack of experience with injecting drugs, but it turns out you have a knack for it.
- At all stages of treatment, you can arbitrarily and unilaterally decide today is canceled. In fact, any day you want is canceled. You realize infertility treatment is a catchall category for skipping anything you want. It’s the equivalent of skipping gym class ‘because your period’ in middle school.
- After a few days, you’ve become the expert on all things fertility. Commence trying to get eligible family and friends to sign up for the same program immediately.
- Retrieval day is scheduled! Go back to step #10. Repeat indefinitely.
Next Up: During an IVF cycle, how do you know what good looks like?
