It's about that time!

So we're just one week away from transfer!!  I've been waiting to update the blog when we had some dates set in stone for the egg retrieval/insemination and for the transfer and we (finally) got confirmation today so here we go.......

I'm going to write this in chronological order so it doesn't get confusing.  If you remember, we decided to split the number of eggs (and the cost) with another random couple.  Since the fertility clinic now had to deal with two carriers (or surrogates), they had to wait for the menstrual cycle of our carrier and the other couples carrier to fully complete before they started taking their hormones. This led to a bit of a delay but only by a couple of weeks.  

On Sept 4th, our carrier started taking estrogen injections to "trick" her body into thinking it was pregnant so it would build a thick uterine lining for the embryos to attach to when it came time to transfer.  She's been giving herself these injections every three days and will continue to up until the day of transfer.

On Sept 14th, our egg donor starting taking her hormones to get her ovaries to produce as many follicles (that will end up being eggs) as they possibly can before retrieval day.  

Sept 17th our carrier went to her local clinic in Wisconsin to check her uterine lining and to make sure everything looked healthy.  There was some concern over a cyst that was found on one of her ovaries but the doctor wasn't worried so luckily there was no hang up with all that.  

Yesterday (the 23rd) we received an email from our nurse saying that currently there are 34 eggs (17 for each couple) and they all look healthy.  Keep in mind that even though we're getting 17 eggs, not all of them will be viable for transfer so we might only end up having 12 or 13 eggs to really use.  

Today our clinic told us that our egg donor will "trigger" this evening; apparently they give the donor some type of final injection to mature the eggs.  Since she will trigger tonight, she will come back in on Wednesday to have her eggs removed.  

On the 25th, the egg donor will have her eggs removed by using a hollow needle that will go up and thru her vaginal wall toward her ovaries.  Once the needle is near the eggs, a suction device will suck up all the eggs that have accumulated over the last week and a half.  Almost right away, they will inject my sperm into the eggs.  They have my swimmers frozen at the clinic so I don't have to make a trip to the clinic on Wednesday for this.  

After the eggs are fertilized, they will sit in a petri dish anywhere from 3 to 5 days.  Since we'll likely have quite a few eggs, they'll transfer the eggs on the 5th day.  If we didn't have many eggs to start with and if they didn't look like they were doing too well, they'd want to transfer the eggs into the uterus sooner but hopefully this won't be the case.  On the 5th day, the top two eggs that look the healthiest and most viable will be transferred to our carrier.  The rest of the eggs we will freeze in case we want to add any brothers or sisters down the road.  I'm really pushing for more kids but Chris wants to be done at one or two.....so likely we'll have more kids.  :-)

Our carrier (along with her husband) will fly into DC on the 29th and the transfer will happen on Monday, the 30th.  The transfer process takes less than 5 minutes and then she will be on bed rest for 24 hours at their hotel.  Then the next day they fly back to Wisconsin.  

I'm not too sure how long they wait to do the pregnancy blood test or the pee test but once they do, I will of course shoot out another post.  Keep in mind though that only one or maybe neither of the eggs that are transferred will make it.  I think it's like a 74% chance that one will make it and 63% that both will make it; so our chances are good but it's still not a guarantee.  

I won't do that whole thing where we wait until after the first trimester to tell y'all (that whole jinx thing)......as soon as I know, y'all will know.

Thanks for reading!