Our egg donor’s egg retrieval

On Friday morning, my husband and I rolled up at the hospital in Belgium with our awesome egg donor Marie for her egg retrieval surgery. I’ve been trying to write a post about it ever since, but the past week was such a blur of ultrasounds and international road trips that we’re all pretty exhausted. So instead, allow me to present a brief highlights reel.

The ‘puncture’

The finale of Marie’s past two weeks of hormone injections was the egg retrieval surgery. Marie was never particularly thrilled about this part of the process, but she was even less thrilled when she learned that it’s referred to in Dutch as ‘the puncture’. This makes sense, as it’s performed by sticking a very large needle into the vagina, through the vaginal wall, and into each ovary. A fun way to spend a Friday morning!

Here in Belgium (& the Netherlands), this procedure is done while you’re awake. Our clinic uses a local (internal) anesthetic and a morphine IV to help minimize the pain. Ironically, Marie found the IV (which was placed in her hand) to be the most painful part of the whole procedure. I tried my best to distract her while we waited to be taken back with entertaining anecdotes from my husband’s experience one floor below.

The ‘sample’

At roughly the same time as Marie was being called in for her puncture, my husband had a finale of his own….so to speak. For our first two IVF cycles in Holland, the ‘sample’ (as it’s called) could be ‘produced’ at home and biked over in his jacket pocket. (Can you imagine what would happen if he had gotten into a bike accident??)

Here in Ghent, the ‘sample’ is instead produced in a small room with a tasteful silhouette of a naked lady on the wall and a collection of decidedly less-tasteful magazines. For maximum quality, the ‘sample’ should have ‘accumulated’ for 2-3 days. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

The number of eggs retrieved was…

Back in the operating room upstairs, Marie and I were 3rd in line (out of four ladies that morning) for her puncture. We were called back around 10am — almost exactly 36 hours after her trigger shot — and the actual procedure got underway. Marie was pretty out-of-it from the morphine at that point, but I got to watch the ultrasound monitor as the fluid was rapidly drained from each follicle and into a tray of waiting test tubes. Marie had WAY more follicles (17!) than I had ever produced, so she filled up test tube after test tube. No wonder she had been feeling bloated!

Marie’s large number of follicles also meant the fluid couldn’t be processed immediately to find the eggs like mine was (think panning for gold), since the procedure was all done in only about 30 minutes. But shortly after the procedure was over and Marie was back resting in her bed, the nurse came in to give us the great news: 16 eggs had been retrieved!!

If you recall my previous post about the odds of this cycle working, you may also recall that ~15 eggs is the optimal number as far as maximizing the odds of pregnancy. So basically, Marie and her overachieving ways freaking #killedit.

A slight hiccup

There is a downside to Marie producing so many eggs: it puts her at a higher risk for developing ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome (OHSS), where the ovaries become painful and swollen. In order to mitigate the risk, our clinic puts anyone who produces more than 15 eggs on Cetrotide injections. So although we thought Marie had had her last encounter with a needle, she’s now being treated to 7 more days of daily stomach injections.

How many eggs fertilized?

On Saturday morning, back in Holland, I got the call that 15 out of 16 eggs had fertilized. This is a fantastic fertilization rate, and hopefully it increases our odds even further. When I relayed the information to my husband over the phone, I like to imagine his hands were clasped over his head in a victory gesture.

Now we are waiting to see how many of the 15 embryos continue to divide and develop into 5-day-old blastocytes, when we will hopefully transfer one to my waiting uterus and freeze any remaining for later attempts. Today is already day 3, which means my husband and I will make the drive back to Belgium tomorrow night for a Wednesday morning embryo transfer. Unfortunately, the necessary timing of the transfer also means we will miss the departure of Marie and her family! They all fly back to the U.S. early that same morning, wrapping up what must be one of the most eventful family vacations ever.

By the way, if you’ve ever wondered how you’d react if one of your friends traveled internationally to have elective surgery and potentially give you the gift of life, it may be something like this: