Retrieval Day!

Hey Everyone. It's Darryl. Jen is resting and relaxing from an eventful day for us.

I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been reading and praying for us. It has been pretty overwhelming for both of us to see how supportive you are.

Today's procedure was successful relative to whom you spoke to first. Dr H. harvested 4 perfectly healthy and mature eggs today. That is 4 of 12 that Jen had produced. Jennifer was disappointed at the outcome and was crying when I came in to see her.

Prior to going to the recovery room, Dr H. explained to me that the other eggs were not as developed and were not good candidates for re-implantation later. She thinks that this is from Jennifer's endometriosis. A woman of her age would normally produce many more eggs than she did at the maximum dosage she was at. We also discussed the re-implantation. This will be done on Wednesday morning if the eggs fertilized today. She will be place 2 (possibly 3) embryos back. Dr H. is reluctant to do 3 and be so aggressive on the first round. She does not want a high risk pregnancy for us. Her goal all along is for us to have 1 child, not a litter. The biggest concern would be for the eggs to split (6% chance) or for us to have them at 20 weeks and be disabled. I know we have been joking about having a basketball team (I was saying we should go all out and get 11 so we can field all major sports...). I am really only ordering 2 or maybe 3 max!

When I got to the recovery room, Jen was crying and Dr H. was explaining to her what she had just told me. Jen had wanted as many eggs as possible and was disappointed with the outcome. We both told Jen that we only need 1. She started to feel a little at ease. We stayed for about an hour so that the drugs could wear off. Dr H. will be calling us tomorrow morning to let us know how many fertilized.

I am perfectly happy with where we are right now. It would be nice if everything would just go smoothly for us, but if I have learned anything throughout this process, its never up to us. Its God's decision, and if its our turn, then we have an addition to the family. I personally did not want to have to figure out what to do with any extra embryos. To me, they would be our kids, and I don't know if I could donate or discard any. I don't think Jen could either. So in my opinion we are exactly where we need to be.

On the fun side, Jen was pretty "high" coming out of the procedure. Apparently, she was telling the anesthesiologist to "Get Off!" We aren't sure what she was talking about, but I think she was dreaming about our German Shepherd puppy, Ari, jumping all over her. She also was acting like 10 Second Tom from 50 First Dates asking the same question every 2 minutes or so.

So the plan is now to hopefully get a good call tomorrow morning and have our kids put back into Jen on Wednesday. Jen will have 4 days of bed rest and we have a pregnancy test in a couple weeks. Please keep praying for us and hopefully we have good news soon.

Thanks,

D