It's trigger time!

This cycle has gone by pretty quickly. I started off fast and they slowed me down a bit by lowering my dosages, but it is already time to trigger. I'm so glad that it wasn't last night, since J just got here today. So that is great timing - he can give me my trigger shot tonight at 10 pm and then tomorrow we don't have to do anything, just relax and wait for Wednesday. Our retrieval will be on Wednesday morning at 9. We have to get there at 8. I'm hoping that Dr. School.craft himself will be doing the retrieval - I'm not sure what the schedule is but I think Wednesday might be his day. Although for my first retrieval I had Dr. G, and he actually got a lot more eggs out of me than Dr. Sch did, so I'd take him again too.

I have about 8 follicles that are looking prime (one of them might be a little overprime...) and then at least 5 other small ones that may or may not mature enough by retrieval. CCRM is able to mature the eggs in vitro though, and do second day ICSI on them. We did this with one our first cycle, and it did fertilize but I don't think it made it very far in the embryo stage. I know of other people who have had success with that though, so we'll see. My E2 level (estrogen) is nice and high at 3557 today, which I guess is good. It is supposed to be a certain level per mature follicle - I can't remember the formula right now. But this is just about exactly where we were last time on trigger day, when we had 10 good sized follicles. They retrieved 11 eggs last time and 7 of them fertilized. I had more that were on the small sized last time, whereas the general size this time is a little bigger, so I'm hoping for an even better fertilization rate. Of course there is no point in worrying about it too much, because there is nothing I can do about it and I just won't know how many fertilize until the day after the retrieval. And the really important news is the Day 3 report. Last time I only had 3 that looked good on Day 3, and 4 that were only 4 cells, which is slow for Day 3. Of the three that looked "good", only one was an 8-cell, and that is the only one that made it to blast, and also ended up normal. So I'm really hoping for a good number of 8-cell embryos on Day 3.

So yes, we will be doing the comprehensive genetic testing on any embryos that make it to the blast stage. They will be biopsied on Day 5 or 6, then frozen by vitrification, and the biopsies sent off (to New Jersey!) for full testing. They will check every single chromosome to make sure they are normal and we will only transfer normal blasts. Last time we only had one to test, which might seem like a waste of money, but we just want to make absolutely sure that anything we transfer has the best possible chance. And we don't want to waste any time by transferring anything abnormal that won't stick around. Plus, I like the idea of doing a frozen transfer, which gives my body time to recover from all the stimulation and hormones. CCRM uses vitrification, which has a 99% success rate on thaw, so I am very comfortable with that.

I am feeling tired and fuzzy-headed from the high estrogen. Strangely, my throat also tends to get hoarse when my E2 gets this high. I mentioned that to the nurse on the phone today and she had never heard of that. But it has happened pretty much every time I've had a retrieval. Weird.

So J. got in today with no problems. We switched to a better room in our hotel when he got here, so now we are on the top floor and have a nice view of the mountains. He is having a little nap right now (I just had one too) and then we are going to go lounge by the pool a bit and then head out for sushi for dinner. Yum.