The Egg Collection Saga: Day 3 (Part 1), Monday 13th February

On Monday I posted about our rather long journey into Glasgow and eventual check in at the hotel the day before the egg retrieval op.

Monday morning was a VERY early start. We had to be at the hospital by 7:45am and although we were about ten minutes down the road we were aware that we would have to negotiate city traffic and bits of road we weren't familiar with, so had planned to leave the hotel by about 7am.

I think the alarm went off at something ridiculous like 5am. In hindsight this was far too early. I'd gotten a bit hot in the night so I took myself off to the bathroom for soap and shampoo-free shower. Strong scents like perfume, deodorants and other toiletries can affect your embryos so you're not allowed to wear them to procedures at the hospital. I was convinced that I smelled sweaty and that the medical staff would all be talking about how gross I was while I was unconscious, hehe.

I was also nil by mouth that morning. Not even water was allowed to pass my lips. So I made Mr Click make a cup of my peppermint tea and then while he drank it, I sniffed it! It smelt lovely. The early start and the nerves about what was to come meant that I didn't really miss breakfast at all.

I'd already packed my hospital bag the night before, so there was quite a lot of just waiting around before it was a realistic time to check out of the hotel. The drive to the hospital was smooth as well, apart from the slightly hair-raising bit of the journey where we got onto the motorway at one junction, then had to cross four lanes of traffic to come off at the very next junction on the 'wrong side' of the motorway.

Once we reached the hospital we followed another couple to the ACS Unit. We were there before the staff and one of the nurses let us in, even though we were a wee bit early. We couldn't even check in at the desk because they weren't actually ready for us.

The waiting room filled up very quickly. As we're always there for appointments around 9:30am or later I kind of forgot that the clinic actually runs appointments from 8am. I started to panic as all these people came in because I couldn't see how they were going to get through eight or nine egg collections that morning! Then a woman strolled in with hair and make up all perfect and massive fake nails so I knew she wasn't there for egg collection and I realised that perhaps some of the others weren't either.

I was right.

The nurses started calling people in for scans or blood tests or whatever and soon a couple were taken through to the other waiting area. A few more minutes passed and then it was our turn too. I was quite pleased about this because after a couple of days when my full ovaries had gone quiet, I was starting to feel very full again.

There seemed to be less waiting around this time compared to last time. I know last time around I was about fourth on the list, whereas this time there were three of us having egg collection.

First up Mr Click and I were taken to a little couples waiting room. We're very familiar with Waiting Room 2 (we've used Waiting Room 1 before as well, but Waiting Room 2 is our usual haunt with its friendly little daisy picture on the wall). First up we saw the doctor who went through the procedure, risks and things, then got us to sign our consent forms. It was here that I was finally allowed a lovely sip of water and two tasty paracetamol to help ward off the oncoming discomfort.

Next up was a visit from the Embryologist. She walked us through the Freeze-All protocol explaining that what would happen is that day our eggs would be collected and we would have ICSI done on all mature eggs (that's where the sperm is injected directly into the egg, rather than letting them find their own way there as in conventional IVF). The following day they would then let us know how many we had, then they'd be frozen and in a couple of months time, depending on how many embryos we had, they would thaw about half of them and let them culture on to Day 3 or Day 5 (you might be noticing that this is slightly different to what actually happened, I'll come on to that in a future post).

Then she said to Mr Click that she would take him away to do his one and only bit in the whole process (aside from hand holding, transporting, feeding and general looking after, of course). She stepped outside to give us a moment together but Mr Click was raring to go and I actually had to call him back to get a kiss and a good luck from him!

I sat alone for another couple of minutes and then I was taken away to await the third and final meeting of the morning; the Anesthetist.