Little jars of hope

I feel like this post has been a LONG time coming.  Not just between when I posted about our egg pickup to now, but since this whole process began two years ago.  I can't quite remember how far into things we were when I wrote about the pickup, but since then time has been flying by and we are well and truly on our way to parenthood.  

Our pickup was overly successful and very surprising to all involved, with a whopping 33 eggs collected.  All 33 were healthy enough to attempt fertilisation on Day 1.  By Day 2, 24 had fertilised!  We were amazed!  On Day 3 we were down to 19, and by Day 5 we nervously waited for a call from our scientist to give us the final numbers.  We had no idea what to expect.  No preempted number in our heads.  We told ourselves we'd be happy with four or more.  And at the rate the numbers were dropping, we weren't expecting too much higher than that.  Late on Day 5 Dr Scientist called me, "There's nine in complete blastocyst stage ready to freeze."  I was shocked.  "Nine?" I almost squealed back at him.  "Well, actually, if we leave them one more day, it'll probably be 10" he calmly replied.  We had one more little one on the verge of replication and it would take another 12hours of incubation to know for sure if it was viable or not.  That night, we went to bed and said our prayers.

Thank you, Lord, for hearing our prayers these long and restless months.

Thank you for never leaving us alone on our journey to parenthood,

For never doubting us, or our ability to create life.

Thank you for making IVF accessible to us,

For opening the many doors that led us to this one.

Watch over our little bundles in their tiny little jars,

Give them strength to stay the course,  

until we are able to bring them home to us.

Though they are so tiny and new, 

know that we have loved them long before they came to be.

And we can not wait to meet them.

Amen.

The next day, at around the same time, the phone rang.  "Congratulations Mrs Sunny, today we froze 10 of your blastocysts."  And their it was, the biggest answer to the biggest prayer Hubby and I have ever said.  We have 10 little em-babies all tucked in safe and sound, in tiny jars of two.  Ready and waiting for us.  Our little 'Boobals', as they are very affectionately called in the Sunny home.

The only thing stopping us from running over there and transferring a couple of them now is my blasted hormones.  We knew we'd have to wait one cycle for the storm in my belly to calm itself, but that may have been extended when I developed a new run of OHSS post period.  Something about the rush of new oestrogen in my system from a natural cycle has joined forces with the stimulated oestrogen.  I'm not really sure how it all works.  All I know is I felt worse after my period, than I did after the egg pickup.  BUT, I'm now on the speedy road to recovery, which means that hopefully in four weeks we can defrost some of our little Boobals.  So, watch this space!