My egg retrieval was a week ago. I actually handled that better than I anticipated. I didn’t suffer from OHSS and I had little cramping and pain on the days following.

After retrieval, each egg was implanted with a sperm in a process called ICSI. This ensures that every egg is fertilized and begins developing.

Our doctor called us on the following days to give us updates about the embryo development. Of the 24 eggs we retrieved, all 24 were mature! That was great news off the bat. They were each fertilized with a sperm.

These updates came as embryos progressed towards the blastocyst stage. The ones that make it to this stage will be biopsied and frozen.

On Day 1 (day after retrieval), we were told 20 embryos made it. This is still a huge number and the nurse was very excited. We were told the average to survive the first day is about 70%.

On Day 5, we were told we already had 6 embryos in the blastocsyt stage that were biopsied and already frozen. Good job little ones!

On Day 6, I answered the phone. It was my Doctor. Before I could get a word out, he exclaimed “Jess, You’re killin’ it!”. We had an additional 10 embyros that made it to blastocyst. That makes 16 frozen embyros! They were watching the other 4 but we were told it would be unlikely they made it to Day 7.

“Jess, you’re killin’ it!” - Dr Doyle

On Day 7, the doctor was right, those 4 didn’t make it but the doctor and nurses were ecstatic with 16 frozen embryos!

They have all been biopsied for PGS testing. This will determine which embryos are chromosomally normal and the best ones to transfer. This process takes about 2 weeks.

Now we wait. Again.

BUT we couldn’t be happier to have such a large number of frozen embryos. It’s all a numbers game so to have this many at the start is giving us hope that we’ll have quite a few to choose from. Now we’re even thinking we could possibly have two children!

Stay tuned for testing results.