Harvest

At 10:30pm on Wednesday night I gave myself the Ovidrel trigger injection as instructed. I worked out this was the last of 41 injections I have administered to myself in total (Ovidrel was the 41^st) in the 29 days between 22^nd January and 19^th February. When I woke up on Friday morning I drank lots of water up until two hours before the procedure (8:30am) when I had to go nil by mouth. The exception to this was the three paracetamol I was instructed to take with a sip of water one hour before egg collection. We reported to the laboratory at Fertility Associates just before 10am, and delivered the semen sample Dave needed to provide. The embryologist was actually the one who received the sample from us, and once Dave had completed the submission forms for the sample they took us straight into the day clinic and got us set up in a small room with a big chair in the centre. Here they went over all our paperwork, re-confirming my details and the medical history I had previously provided. I was then instructed to change into a hospital gown, and shortly afterwards a nurse came to take my observations (check blood pressure, heart rate and dissolved oxygen). My doctor then inserted a cannula into my hand ready to receive intravenous medication. They explained that I would be given a cocktail of midazolam and fentanyl for the procedure.

Once I was all set up, they showed us through to the theatre, where a team of six staff comprised of nurses, doctors and the embryologist were busy preparing. I was seated on a big chair with stirrups and surgical drapes were placed over my legs and abdomen. Dave was seated in a chair slightly behind and to my left, able to watch the procedure. I was given a nasal cannula providing oxygen, a dissolved oxygen monitor was placed on one hand and a blood pressure cuff on the opposite arm. They then injected the sedative medications into the port in my hand. The doctor used an internal ultrasound probe to guide a needle which was used to collect the eggs from my ovaries, which took around ten minutes in total. While I felt really light-headed and woozy, I was surprised to find that I was fully conscious for the whole procedure, and I think I can remember most of it. The medications obviously did their job though as I felt no pain or discomfort throughout the egg collection. I recovered really quickly from the sedation. They provide tea and toast before you leave to aid recovery, so after this and two glasses of water I was a little light-headed but ready to go after half an hour. After lunch, I just went about my day as normal and felt no further discomfort than the same slight bloating I’ve had for the last week.

Diagram showing how egg collection is carried out

When they were finished the team were really pleased to announce we had collected ten eggs in total, which is a great result! They will fertilise them in the laboratory later today using the ICSI method, where an individual sperm cell is injected into each egg (https://www.fertilityassociates.co.nz/media/1699/updated-fertility-facts-icsi-and-ssr.pdf). While this method is often used where sperm motility is an issue, in our case it helps ensure no additional sperm adhere to the outside of the egg or zygote (fertilised egg), which could confound the results of the genetic testing later. After discussion with our specialist we had previously decided to pay an additional $975 to use Time-Lapse Morphometry Imaging (TiMi). For this the embryos are placed in a special type of incubator that photographs them every 10 minutes as they develop (instead of removing them from the incubator to track progress), which can help embryologists detect which ones are developing most normally and identify the highest quality embryos (https://www.fertilityassociates.co.nz/about-us/latest-technologies/time-lapse-morphometry-imaging-timi/). This will hopefully help ensure we have as many embryos as possible reach the point where genetic testing can be carried out.

The lab will call us early tomorrow morning to let us know how many of the eggs have successfully fertilised. On Wednesday and Thursday next week they will call us to update us on how many embryos are developing well enough to be biopsied for PGD. On day five of growth they will then perform the biopsies on any suitable embryos and freeze them while we await the results of the genetic testing.

22/2/20 Update:

The lab called this morning, of the ten eggs collected, they were able to inject sperm into nine of them. And all nine have fertilised! They will develop them all to Wednesday/Thursday next week and call us each of those days to update us on how many are developing as they should. We are feeling cautiously optimistic.