Getting very close

In the short time between blogs, lots has been going on behind the scenes (various hormone injections and oestrogen patches mainly) and both Niki & I are well into phase 2 of our treatment cycles. Niki braved a stupidly early morning journey today to come down to Hammersmith as we both had scans to see how things are going. All is going well, the drugs are doing what they should, and we are nearing exciting times! This is a bit more of an informative blog (not sure if anyone's actually interested in the process but you're about to find out...!)

I will have my egg collection at some point this week, which will involve as much sedation as I can persuade them to give me, and not much else on my part, but a short spell in theatre having them retrieved from each follicle. I am currently looking a tad rotund/sore/nauseous due to the drugs causing my ovaries to get very over excited and create lots of follicles, but that's all part of the plan (and the purpose of the drugs) so I'm not complaining. After they have collected all my eggs, they will fertilise them, and then we have a tense wait till the following morning to find out how many successfully become embryos.

The next hurdle is the daily wait to see how the embryos develop. The aim is to get to "day 5" which is when embryos turn into something called blastocysts. The reason the clinic will try and push the embryos to this stage is that the weaker ones die out along the way, the result of which is transferring an embryo that has a greater chance of survival/implantation. Once the transfer is done and we have 1 or 2 embryos tucked safely inside Niki, all that's left to do is wait till we can do a pregnancy test.

This is hopefully what our embryos will be doing in their petri dish.

There are just so many unknowns in IVF. Will we get a good number of eggs? Will they be mature enough? Will any of them fertilise? Will the embryos develop properly? How many will we get? How many will we have to transfer? Will there be any left to freeze? So many questions, and no way of telling, and that's not even thinking about the biggest question of all. My biggest fear is the egg collection - I just don't want to let anyone down at this vital stage. I'm well aware that that's a stupid comment and that no one would feel remotely let down at all, but I just want it to go well and for us to get a good number of eggs.

My favourite bit (well, it's a love/hate relationship...) is probably the "2 week wait" - the period between transfer and the pregnancy test. This is a lot of people's worst bit, but for those 2 weeks, the idea of being pregnant seems closer than it has ever seemed before, so close we could almost touch it. It's the closest I've ever got, so I do try to enjoy those two weeks of "what if".

The next few weeks will be extremely exciting but very nervewracking as well, so please keep us all in your thoughts, especially Niki who is just being incredible and could not do any more - she is a true star.