Here he is!

I've had a lovely but exhausting day and it's not yet bedtime.

After being woken up every two hours, I finally drag myself out of bed at 6 and head off to the airport by 7 to pick G up. So great to see him and have him here, though, I'll be honest, the last 17 days have just flown by, and while I have missed him, I'm rather impressed that I've been able to hold it together for this long on my own. We're on the eve of egg collection and I've made it! I've gotten through it! I've given myself every single injection, i've gone to every BT and U/s, i've spoken to nurses and doctors, taken pills AND been a single mum all this while... I'm going to stop now and give myself some applause and congratulate me for such a fine job. 22 follicles is quite an effort! Just praying they each hold a beautiful and perfect egg too.

No wonder I feel like I can't breath and my tummy is about to explode. No surprise that I want to vomit and be in bed. I can do that now that G's here. He can entertain our darling daughter who had missed him terribly. He can help with the cooking and cleaning, socializing and be the strong one out in front. The hard part actually starts now. The dreaded 2 week wait (actually 16 days from tomorrow). Because all this tooing and froing, all the tests and injections, they weren't a walk in the park, but they are better than the complete mind fuck about to start after egg collection. At least before, I had been busy doing stuff. I had a job to get done and I did it.

Tomorrow is going to be a write off. I was bed ridden for days after my last collection. Even though you're sedated, it is a long and thick needle that gets poked through your uterus wall and into your ovaries to suck out each and every one of those 22 follicles. Then a painstaking search by a scientist in all the bloody fluid to find the teeny tiny eggs. After, there is abdominal pain and last time, it lasted for days, I could only lie in bed and pray it would go away.

Then it's waiting, wondering, hoping, wishing. And there isn't one damned thing you can do to change the situation or move it along quicker.

Day 5 after collection they squirt an egg or two up you with such little fanfare that you wonder if it even happened. Then the waiting and wondering continues...

Yep, I'm celebrating now. Congratulating myself now because after this, it's just a long and tedious road to the end where we either are pregnant, get ready to start another cycle (SO not likely in my present state of mind) or admit defeat and return home barren but with at least our one beautiful star who was made in this same miraculous way.