Day 8 Scan & Eggs etc

[Susan_22]

To all the lovely ladies who have been there and done this ivf thing before...

Advice required please

I am on the synarel spray morning and night and 175ml gonal f injections each morning.

I just had my first day 8 scan which revealed about 20 eggs ranging from 6ml to 16ml.

Sooooo can anyone tell me if this is kinda normal or fill me in on their experiences?

Ta x

[Pholi]

I'm guessing you mean 20 follicles? The follicles are the patches on your ovaries, like little fluid filled spaces, that they count. Each one might contain one egg, or none. The eggs are so tiny, they can't actually be seen on the scans. When the time comes for collection, they then drain all of the fluid from each of the follicles that are big enough, and count up the eggs then.

I would say that your follicle count is pretty good, for day 8. On my first and only (because it was successful) cycle, I had about the same, I think, and when I went back for another scan on day 10, they decided that day 12 would be collection day, because the biggest of the follicles were big enough. I think they drained about 12 follicles (some are always still too small to have any chance of containing a mature enough egg) which I think is also pretty normal. However, I only had 3 eggs between them.

My FS said that he aims for around 10 eggs. You will see people who have many more eggs collected, like 26 at a time, and so on, but that's the extreme at the other end. I had very few, but there are also some ladies who have none. As my FS said, it only takes one to make a baby. On a first cycle, the FS is likely to have been a little bit conservative with the medication doses, so he can see how you react, and minimise the rick of OHSS, which would not only make you very unwell, but also means they can't so a fresh transfer.

It sounds to me like you're follicles are coming along just fine so far. Best of luck to you!!

[Susan_22]

Ahhhh right that makes more sense! Thanks for explaining all that better.

Seeing as we are 600km away from our clinic and just getting the scans done by the specialist in town I feel so clueless!

[Pholi]

You're welcome!

It must make it even tougher being so far away from your clinic... In my experience the nurses are marvellous when it comes to fielding questions on the telephone, though. You should feel that you can always call and ask, and also ask the person who does the scan, or the nurse who discussed the findings of the scan, as many questions as you can. I think that understanding what's going on helps you to deal with the stress and strain much better, as well as making it easier to accept the findings (for example, if you kept on thinking there were 20 good eggs to be seen on these scans because you mistook follicles for eggs, then they only got 5 eggs at collection, you'd think something had gone really wrong!) It's so easy to kind of nod and smile when they tell you things, then walk out and realise that you don't really get what just happened at all. Ask, ask, ask!