How sweet it is...

Well, a lot has happened in the past day or so*.
Mammoth trip to Brissy yesterday for the very scary surgery - white lights, backless gowns, lots of waiting - in three different waiting rooms, no food or drink for six hours and a bloody stingy-wingy anaesthetic needle combined to produce a generally quite unpleasant experience overall!!
But of course that was all pushed to the background when the doc gave me the best news of all: we got 16 eggs.
16!!!!!!!!
Just call me mother hen! That's, like, a dozen...plus four gifts with purchase!
There I was in recovery and the doc walked in, patted me on the leg (slightly patronising, but I prefer to think of it as an encouraging gesture) and said "you did very well, we got 16 eggs!"
I smiled and drifted back to sleep. Ahhh, sleep. I tell you what, any sleep-deprived parents out there, I can highly recommend general anaesthetic for one of the deepest, most satisfying slumbers you will ever have!
And you wake up all wrapped up in your blankie layers and it is so COSY...took me back to those days when I would sleep in on a Sunday until 11am.
So eventually I was discharged, we got back in the car and drove home - going via a lovely friend's house, who had been looking after Jay for the day.
I felt fine, as long as I kept the Panadols up, if a little bloated. And fair enough too I guess...after all, a needle had just been pierced through the wall of my cervix, penetrating both ovaries to harvest the eggs - it was always going to be sore! Sorry if too much info there!
Bizarrely I was given a script for antibiotics and told to get some protein powder to make up a drink I had to take three times a day.
What the?
I got some answers today: the antibiotics are a precaution as it was discovered that I have something called an endometria, like a cyst on the ovaries, and there could be an infection...there could not; and the protein thingo is not because I have suddenly been advised to embark upon a career in bodybuilding, but because I am now at risk of Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome - which comes with capital letters, therefore must be serious.
Well, it is...but as long as I have three litres or more of fluid a day and take my protein shakes (they taste like a vanilla malted milkshake and are quite nice) I should be right.
I also rang the doc's office to see how my little embryos had fared overnight. Cos it's one thing to start planning a "We got 16 eggs party" but it's quite another when you realise how many of those 16 have divided strongly in 24 hours.
I found myself feeling quite protective of those little cells sitting forlornly in the lab in Brisbane.
I slept really well until about 5am, at which point I felt a sudden jolt of guilt that there was so much distance between us...how weird. These little embryos should be inside me...well, not all of them, but you know what I mean. And yet they were holed up in some dark, scary lab...in day care already, and so young!
Gosh, Mem Fox would have a heart attack!
Anyway, more good news: 12 of those 16 are strong, vital little beginnings...wow.
Wow!
Is that too many? Not enough? What will we do with the other 11 if the first one takes? What if none of the 12 take? What on earth does the future hold???
We will hop on the next rollercoaster in this crazy theme park when we have the implant tomorrow...where some, all or none of those questions will be answered.
*understatement