Welcome to my newsletter, Good Egg

An anxious millennial dealing with IVF in my motherhood era

There are so many egg stock photos in Substack?! What an untapped market. Photo by Leti Kugler on Unsplash

Motherhood by the numbers: Three pregnancies, two losses, one sweet son. After a stillbirth in 2019, my son’s birth in 2020, and a miscarriage in August 2022, my husband Grant and I are dealing with secondary infertility. I’m going through IVF treatment after 4 failed IUIs. I wanted a space to document this time and to share my experience: what’s helping, what’s not, and what I’m watching/reading/listening to. I will also eventually share more of my experience with two pregnancy losses, including a longer essay I wrote about my stillbirth. Look for that sometime in October, which is Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month.

My plan is to send out an update every other week, including resources and helpful links. Each issue will also include Bird Facts, because eggs —> birds, and I have always wanted to start a newsletter called “Bird Facts!” where I share…facts about birds.

Thanks for being here!

My newsletter Fairy Godmother,

Alex Steele

¹, says it’s a good idea to “spoil the movie,” which is fantastic parenting and newsletter advice. So here I am spoiling the movie: we have six embryos that are off for genetic testing! Here are my IVF Hunger Games stats:

Follicles: 23 on the right and 11 on the left
Eggs retrieved: 22(!)
Mature eggs: 13
Fertilized eggs (via ICSI²): 12
Blastocysts (frozen embryos) off for testing: 6

How was the egg retrieval? Looking back, the hormone stimulation shots were actually not bad. By day 10 or 11 of “stims,” I could feel soreness in my ovaries, especially on the right side. I also really did get used to giving myself the shots³, but Grant helped with most of them. He was away the weekend right before our retrieval, so my mom helped me with shots, including my trigger shot! Thanks, Mom 🤗

The actual retrieval was pretty quick, I was completely and blissfully asleep during the procedure (AHEM, YALE), and when I woke up I asked the nurses, “Am I at the beach?” I was not at the beach, but later I told Grant “They do these at the beach.” Sure, Em, let’s get you home! I took three days off from work, and as I write this 9 days later, I can still feel an achy twinge in my right ovary. Lots of rest and Gatorade helped, especially since I was not given stronger pain meds afterward. I probably could have asked for it! Damn, advocate for yourself, Emily!

What are our next steps? The genetic testing can take anywhere from 2-3 weeks (which is what my clinic told me, Nurse Google says it can take 4-6 weeks!). We will hopefully have at least one euploid (genetically “normal”) embryo, ideally more than one. If all six are normal, I’ll go buy a lottery ticket. Until we know where our embryos stand, we just have more waiting to do.

Matt & Doree’s Eggcellent Adventure
A fun, light-hearted podcast about IVF. It started back in 2016 so I have been listening to it from the beginning. I don’t usually like “chatty” podcasts, but Matt and Doree are great to listen to (and commiserate with), and I think Matt sounds exactly like Bill Hader which is fun. I love listening to them going through this process in real-time, just like I hope this newsletter can be helpful for someone!

A group of Northern Cardinals can be referred to as a college, conclave, or Vatican.⁴

Thanks for reading the first issue of Good Egg! I’m going to see The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie with my friend Becca tonight, aka Fun Little Sad Girl Bestie Night!

1. Her newsletter, Handpicked, is one of my favorite things that exists on the internet!

2. Stands for intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), when a single healthy sperm is injected directly into each mature egg. Pronounced, “Ick! See?”

3. I used these Pitaya Coconut Smoothie Packs to ice the area before I gave myself the shots. Pitaya, call me!!

4. https://www.audubon.org/news/10-fun-facts-about-northern-cardinal