Having your eggs extracted is not something that everyone wants to read about, so let’s just leave it at the doctor harvested my eggs while I was under local anesthesia. The eggs have to be dealt with in the lab by the professionals, observed, determined if they are mature enough to attempt fertilization, fertilized, observed, observed, observed… They want to see how many will achieve fertilization and then how many will grow. Here’s what I’ve learned: 1. Just because you have an egg harvested, doesn’t mean it will be mature enough to attempt fertilization; 2. Just because you attempt fertilization, doesn’t mean the egg will actually be fertilized; 3. If an egg is successfully fertilized, there is no guarantee that the embryo will continue to grow and mature over time; 4. They cannot freeze an embryo for transfer unless it has grown to a certain size over the first 5-6 days after fertilization.

So, with all of that in mind, here’s our personal experience. My doctor reported to me in recovery that they had harvested 11 eggs, and he was very pleased with that. That was all we would know for 24 hours. Once I got home and was resting, I told Read that I felt like we had left our future children in a cold lab with strangers over an hour away. It was awful. I hadn’t even met the doctor that was taking care of my kids in the lab. Of course, you hope for and expect the best: 11 mature eggs, all achieving fertilization, all growing to a mature size that can be successfully transferred.

When I finally received the report I had been waiting for, they said that five eggs had been mature enough to fertilize, and three more had matured enough later in the day to fertilize. The other three eggs were not good enough or mature enough to do anything with. Each of the eight was successfully fertilized, and Read and I rejoiced over the eight new little lives that were now a part of our family tucked away in petri dishes in an incubator in a lab in Kansas City.

I find it ironic that on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, Read and I, along with five other couples who had been through the same procedures on the same day, waited anxiously to hear how our children were growing as cells in petri dishes in an incubator in a lab. On the anniversary of a decision that said a child isn’t a human being unless it’s wanted or until it’s born, we rejoiced over the lives of our children who were just cells growing and fighting for life at such an early stage. Life is so precious.

We have celebrated the lives of and mourned the loss of each of our children. Since I wrote the above, we found out that four of our little ones stopped growing on Day 5. The embryologist told me that having four embryos out of eight mature is really great. I appreciated his reassurance, but the loss is still great. But in spite of the pain of that loss, I have hope because I will get to meet all four of those precious babies one day when I get to heaven. My hope is in the Lord; not because of any good works I’ve done or rules that I’ve followed, but because Christ died for my sins and I have accepted His gift of salvation. Someday I will get to heaven and spend eternity with my heavenly Father and my seven children who have gone on before me.