What Can I Expect Recovering From My Egg Retrieval?

Dr. Kofinas

If you’re seeing your doctor and they’re monitoring you, ask them how it’s going and when they think the retrieval will be. You have a life and need to know when you’re going to be under anesthesia. You’ll have to get someone to pick you up and figure out when you’ll get back to work and how you’re going to feel. You’ll need to know if there’s anything you can do to decrease the risks of complications. These are things that are evolving as you’re going through the process.

If we see that you're making 20 or 30 follicles, your provider might be concerned about hyperstimulation. There's ways to manage that to decrease the risk. Now, if you're just blindly going through the process and no one's guiding you, that could be a little bit uncomfortable, and risky, frankly.

Mariana

Once you are ready for  the retrieval to happen, you set your date, you go in. With all of the research I had done, I was ready for how the process was going to be and getting all my steps right afterwards. Afterwards, the recovery is what surprised me the most. You could be one of the few who has a tough recovery. What can you expect from the recovery process? I had a friend who went hiking two days later, but I was in bed for a whole week afterward.

Dr. Kofinas

It just depends because if you have a significant amount of water retention, you're going to find that you're gaining between 3 to 10 pounds in the span of 1 to 2 days. That's hyperstimulation. And if your abdomen is being stretched because it's filling with fluid, that's uncomfortable, or if you had some bleeding from the ovary, which is quite common. It's hard to control the bleeding from the ovary, but it will stop on its own. But, that blood will irritate your bowel, your bladder, and sometimes even your liver to the point where you could feel some shoulder pain.

We don't want that to happen, but it’s not dangerous. It's just something that, if you start to expect it, you'll probably handle it better than if you all of a sudden start feeling significant pain. So I think it’s important knowing and understanding that you may feel bloated, you might gain weight, you might feel dehydrated, you might have a reaction to the anesthesia, you might have nausea or feel kind of foggy and out of it for 24 hours. These are kind of normal things that can happen. They don't happen to everyone. But if they do, I think it's important that everybody knows what to expect could happen- even if it doesn't happen.

Mariana

To know the panorama of different scenarios and reactions that might happen, yes- that's important.