At the end of your stim phase, you’re given a different medication called a “trigger shot”. This is administered exactly 36 hours before your egg retrieval is scheduled and lets your ovaries know that it’s time to mature the eggs and prepare them for release. Before they are actually released, the procedure is performed to aspirate each of the eggs out of their follicles. The follicles have grown to be about 20mm at the largest, and usually at least 14mm if they are containing a mature egg, and they’ll continue to grow after the trigger shot, but the eggs themselves are still microscopic.

First, our medication arrived from a special fertility pharmacy. It arrived in an insulated box I could almost fit in. Needles and syringes and everything. The nurse warned us that the box would be big when she taught us how to administer the medication at our last appointment. It was still pretty overwhelming. Our box had several medications in it, some of which needed to stay refrigerated. According to my research, the first IVF cycle can be “diagnostic”, meaning the doctor will see how you respond to a standard dose and if you need to change dosages or protocols in a future cycle, you can adjust to try for a better outcome, meaning more mature eggs that fertilize normally.