My husband and I recently completed the first part of our IVF cycle. I was on the max dose of Menopur and Puregon meaning two needles per night for the first week or so. My husband did my injections for me as I just couldn’t bring myself to do it! I do acupuncture for a living giving my self a needle should be no big deal right? Wrong! I just couldn’t do it.
When you are taking fertility injections you feel like the clock runs your life. You need to do your injections at the same time every night in the same order. I was bloated, getting headaches within 30 minutes of my stim injections and feeling as sexy as a bag of potatoes. This made dressing for work a challenge but lucky a lot of my clients are also going through IVF or IUI procedures.
After multiple ultrasounds measuring my follicle growth another injection is introduced to suppress ovulation. Three needles per night at exactly 7:30 pm.
When my follicles were measuring the right size and egg collection was within the next 36 hours I took my trigger injection. My husband picked it up from the pharmacy for me and it had to be kept cold and in the fridge. When we did the injection exactly 36 hours prior to collection I can tell you that was the one I liked the least! Within 30 minutes I had a blinding headache and decided to go to bed early.
On my egg retrieval I had 13 follicles all from my left ovary. 10 were mature, meaning they measured the right amount, and 8 fertilized with ICSI. Now we wait for the call from the embryologist on three days post retrieval.
Waiting for the call is nerve wracking. If you have had problems conceiving you know that waiting is a lot of what you do. Waiting and hoping.
Three days post retrieval finally came and we had 7 embryos with 5 at good quality and 2 fair. Now we wait until we hear again from the embryologist in the next few days. The next call is six days post retrieval and we have three embryos that they have frozen. Two five-day embryos and one six-day embryo.
Since our cycle was a freeze all (my estrogen was too high to do a fresh transfer) we wait until we are ready to precede with the next step the frozen embryo transfer. Repeat certain testing and starting a new round of drugs to prepare the endometrium for the FET. Until then we wait.