Part 5

There is a lot that goes into IVF (in-vitro fertilization). It is hard on your body and your emotions... the meds really mess with you. Once you learn about every little detail that has to line up exactly for a positive conception you wonder how people ever get pregnant naturally; it is truly a miracle every single time.

For IVF you take meds to get your ovaries to mature as many eggs as possible in one cycle. Usually you ovulate one egg per cycle; we try to get 15-20 mature eggs in one cycle.

This was pretty much what my bed-side table always looked like

Your Dr. changes up your shots depending on how many your ovaries are making and how fast they are growing. I have forgot to mention this in past posts, but you have SO many ultra sounds while going through fertility processes. With an IUI, I would have about 3 or so the week before the procedure. With IVF, I had them pretty much at every single appointment. You have to measure each follicle (in both ovaries) to see if it's big enough to fertilize.

I still had to be on my 2 shots of Heparin every day, plus the 1-3 shots of meds to get my ovaries going (HCG and FSH), plus getting my blood drawn twice a week. I learned how to mix my own meds using a huge needle and then changing to a smaller needle for the shot. The bottles below were all mixed for 1 shot. You get pretty good at learning amounts and how to do all of it when you have to do it so much.

I started my stimulation meds on September 18th. Once your eggs are ready, you have your egg retrieval, count 5 days from then (for the eggs to fertilize), then do your embryo transfer (put the embryos, back in your uterus).

At my first ultra sound after stimulation started I had 20 eggs growing but about 14 were maturing more than the others. A few days later I had another ultra sound and we were hoping for about 12 mature eggs.

Your ovaries get so big with all the eggs that I literally looked a little bit pregnant. You just get so swollen and it is not comfortable.

This is the majority of my shots after IVF was done.

September 28th was my day for egg retrieval. I was pretty nervous actually, but it wasn't too bad. You get put under and to be honest... the deep sleep was SO nice. It didn't hurt at all and I had no pain after either. They leave you groggy for the rest of the day because they don't want you to do anything but rest.

We got 14 eggs, 12 were mature; not as good as we were hoping for originally, but not bad at all. Right after they remove them, they fertilize them. We got news the next day that 9 had fertilized. 6 had gotten started to grow, but only 4 grew into 8 celled embryos. (there are so many factors to getting a completely fertilized embryo that can be implanted.

October 3rd was my scheduled transfer date to put 2 of our embryos back in.