Program Start Appointment

We had our program start appointment on Monday. They did a saline sono to make sure I didn’t have polyps or fibroids (I was all clear) and then they did the trial transfer. Everything went well, except I had the recommended 48 ounces of water and on ultrasound it didn’t look like I had had anything. I ended up drinking 96 ounces of water in an hour. I felt a little sick from that! I was trembling because I was cold and I was dizzy. I think with the actual embryo transfer I will drink warm water to keep a steady body temperature. We also had our injection teaching, where they taught both Mark and I how to do our injections. The injections I'll be doing are virtually the same as the ones I did over the summer for our injectible IUI's. The ones Mark will be doing are in my behind...I hope he's good at it!

The only bad part of the day was when we met with the scheduler. She had our dates all set for a tentative retrieval of 4/9!!!!! I was not happy! I asked why they had put me on the pill so early. We are trying to conceive and we would have had another month to try naturally or via an IUI, but they put me on the pill! She said it was so that I would be ready when they wanted to start! I was more than frustrated! I told her that I would have gone with our other clinic if I had known it was going to take so long to get in. She went and talked to the doctor and came back with a new retrieval of 3/19. It’s still about three weeks later than we anticipated, but much better. I start lupron (the drug that suppresses the ovaries that is started while still on the birth control pill) on 2/27. I have a baseline ultrasound on 3/6 to make sure my ovaries are quiet and my endometrial lining looks good. If all is a go, I start the stimulation drugs bravelle and menopur on 3/8. I'll be on 75 units of both of those drugs, which is a very minimal dosage. They are hoping my eggs will be nice and ripe for a trigger shot on 3/17 and retrieval on 3/19. Then we would transfer the fertilized embryos back into my uterus either 3/21 or 3/23, depending on how they look. I'm hoping for a day 5 transfer on 3/23. That means we had so many embryos that were growing so well that they could let them grow a little longer to determine the best ones to transfer back to my uterus.

I’m excited to get started, but I can’t help being nervous. I’m nervous because this is our ‘last shot’. I know there is a very high probability that we will be one of the 80% for whom it works, but I’m just not ready to accept it if it doesn’t. They say it generally takes about a year to get through the entire shared risk program if you don’t achieve pregnancy, so I guess I have awhile to get used to it if it comes to that.

The doctor is really optimistic because of my age. His only concern is that I will over stimulate because of my prior reaction to stimulation drugs. He is starting me out VERY slowly and he’s going to monitor me closely. The only reason I’m nervous is because with PCOS you sometimes have poor egg quality. I’m just hoping they get fewer eggs of great quality. Ah!!!! I’m just ready to get going! My meds are being delivered today. I’m going to use our second upstairs bathroom as my lab! I just want to lay everything out and make sure it is all there!

As always, keep us in your prayers!