Our First Round of IVF

We finished our first round of retrieval for IVF (and are about to start our second) so I figured it was time for an update of how it all works and how it went for us.  The start of any IVF cycle is the first day of my period so on the first day of my period I call the doctor to let them know.  I started taking birth control on the second day of my cycle.  I took those for 9 days.  It sounds counterproductive to take birth control when the point of all of this is to get pregnant not prevent it but apparently this helps even out and regulate my natural hormones.

Once I finished the 9 days of birth control I had 2 days of no medicine before starting with the shots.  Since this is all very specialized (and expensive) medicine I can't just go to any old pharmacy to pick it up.  You call a special pharmacy and tell them what day you need to start your shots and then they overnight you a giant box of medicine that you have to be home to sign for.  Some of the medicine has to be refrigerated hence the overnighting. 

It was a little (or a lot) overwhelming to see that box of medicine and needles and know all of that was about to be used on me. I am fortunate that I have the option to work from home some days so I was able to be home to sign for the medicine without actually having to take a day off of work.  The first 2 days of shots there was only one shot in the morning and one shot at night but starting on day 3 I moved on up to 4 shots a day.

You have to be consistent with what time you take the shots every day so since they are supposed to be fairly equally spaced I decided on 7 AM for my morning shots and 8 PM for my evening shots.  The downside of this is that even on weekends I have to set my alarm for 6:45 AM to be up and ready for shots.  I can go back to bed after but still have to wake up to do it.  The night one also has its downside in that I have to be home by 8 PM to do the shots which does wonders for your social life. I told people I had an 8 PM curfew! I don't really tend to stay out late very often but I kept getting offers to do fun things that I had to turn down because of my curfew this month.  

Starting on day 7 of my shots I had to go into the doctor's office every 1-3 days for blood work to check hormone levels and an ultrasound to check the number and size of follicles. Only follicles that measure at least 5 somethings (I think millimeter) are counted so at my first appointment I have 3 follicles and at my second one there were 5 follicles.  At my third appointment there were 6 and at my last appointment they could see 7 follicles.  In addition to wanting to have lots of follicles you also need them to be growing at about the same rate so they will be large enough and ready to "harvest" at the same time. After 7 days of shots I was banned from regular workouts but I was still allowed to go on walks. Apparently this ban is to prevent my organs from twisting since they are swollen.

I ended up doing a little over 2 weeks of shots.  The last few days I even increased my shots to 5 a day. By the end of the weeks of shots my abdomen was quite the mess.  I looked and felt like a big round pin cushion. My abdomen had puffed up from the medicine and growing all those follicles and also was bruised from the number of needles.  I always did my left side in the morning and right side at night but that still only gives each side 24 hours between shots and that is not enough to fully recover. 

The day I went to my last monitoring appointment I got a call later that day telling me that my hormone levels were raised so the next day I would be giving myself the trigger shot. This trigger shot is the final shot in the process and causes my body to prepare to ovulate (hence trigger) so that the eggs can be harvested from the follicles. The time of the trigger shot is directly tied to what time you are schedule to have your retrieval procedure and has to be exactly 36 hours before.  That is all well and good in theory but my appointment was at noon so my trigger was at midnight.  I had to go to bed and then wake up to take the shot.

The day of the retrieval I didn't have to take any shots but I did have to stop eating and drinking at least 8 hours before. That 8 hours was the middle of the night so in reality I had to stop drinking (and eating) when I went to bed.  I got to sleep in a bit and then my husband and I headed into the surgery center for the procedure.  During the procedure I was put under anesthesia and had an IV in my arm so I got all dressed in the fancy hospital gown complete with attractive hair net and socks.  At least the whole outfit was purple.  I was nervous but my husband held my hand until it was time for me to go in. I got to meet the doctor doing the procedure before I went in and she told me that looking at my last ultrasound she thought there would be 4 eggs to harvest and she was right.

After I woke up they told me there were 4 eggs they were able to harvest. Once I recovered for a while I got to go home and eat! I was very hungry at this point and we stopped to get a milkshake on the way home. The day after the procedure the doctor called to say that all 4 of the eggs they harvested had successfully fertilized and they would grow for the next 5-6 days.  Six days later the doctor called again and told us that of the 4 only one of them kept growing to the correct size.  I was a little sad but one is better than none. They took a biopsy of the embryo and then froze it.  They ran tests on the part they biopsied and all the tests came back good so we have one pretty little embryo frozen waiting for us to be ready to implant it in me.

We are doing this all 2 more times before we do any implantations but it is a relief to know we have one so far.