Our Third Round of IVF

We are done with our third and final round of IVF so it is time to do a recap of it.  Before I start I just wanted to clarify the title of this post a little bit.  We are doing three rounds of harvesting so this is our second round of harvesting. Sometimes when people say a round of IVF they mean the whole harvesting and implanting process but in our case each round is just harvesting.

This round started like the first two rounds with me calling the doctor on the day I got my period.  This month I took 7 days of birth control again but this is where the medicine similarities end. This time after I stopped taking the birth control pills I had to wait for my little short period to start after a baseline ultrasound I was cleared to start medicine.  There were less shots this time around (yay!) because I took 5 days of Clomd which is a pill in addition to the nightly Menopure shots. About a week after I started the Menopure shots they added in Cetrotide.  The Menopure burns when you are injecting it but the needle is really small and short while the Cetrotide doesn't hurt going in but the needle is longer which makes it a little scary to look at.

After about 2 1/2 weeks of medicine my hormone levels were high enough I took the trigger shot.  The trigger shot is my least favorite one because it hurts.  It doesn't hurt during the actual shot but afterwards as the medicine flows through you it hurts.  I usually try to go to sleep as fast as I can after the trigger shot in hopes I can sleep through the pain but this time the shot had to be at exactly 9 PM and I had to take my last Menopure shot at 9:30 PM so this plan wasn't possible.

This time our appointment was at 9 AM so I had to get up nice and early due to traffic and then head out with my empty stomach to have the harvest procedure.  Even though I had done this twice already I was still nervous.  After the procedure was over and they released us it was time for another milkshake.  I was feeling fine (and hungry) so we stopped to get a milkshake near the doctor's office.

This month there were 11 follicles but only 4 of them had mature eggs in them.  After they fertilized them 3 of them were successful and they let them grow for 5-6 days. Of those 3 eggs all three of them made it to day 6 to be frozen and tested.  I was so excited that all three made it to be frozen because the other two rounds we only had one make it each time.

I got the call about a week and a half later that all three of those beautiful frozen embryos were perfect and passed all the tests.  We now have 5 fully tested frozen embryos just waiting to grow inside of me!

After three long and not so fun cycles of IVF harvesting the next steps are to start implanting the embryos and have a baby! I am so excited for what 2019 has in store for our family.