Shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots...

I'm still playing catch-up and can't believe how fast things have been moving (I'm sure I'll regret saying that in a few weeks when I'm waiting for our transfer or waiting to find out if it actually worked). I feel like it was just yesterday that I was telling Ben I only had a week left before starting injections, and now they're over (at least this round...)! But backing up....

On Monday October 12 we went to our baseline appointment, which is essentially the kick-off of the IVF cycle. I had an ultrasound first, and I was so nervous that something was going to come up that was going to prevent us from actually starting this cycle, but everything went well and we were given the green light to start! I had 6 follicles on my left side and 1 on my right side, plus a cyst on my right side - I have determined that my right ovary is almost completely useless. So, my antral follicle count (AFC) was 7, which is pretty low for most people, but in the normal, expected range for women like me with DOR. (FYI - follicles contain immature eggs). This number can change as things progress - the point of the medication I'll be taking is to stimulate as many follicles as possible to grow, so it's possible there could have been some at that initial appointment that were too small to measure that will catch up. I go for ultrasounds every 2-3 days over a week or so to see how things are progressing.

That was also the day that I was trained on how to mix all my medications and inject them (I have 3 different medications to inject - one is twice a day and the other two are once a day so that's 2 in the morning and 2 at night), we signed a bunch of legal paperwork about what we want to happen to any embryos that we make in the event that we get divorced or die (IVF is not a romantic process), we paid for the full cost of all the treatments, and ordered all of the medication to be delivered later that week.

The hardest part of all of this so far for me has been that something unexpected always seems to come up. It's usually not a huge deal, but when you go to the doctor on what feels like a weekly basis and never get *good* news, it starts to wear on you. In all of the tests we've both had (mostly me, but both of us) over the last few months, the one thing we hadn't done yet was a semen analysis for Ben. I don't know if this was an oversight on our clinic's part or not, but I had been assuming this whole time that since they know I've gotten pregnant naturally twice, they didn't think he needed to be tested. There was some confusion about that at my baseline appointment, as they thought he had been tested and needed to be re-tested, but he had actually never been tested in the first place. 

They scheduled it for the next day, and we were both surprised to hear back about the results within a couple hours. I never even considered that it would come back as anything but normal (see: previous two pregnancies), and was full of jokes...until Ben called me at work to tell him the clinic had called him about abnormal results. Naturally, overreactor that I am, this sent me into a tailspin. I just couldn't believe that there was something else after everything we've already gone through. Like when is enough enough?! Fortunately his diagnosis wasn't severe, and may not have been a diagnosis at all. It's possible that he has an issue, but it also could have just been that he needed a quick antibiotic and to drink more water. If only my stuff had been as simple as downing a couple extra glasses of water a day!

Impregnation medication station

After we dealt with that potential hiccup, a couple days later we received all of my medications for ovarian stimulation (i.e. stims). We received 10 days worth of injections (2 in the morning and 2 in the evening) that I'd administer myself in my abdomen, plus a final injection called the trigger shot that Ben would have to give me in my glute muscle. We both woke up at 6am on Sunday October 18 to start my stims, and it was wild. I was able to give myself the two shots in my stomach (Ben totally could have done it instead, but I insisted I do it myself because...well, hello, I'm me) but it was more difficult and traumatizing than I was expecting. I think I sat on the couch in a daze for like 30 minutes afterward (being up early on a Sunday certainly didn't help matters).

As the days passed, I got more and more comfortable with giving myself subcutaneous injections and, if I'm being honest, I really liked the routine of it all. I had to do my injections exactly every 12 hours, which really made the whole thing fly by. I thrive on that kind of routine, and by the end I was a total pro and didn't wince at all. I could even watch the needle go in (something I still can't do when someone else is putting a needle in me)! Like I said, I could have just had Ben do the injections for me, but for some reason it was important that I do them myself. It felt empowering, like I was at least a little bit in control of this process that is really entirely out of my control. But I did it. Ten days worth of shots. Forty total shots (plus the final trigger which Ben did for me, and more to come later). I have black and blue bruises on each side of my belly button. All for our little legend.