IVF Part 3: Waiting

Alisha says:
Friday, February 13, 2015

Now we are just in the another waiting time in which I have been on birth control for a few weeks while my body recovers and then I will be taken off them and will start a new set of injections in order to grow the endometrium lining for the transfer. My new box of meds/injections arrived and this time the shots are delestrogen and progesterone in oil and have to be given intramuscular (in the muscle)in the back of the hip area which requires a much bigger and longer needle that I had to use for the stimulating medications. The needles are  1 ½ inch long and are a little intimidating. I had injection training yesterday at the clinic, they said that you can give them yourself but it is easier if someone else does so we will see if I can talk Dave into doing it, he wasn’t too excited about the idea. After that I had to have another saline sonogram to make sure that no cysts or polyps had developed in the uterus. It is a simple procedure but they had a hard time feeding the catheter in and it ended up taking almost an hour and several attempts. Eventually they even had to use a tenaculum. Because of the trouble they had with the SHG they decided that it would be best to do a mock transfer to figure things out before the actual transfer.  The mock transfer was scheduled for the next day so back to the clinic I went, luckily it went smoothly and they have some notes and measurements for when they do the real embryo transfer.

February, 25, 2015

Yesterday we had a meeting with Dr. Johnson to discuss some lab results. Because I have technically had two miscarriages I had to get a panel of blood tests done to see if a blood lipid thing could be part of the problem. My results came back border line for one of the lipid and usually the treatment is to be on injections of heparin two times a day for the first trimester. I wasn’t sure if this was something that I wanted to do since the result was only border line and after a good discussion Dr. Johnson left the decision up to us and we decided that we are not going to use heparin this time.

 That night I was supposed to begin my delestrogen injections so while I was at the clinic I had them draw some target circles on my backside for where to aim. I decided that I would give myself the injections and spare Dave the experience. I thought I would be totally brave and just be able to do it but I have to admit that it was a little intimidating. I drew up the injection and then just stared at the needle thinking that it was big. I had to psyche myself up and then I just did it and the actual injection really wasn’t that bad. It made me a little sore but not too bad. I have to give this injection every third day up until the transfer when I will stop these shots and switch to progesterone injections which I hear really do make your derriere sore.

More meds to get ready for the transfer/post transfer. I ended up giving myself at least 115 injections and going through 22 vials of progesterone.