The two things I hate most are - 1. The way it makes me feel and 2. The way it makes me want to eat everything in site. 2 is pretty self-explanatory... I am not a snacker, but on birth control I can't stop eating and I feel like I am beginning to look like this....
I need an Oompa Loompa to come to my rescue.
As for the way it makes me feel, it's no secret that birth control suppresses your hormones, namely estrogen. Some people aren't really effected by lower estrogen... I am not one of those people. Over the last 10 days I have noticed I feel like I am in a major rut. Just sort of sad. Not mean or angry like you feel when you are about to start a new cycle, but sad. Being sad is fine when you have something to be sad about, but unjustified sadness makes you feel nutty, which leads to feeling anxious (at least for me).
So to recap, I'm fat, sad, nutty and anxious. Awesome. My husband is a lucky man.
Tonight, when I go home, I think I'm going to scrub something. Getting down with a gallon of bleach always makes me feel better... ;)
The thing I love about being on birth control is knowing that every day I take one of these little fat-inducing, anxiety-causing pills I am one step closer to becoming pregnant! Sounds a little backwards, right? Welcome to the world of infertility.
I know I have talked about the process briefly before, but basically the IVF protocol I am doing requires you to go on birth control for about 3 weeks before you move forward. This allows the doctor to sort of "take control" of my cycle, as well as getting rid of any cysts I may have developed. Basically, birth control puts your reproductive organs on pause, giving you some level of control as to when it plays again. I don't really like the idea of that in general, but since it's not like birth control is the thing that's keeping me from getting pregnant... here we are.
Yesterday I had my IVF meeting with my nurse and even though I love her, queue the anxiety. We started mapping everything out and going over all of the meds and doses and timing and whoa! It's a lot. A lot to take in both mentally and physically. IVF is no joke, and I am fairly confident that when it's all said and done my needle phobia will be conquered.
In a time line, here's how this will go down:
I will continue on birth control until Monday, July 7th. At that time I will discontinue that little pill from hell and hopefully return to some level of normal human.
On Saturday, July 12th we start the stim drugs, and by we I mean me with Mike administering them. For the first 2 days I will be taking a 225 dose of a drug called Gonal F right into the stomach fat which, luckily for me, there is a lot of thanks to the above mentioned BC pills.
Monday morning, July 14th I will go see my doctor for blood work. That afternoon, I will get a call from the nurse telling me if we need to increase/decrease/maintain my dosage and to keep going. From that point she told me I will most likely be in every other day for monitoring (aka those lovely internal ultrasounds) and blood work. They will be closely watching my hormone levels as well as the size of the follicles I am producing.
Once the follicles reach 12mm in size or by day 4 of the Gonal F shots, I will add in another drug called Menopur. That will keep my body from ovulating ahead of schedule. This is important because if I were to ovulate on my own the doctor would not be able to collect the eggs and our IVF cycle would be canceled. Luckily I don't have to do two different shots, I can mix the Gonal F and the Menopur and administer them in one single needle. Gag. Talking about it makes me queasy!
Basically, the nurse told me I will probably be doing this for about 9 days.
9 nights of me laying on the bed, trying to act like an adult, while Mike stabs me with a needle. In the past, I haven't been very graceful at this. Maybe one night I will record it and post it here so you all can get a good laugh. Honestly, I am worried that my neighbors think he's trying to kill me. He really is a patient human.
So then, if all goes well, either July 20th or 21st we will be headed to the doctor for them to extract my beautiful follicles! This is where I will be so emotional. I consider myself so blessed to be able to go through this process. Sure I would have loved to just get pregnant, but watching it happen is insanely amazing to me. I feel like I get to geek out with God over what an amazing process He created.
It is considered an out-patient surgery, and I will be under general anesthesia. I have had a few outpatient surgeries now, so I am honestly not worried about that so much. Compared to the surgeries I have had, this will be a walk in the park. Obviously, I will ask for prayers and will be praying every day, leading up to that for God to hold my hand the whole way through.
That day, after I wake up, they will tell us how many they got, then we will be on our way. Soon after, the nurse will call us to tell us how many of those eggs successfully fertilized with Mike's help.
From that day on, the nurse will call just about every day with an update of how our babies are growing. I am beginning now to mentally prepare myself for this part of the journey. I know it will be incredibly bitter sweet. For me, the second those eggs fertilize they are babies. As the days pass and we loose some of them to the process I will have to internalize that. I know that my faith tells me God knows them each from the moment they are more than just a cell, and I trust in Him completely to give us the baby(ies) He wants us to have. How cool is it to think that, potentially, the first image I will see of our next children will be the moments after conception?! That's right, we get pictures of the embryos as they grow and develop.
This process, that occurs outside of my body, will take about 5 days. Once the embryo's have hit a certain phase of development, the best 2 will be selected to implant. That's right, 2. I think Mike and I both feel pretty comfortable with 2 embryos being transferred. We are still praying about it, continuing to look for direction, but right now we feel confident in the number 2.
Now during that 5 days of watching our babies grow, you'd think I would get a break from needles, but ohhhh no. Starting after my retrieval, we begin progesterone shots, and unlike the Gonal F, these have to go in the muscle...
The nurse said, "during your retrieval, I will use a sharpie marker to draw a circle on your butt. Mike just needs to make sure he pulls the skin tight and injects the progesterone somewhere in that circle." Lovely. Great. This process has really been a dream for me. When do I get to shoot him with a needle?!
I have to do that for another 8-10 days, maybe longer. So I'm looking at 20 days (at least) of shots, as well as blood work every other day during stim shots. Yikes.
Right now, if all goes well, the transfer would happen somewhere around the 26th of July and we would know if it worked 2 weeks later. I know those 2 weeks will be like torture, but I am going to do my best to focus on anything other than my pending pregnancy. I am cautiously optimistic, and hopeful that this will be our answer. I promise to do my best to stay honest and open through-out the process, and as I mentioned before we won't be keeping secrets. We may be a little delayed as I am sure our friends and family would prefer to hear the news from us rather than reading my blog, but you won't be far behind.
I know I can share our news, because I know how much support we have. I know that regardless of the outcome, the love of those around us will pour in and fill our hearts. IVF isn't the end of our story, just the beginning and in the event that this time isn't our time, I will need this blog more than ever.
Thank you so much for reading this incredibly long post. Thanks for supporting us and being eager to see what's next. Our family is blessed to have so much love being shed on us! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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