IVF: Checking on My Ovaries

Another big part of the Ovarian Stimulation Phase was going to my fertility clinic for blood draws and ultrasounds.  The purpose was to see how my ovaries were responding to the medications.  I would go in right at 7:30 when they opened and then they would call Adam in the afternoon once they had the blood work results in.  Since I'm a teacher, it's hard for me to answer my phone during the day, so Adam took over that responsibility.     

After being on the stimulating medications for two days, I went into my fertility clinic to see how I was responding.  I was told that things seemed to be progressing, but they upped my Gonal-F dosage.  We ended up having to order more medication as we went along.  Thankfully, Adam kept a close watch on this and our fertility clinic was able to give us some samples towards the end so we wouldn't have to purchase entire vials.  

I had to miss part of school each morning I went in to the clinic.  I wasn't pleased about getting my blood drawn so much or missing so much school.  After each blood draw, on my way back to school, I would stop and get hot chocolate from Starbucks.  It was my reward for having to put up with blood draws.  

The other part that just about broke my heart was that I was restricted from doing any sort of exercise and was expected to take it easy.  Since my ovaries would be producing multiple follicles, they would be getting very heavy.  There was a risk of my ovaries flipping over, which would cut off the blood supply and result in having to have a surgery to remove them.  That was enough to scare me into listening!  I had some very kind co-workers who helped me limit all the walking around I typically do in a school day.

But, boy was it hard to give up my walks with Jazzy!  It nearly broke my heart and made me cry when I would come home from school and Jazzy would be so excited to go for a walk.  But I couldn't take her and I couldn't make her understand why.  She would sit patiently by the front door as if saying, "Um...excuse me.  Now's when we are supposed to go on our walk!"  Adam really picked up the slack for me and took her when he got home from school and right before he went to bed.  He even took her some mornings before he left for work.  It's a good thing he was around!  Especially since I was feeling like a deadbeat dog mom at this point.  

I went in two more times for blood work and an ultrasound and the last time I went in, I could tell the nurse wasn't super excited about how my ovaries were looking.  When I asked how things were, she said I had a few follicles that were the right size and would probably contain eggs.  She didn't say much more and I felt like she was holding something back.  But she did rave about the lining of my uterus!  She said it was nice and thick, which is what you want at this stage in the game.

The call we got the afternoon of my final blood draw and ultrasound wasn't the news we were hoping to hear.  The nurse told Adam I ended up with 9-10 follicles and they expected to retreive 4-5 eggs if we went forward with the retrieval.  I remember Adam emailing me at work and told me to call him when I could.  I knew something was up.  He told me we had the option of moving forward or canceling the cycle and trying again later.  I'm not going to lie, that was hard to hear.  We had gone through so much already and spent lots of money on the medications.  If we canceled now, we wouldn't have to pay the full amount of an IVF cycle.  But then we would also end up right where we were before we started IVF: without a baby.  

After Adam and I talked, he decided to call and ask to speak to Dr. Brabec to get her opinion.  She told Adam that she still had hope that this cycle would be successful if we moved forward, but wanted us to understand our odds weren't as great since there wouldn't be as many eggs.  She said that she has told patients in the past that they should cancel a cycle and she wasn't saying that to us now.  

Adam and I felt like we were already in this thing.  I didn't think that I would respond differently to different medications or during a different cycle.  During all the times we tried IUIs, I never seemed to produce many follicles.  I just felt that things wouldn't be different if we tried again.  We decided to move forward and remain as hopeful and positive as we could.     

So we scheduled our egg retrieval for December 9, 2016.

Two days before the egg retrieval, I had to administer a trigger shot, which promotes the completion of the egg maturation process.  I had to take it at exactly 9:00pm.  This was also one that I injected in my belly fat with a tiny needle.  It didn't hurt, but was a bit stressful since I had to inject it at 9:00 on the dot.  But Adam was there and told me exactly when to stick in the needle.  There was no turning back now!