IVF #2: Stims

Hilarious.

You probably can't see it super well but every injection leaves a red dot and sometimes a small bruise. So after a while you could really see it on my stomach. They were always worse on my left side, I don't know why.

Lupron injections keep your hormones down low. It decreased my estrogen to 56. Nice and low. Lupron simply suppresses your body from all the normal cycle events. They want your body down at a base level so that when you start the simulation injections, they will have had a solid base to start from. 

After a few weeks of the Lupron injections every morning (one injection per day), you add two more per day---so now it's 3 injections each day. Two in the morning (6 AM and one in the evening around 6:30PM). 

Stimulation injections do just what they're called. They stimulate your ovaries to produce--and over produce follicles. A normal healthy woman usually produces just ONE follicle to maturity each month that is released at the time of ovulation. But with IVF, they want to be able to get 10-20 follicles when they go in for the retrieval. So you add these two new injections.

The two I was on were Menopur (6:30 AM). 

 This one has to be mixed. One bottle is powder and the other is pretty much just water. 

You have to pull the water into the syringe with the Q cap and squirt it into the powder, swirl it around to mix and then pull it back out into the syringe. Then you take off the Q cap and replace it with the injection needle. And this one goes in your stomach, just like the Lupron.

Bryce took the pics for me of course. While pushing the needle in Bryce told me to look at him and smile....I don't think I did the greatest job at smiling. lol Kinda weird to smile when you have a needle in your stomach. :)

The other stimulation injection is Follistim. 

This one came with this fancy pen and a case and everything. It's also the one that has to stay refrigerated.

Bryce did this one for me a lot of the time. He was the one who put it together when we first pulled it out to use it the first day. 

My first injection of Follistim my instructions were to do 150 units. So, with the pen, you just dial the back end out til it shows "150" in the window.

Then when you inject it, you just push in the end and it gives you the dose you dialed in. You leave the vial of medication inside the pen between doses and you just attach a new needle each time. It's nice! 

And really, again, Bryce was the one who gave me these ones a lot of the time. I wish I had pics of him doing it! Aaand there's that fake smile again. Although, it does look better than the first time I tried to smile! 

 OK so while you're on stimulation injections, you go in for appointments about every other day.

Stimulation meds usually last 9-12 days depending on how fast your body responds. I was on them for 9 days. I had an appointment every other day for a week and then every day the last 3 days. 

(PS-- their office is 45 mins away from my home. I would go in at 8AM so that I could be in and out as fast as possible and head straight to work after (35 mins) and make it there by 9 or 9:15. So most of the time I only lost an hour of work time for each appointment. 

Pics below were taken the day after Thanksgiving, Nov. 23rd after staying up all night in line at Cabela's for their Black Friday sales. No one can say I don't love my husband....

Once they call me back, one of the nurses takes my blood-work (1-2 vials each time). 

They test it for my estrogen level. They get the result by 2 pm the same day and call me to tell me what dose of the stimulation injections and the Lupron to do. They adjust them based on how high my estrogen level gets. 

This is Tiecha! She is completely amazing! She's the nurse I deal with 90% of the time and she's just awesome and so so nice! (pic is from Nov. 21st, the day before Thanksgiving)

 After labs, they do a vaginal ultrasound (super fun! ha!) to look at your ovaries to see how many follicles you have and measure how big they are and then they measure your uterin lining as well.

This is the screen when it's not being used. I'll post pics later of the follicles!

So I had one of these beautiful looking bandaids on every other day going to work.

Bryce got to come with me for a bunch of the appointments. I loved it when we could schedule it so he could come!