To my knowledge, I have never been pregnant. My cycle has been as consistent as the moon’s monthly trip through its lunar cycle. This was always a good thing..until last year. An exquisite man proposed to me who wanted a family just as bad as I did, and suddenly I was begging my body to not be quite so consistent.
As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, it’s hard to say for sure what has caused my fertility problems. Is it my job? The stress, the toxins, the cleaning products, the smoke? The intermittent sleep? The adrenaline rush when the tones go off during a REM cycle? Or is my age? Or the fact that I was an egg donor twelve years ago? Or because I work out almost every day? It’s impossible to know, so instead I choose to control the factors I can manipulate. Thanks to a supportive fire department, I was able to work modified duty throughout my entire IVF cycle. This allowed me to be able to control sleep, stress, exposures.
To catch you up from my last post, the cysts FINALLY dissipated, and about two weeks ago we were able to start a cycle of IVF. I did do a round of egg retrieval last summer, but since we want to have a few children our doctor recommended another round to ensure we had enough embryos to work with going forward.
The egg retrieval process involves daily injections of medications (for me, Menopur and Gonal-F) that stimulate multiple eggs to mature in both ovaries. On day 6 and 9 of stimulation medication injections, you go to the clinic so they can perform an ultrasound to check that your uterine lining is remaining thin, and to count and measure how many follicles (what eggs grow in) are developing in each ovary. They also do blood work to determine how well the medications are working and to make sure they don’t overstimulate you, which can lead to Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome, which has symptoms as mild as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, to severe symptoms like blood clots, shortness of breath, severe abdominal pain and severe, persistent nausea and vomiting. Additionally, around this time they start you on an additional medication (in my case, Certrotide), which is an ovulation antagonist, meaning it prevents premature ovulation of the eggs, and keeps them safely stored in the ovaries where the medical team can retrieve them during the egg retrieval procedure.
Since all the eggs are maturing at different rates, they use your ultrasound and blood work to predict what day will be best to perform your egg retrieval. When the day of your retrieval is determined, they count back 36 hours, and precisely at that moment, they give you another medication referred to as a trigger shot that contains Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG), which is (thank you healthline.com for describing it better than I could):
“With IVF, the trigger shot is used before egg retrieval to help facilitate a process called meiosis. In meiosis, eggs go through an important division where its chromosomes go from 46 to 23, priming them for fertilization.”
The big black circles are a few of the eggs maturing in one of my ovaries
Once you’ve taken the trigger shot of HCG, the meanest, most cruel joke is played on every woman and her partner the following morning when you have to take a pregnancy test to ensure the HCG absorbed properly. I cannot describe the feeling of seeing a “positive” on a test when you have NEVER been pregnant before.
And then, before you know it, it’s egg retrieval day! It’s surgery. No eating or drinking after midnight, take all your jewelry off, and get ready to take a lovely nap under general anesthesia. I was so excited, I hadn’t been sleeping well so I asked the anesthesiologist if I could stay under a while longer but he very seriously said “absolutely not.” Killyjoy.
The procedure itself only takes about twenty minutes, and before you know it you’re waking up to some sweet nurse with a box of apple juice and a single graham cracker, and your doctor comes by to tell you how many eggs they retrieved (9 this time). You’re able to walk out about a half an hour later and before you know it you’re home and resting with some mild abdominal pain for the rest of the day…I might add that it would likely have been more painful had I not taken the Hydrocodone prescribed, as I discovered later when I tried not to take the pain medications.
While the egg retrieval is taking place, my other half was in another area of the clinic providing a sperm sample, and as soon as we’re both done with our procedures those kids (eggs and sperm) are all meeting in petri dishes to say hello and get to know one another.
Based on the development of your embryos, your nurse or doctor will call to say that your embryo transfer will take place either three or five days post egg retrieval. Stay tuned to hear all about our ‘Day 5’ transfer.