Making progress: eggcellent!

We began ovarian stimulation for our first IVF cycle with what seemed a very reasonable dose of Follistim (150) and Menopur (2 vials) daily.  Within a few days, it was clear that my ovaries were languishing about, and my dose was increased to 300 Follistim, and 4 and then finally 5 vials Menopur.

A quick note about these injections.  They were nothing like the Gonal-F I took for IUI.  These things were no joke.  They definitely burned and a collection of bruises sprang up around my lower abdomen.  I went from a proud needle wimp convert with Gonal F to a whiny, wine-guzzling, and sometimes teary mess when I had to do these shots.  After 2 days of needing half a bottle of red to man up and inject myself, my sweet hubs took over.  The whining stopped.  He was a pro.We quickly had a routine.  He prepped the Follistim, I the Menopur.

Whereas I noticed no difference in how I felt or my mood with Gonal-F, with this new cocktail, I (and surely the hubs) noticed some irritability.  I think this could have also been due to the increases stress of knowing that this was kind of it for us, our second to last try.

At one point I believe we calculated each day of injections to be over $400 out of pocket.  I can't remember the numbers exactly, but again, let me just say we are SO VERY BLESSED to have family support.  We couldn't have done it all on our own.

I was scared to death they were going to cancel my cycle the first week; my ovaries responded at a snail's pace.  But they did respond, and we kept up with our injections and monitoring.  Fourteen days of stims, and we triggered two days later.  I was so so excited.  My sweet mama was in town for the week of retrieval and transfer.  She arrived bearing food, a huge Easter basket for her 34 year old, and an endless well of emotional support.  While I worked a day or two that week before retrieval and between retrieval and transfer, she cleaned the house and did more cooking, made Harris Teeter runs, and lunched with my mother in law.  We were basically ready for her to move in.

Retrieval was a breeze since I'd had the polypectomy a few weeks earlier.  Wasn't nervous, just very excited.  Nine eggs retrieved out of eleven.  Not bad.  The next day I was a bit of a wreck waiting to see how many eggs fertilized with ICSI.  Four fertilized.  I began looking up stats on the likelihood one or more would make it to blastocyst.  They tentatively scheduled a day three transfer.  I got a bit  panicky seeing posts like "we got 18 eggs, 13 fertilized, 10 blastocysts for day 5 transfer!"

A few miles away in the embryology lab, there were three collections of cells.  Beings made up of myself and my sweet husband.  It made me smile to think of it.  Little embryos that were neither him or me, but us together.  A friend had a baby the day before my transfer, at the very hospital campus where our little embies were being watched over.  I thought of them and hoped they were cozy and multiplying in their petri dishes while I visited my friend, her husband, and their new little bundle.