I also had to pay the balance yesterday. I tried to pay with my debit card, but it was declined because the amount was too large. So I wrote the biggest check of my life (I almost ran out of room!). Again, just one more step forward.
This morning I woke up early to give myself a shot. I have to give them 12 hours apart, and they want the shots done before the morning ultrasounds (which start on Thursday). So I'm doing them at 6:45am, which I realize isn't super early, but I normally get up around 7am. This morning I went back to bed after and laid there for awhile because I have been completely exhausted lately and wanted to rest as much as possible.
So the shots....I have to give them to myself twice daily from today until Wednesday, March 18th. The injection needle is only 1/2 inch long, so it's not too terrible. The medicine comes in a powder, so I have to take a mixing needle and draw up sodium chloride and inject it into the powder to mix it up first. Then I have to suck that out of the vial and put that solution into another vial of powder and mix that up. Then I switch the needle to the smaller one and inject that into my belly. It's quite the process, but I did it quick this morning and got it over with. The medicine stings as it's going in, but it wasn't anything too terrible. Actually the worst part of this morning was the pill I also have to take. It stuck to the roof of my mouth when I was trying to swallow it, and I've had a horrible bitter taste in my mouth all day.
I have to do the shots twice a day from now until a week from Wednesday, and starting on Thursday I have to do daily ultrasounds and blood work in the mornings. They do this to monitor how the drugs are working and to see what exactly I should be taking as we get closer to the retrieval. These drugs are stimulating my ovaries so that I can produce multiple eggs. However, they are very careful because if you overstimulate, then they will cancel your cycle because you can get very sick.
What We Learned At Our Class + The Timeline
Our 4 hour class on Thursday was pretty fascinating. It's really amazing what they can do and all the knowledge they have. On the day of egg retrieval, they will put me out with IV anesthesia and will go into my uterus and drain the fluid out of my follicles. This fluid contains the eggs. I have to have at least 4 follicles that are >16 mm or they won't do the procedure.
They will tell us after the procedure how many eggs they retrieved. They wait 4 hours before the fertilize my eggs with Shamus' sperm because it takes 18 hours before they can tell if they were fertilized or not. They only have a two-hour window to see if it worked, so they wait the 4 hours so that the timing is right to see the next morning. They will call us after they see and let us know how many fertilized.
They keep the eggs in an incubator that is calibrated for a Colorado woman's uterus. They don't look at them on day 2, but on day 3 they take them out and make a hole in the egg shell so they can later get the biopsy for the genetic analysis. Then they put the eggs back into the incubator and leave them until day 5. On day 5 they will call us and let us know how many good fertilized eggs we have. They grade the eggs A-C, and they won't implant any that have a C grade. Each egg gets two grades, one for the baby part of the egg and one for the placenta part of the egg. BB is a good grade, so we are hoping for that or better. Any of those they will take a small sample out of the placenta part and will send to the genetic lab in California and freeze the eggs. Then it takes a couple of weeks for us to get those genetic results back.
I will take the month of April off and will just relax and recuperate and get my body back to normal after taking all those drugs. Once my period starts in May again, I will have to start taking daily progesterone shots and estrogen to prepare my lining for implantation. They wait for 6-7 weeks to do the implantation, so we are looking at a mid-June implantation date if everything goes according to plan.
After they implant, I will have to be on bed rest for at least two days, and then they will bring me in for a blood test ten days after to see if I'm pregnant or not. I will still have to take the progesterone and estrogen for 11 weeks and will continue to go in for blood tests to make sure that my levels are rising as they should. If everything checks out, they will move me to my OB/GYN to finish the rest of my prenatal care. If everything goes as planned, then we would be looking at a March baby!