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Sunday, September 14, 2008

The Progesterone Ritual

The evening of the egg retrieval is when you start the progesterone injections. Basically it helps to make my uterus nice and comfy for the embryos. I have to continue the progesterone injections until my pregnancy test on the 23rd and if I'm lucky enough to be pregnant, I will continue them for another 6 to 8 weeks. The thing about the progesterone injections though is that they are intramuscular injections given with a 1.5 inch needle. It is also in an oil form so it is nice and thick, if you can imagine. Oh, and by the way, it is also done in the derriere.

Now, imagine this, every night at 8 pm my husband has to give me this injection. I turn on the heating pad, fill up the syringe with 1 cc of progesterone in oil and take an antiseptic pad out of its paper casing. I lie down on the couch with my knees bent and expose a patch of skin around my hip bone. Greg kneels down and places his and in an "L" shape with his fingers on my hip bone to figure out where to place the needle. This takes about 5 minutes. The he applies the antiseptic, blows on it to dry it (or it stings) then probably another 5 minutes later he plunges the needle in and quite often, it hurts!!!

Then can you guess what happens? He actually sits back to admire his work. The needle is sticking out of my ass and he has to pause! After I yell at him to get on with it, he injects the progesterone which I can actually feel going in due to the viscous nature of the oil. It takes another couple minutes for him to remove the needle then the antiseptic pad is reapplied to stop any bleeding and some jiggling occurs to help move the oil around. I always love it when my fat is jiggled. Not. Finally I apply the heating pad to help thin the oil so it doesn't pool where it was injected.

Sounds fun, doesn't it? Other ladies do progesterone suppositories but that is another story. My Dr. always prefers the injections.

2 comments:

nonlineargirl said...

My doc calls for the injections too. After all the rounds of IVF, I have lots of scar tissue in my bottom, which I can feel when I run after my daughter. Charming.

Oh, and you are allowed to like eggplant, I just have a hard time getting over the sluggy feeling of most eggplant dishes. For some reason that chinese eggplant dish I posted does not do that for me.

Anonymous said...

I didn't do the heating pad - I bet that is soothing. I had two big lumps in my bottom where I had the progesterone injections. It took about 18 months for it to go away.

I hope you receive good news on the 23rd.