Champion Follicles

I went in for another round of monitoring this morning. My estradiol jumped from 293 to 708 so things are looking good. Even better my follicles are getting big and lovely. I have at least two on my right side that measure at 15 mm and quite a few on both sides that are plumping up. This means lots of eggs. But don't get too excited, I think I might have said before, I'm good at the quantity but not the quality and there are many more hurdles in the way. After they retrieve the eggs then the eggs need to be mature. After you discount immature eggs, then we need to see how many fertilized. Once we find out how many fertilized then we need to see what the quality is. For me this has always been a very steep slope. I start with lots of eggs and end up with only a couple nice-looking embryos, but as "they" say, it only takes one! (I'll just keep saying that over and over)

I am set to continue taking 300 iu of Gonal F and 75 iu of Repronex in the evening. Tonight I also took 250 mcg of Cetrotide. I am on an antagonist cycle. In some cycles you start a drug called Lupron early in the cycle in order to suppress ovulation. In my case I did not take Lupron and am instead taking Cetrotide to ensure I don't ovulate until the clinic is ready for me to. Normally I will be taking the Cetrotide in the morning but I'm guessing that they didn't expect me to be so far along so I had to take a dose tonight and will do another one tomorrow morning.

I go back for another round of monitoring on Saturday morning which is a huge hassle considering the fact that my clinic is about a 50 minute drive from my house (with no traffic). There is a chance I'll be triggering on Saturday night with the retrieval schedule for Monday morning but I'll know more when I hear back from the nurse on Saturday afternoon. It's all happening folks!

Day One - Let the Injections Begin!

So that's it, it started tonight. At 8:30 I injected 75 iu of Repronex mixed with 1 cc of sodium chloride in to my stomach. I then injected 300 iu of Gonal-F using the RFF pen. So, you are wondering, what exactly are Repronex and Gonal-F?

Gonal-F is a human follicle stimulating hormone manufactured using biotechnology. In a normal month a women's body grows one egg in one follicle then releases that egg when the women ovulates. Gonal-F is going to help my body fill lots of follicles with lots of eggs.

Repronex is also a follicle stimulating hormone only instead of being manufactured using biotechnology, it extracted from the urine of postmenopausal women. Woo hoo! I'm injecting urine! Ok, not exactly urine but something extracted from urine, kind of feels the same. I'd like to thank all of the post-menopausal women who have donated their urine for my benefit.

I'm very good at the follicle creation part and by the time I reach egg retrieval I will be physically uncomfortable due to the amount of large follicles I'll be carrying around. It's the egg quality part I'm not so good at and we won't know those results until after the egg retrieval.

Suppressed? Check.

And so it begins. Last night was my last birth control pill and this morning I went in for a suppression check which consisted of a blood draw and fun, fun vaginal ultrasound. Boy do I love those...not! But, it looks like everything is good to go. I start the hard drugs on Friday.

I will begin with 300 mg of Gonal F and 75 mg of Repronex. Both are injected using a small insulin needle. The Gonal F is sitting in my fridge and comes in pen form. You simply dial in the amount and inject the drugs. I like to inject in to my stomach. Maybe because all the fat cushions the needle. The Repronex comes in two vials, one with powder and one with saline solution. You draw up the solution in to the syringe then inject the solution in to the vial with the powder. You mix it up, draw it back in to the syringe and inject away. Very soon I will feel like a pincushion.

This cycle is for baby #2 and I must admit that it feels very different. While I very much want a second child I would describe my feelings as ambiguous. I feel neither the sense of excitement nor the sense of desperation that I had when we were trying for baby #1. I really want this to work and I know that if it doesn't I will probably be very upset but just now I feel almost angry. Angry that I have to go through this again to have another baby. Angry that the one time I managed to get pregnant it ended up in a miscarriage. Angry that I have to worry about how to find the time for the endless blood draws, ultrasounds and other invasive procedures and somehow balance everything else in my life.

I know that having baby #1 makes me a very lucky girl. There are so many women out there still trying for #1 and I'm angry for them too.