IVF Diary Vol II: 25 Jan 16

January 25, 201619 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Some cocktail of anesthesia drugs, x2 tylenol the nurse gave me before the Egg Retrieval procedure. I have avoided the pain killers so far.

Medical procedures undertaken. The Egg Retrieval!!! My appointment was at 0630 AM, so we got up nice and early at 0500, I actually slept quite well, I thought it might be a bad nights sleep with nerves, but it wasn’t. The nurse picked us up from the waiting room, she exclaimed “Oh I know you guys!!!! You are French!!!” (We thought she was teasing, but I found out later she wasn’t and she actually thought we were french). She said “Oh I am supposed to be just bringing the patients up today….but….I’ll sort you guys out!!” She took over from the other nurse so she could be with us. Haha, I think she actually just loves Chris 🙂 She was very sweet. Anyway, we were number 2 into the surgery room this time (out of 5). I was feeling pretty relaxed about it all, knowing vaguely what was about to happen.

The nurse got the Intra-Veinous drip into the back of my hand with no problems (because my hand has nice straight veins!!), it didn’t hurt at all. It was cold in the ward, I was wrapped up in lots of blankets but my right hand just wouldn’t get warm because of the drip running through it. We waited about 40 minutes or so, and even got a game of cribbage in. I was made to go pee. Chris was called to do his part for the day, and then it was my turn – the anesthetist gave me something that started to make me feel woozy, I was a lot more aware than last time around, so I tried to take a good look around. I was shuffled over to the operating table and was given something else, then zzzzzzzzzzzzz I was asleep. I don’t think I was awake for getting my legs into the stirrups this time!!! 30 minutes later I was waking up with the nurse asking me lots of questions. I was talking random crap about how nice they were. The nurse continued to monitor my vitals (blood pressure and heart rate), I was made to sit up, then finally I was made to go to the toilet to pee for her to check it. There was a teeny bit of bright pink blood, but not much.

Chris helped me get dressed and I was taken to my car in a wheel chair. I was feeling woozy, but no where near as much pain as I experienced last time around. In fact I was wondering if the local anesthetic was taking longer to wear off. I am sat here now 6 hours later, and I have some pain, but not half of what I felt last time. However, I do have a very very drippy sore nose. I think the oxygen tube must have damaged my nose somehow, or the anesthesia drugs have caused this.

What are my symptoms? Really not too bad apart from the runny, dripping nose. I am taking it easy on the sofa, but I haven’t needed to snooze yet and my tummy is tender, but not extremely painful. So overall I’m grateful!

How do I feel today? Super relieved to get today over with, I’m feeling very positive!!!

Any results? 14 Eggs retrieved!!! That is really much better than I expected. Last time we got 9 of which, only 6 were mature. So I am hopful for 9 mature eggs this time 🙂

What’s next? We will receive our fertilisation report tomorrow morning. Then hope for a 5 Day Transfer – this is our goal. But of course we will do a 3 Day Transfer if things aren’t looking promising.

Weight. Not even looked at it.

Waist. Continually growing.

Boobs. NSTR.

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 None. I’m tucked up on the sofa, hopefully tomorrow I will get out for a short walk.

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

Top tips in preparing for an Egg Retrieval

January 24, 201610 Comments

As this is my second round of IVF, I am feeling a little bit more prepared for tomorrow’s egg retrieval surgery. Here are some tips for preparing….

Take a day off work the day before Egg retrieval. Fortunately both times for me it has been a Sunday the day before and so have not been at work. The chances are you are waddling around by this point, ovaries full of beautiful follicles!
Stay hydrated in the days leading up to and after Egg Retrieval. Take a water bottle around with you every where (make sure it is BPA free, glass bottle would be better). Add in the occasional sports drink, such as Gatorade or Powerade.
Prepare you body to prevent constipation. Prune juice worked wonders for me last time around. I tried collace and that just did not get my bowels moving. I am trying prune juice and green tea the day before Egg Retrieval, just in case this helps. (I don’t know if it will, but it won’t hurt!). It’s a mix of the anesthesia drugs, pain killers (if you decide to take the narcotics), dehydration and your ovaries ballooning from the follicles that are leaking in your ovaries that create the conditions for constipation. Plus if you are constipated, you don’t want to be straining yourself after the surgery.
Pack your bag with some funky happy socks (ask if you are allowed to wear them), trashy magazines that don’t require too much concentration to read (you will be nervous whilst waiting so make it light reading with pretty pictures works well!), water bottle (remember you can’t drink/eat anything before the surgery so don’t forget this), powerade/gatorade for car journey home, with a banana or something similarly easy going on the stomach. (You are not supposed to eat fried/fatty/heavy food after the anesthetic – it helps with your recovery if you avoid these foods.)
Change bed sheets day before Egg Retrieval so you can snuggle up into nice clean bed sheets when you get home.
Get the hot water bottle/heat pads ready. I like hot water bottles because they are just that little bit warmer.
Have soft brushed, stretchy, baggy clothes ready, including pyjamas. Go to surgery in loose clothes…the bloating will be almost instantaneous after surgery you might think that they snuck a pillow into your uterus whilst you were out of it. Cosy socks – treat yourself to the ones with aloe lined in them, after all you will be in them for 24hrs or so, you might as well make them soft and beautiful whilst you are at it.
Stock up on healthy bite-sized snacks such as grapes, clementines, celery, raisins and pistachios. Chicken or vegetable broth is probably all you will be able to stomach for lunch, and is easy going on the tum! But also stock up on a little treat or two for later in the day. YOU DESERVE IT AFTER THE PAST FEW WEEKS!!!!
Borrow, rent or add to your watch list a completely new season of a TV series. Because really, the day after you are not going to be wanting to get off the sofa much.
I am also going to be keeping my sanity and avoid thinking every 5 seconds when I am going to get a fertilisation update by knitting, reading some more of ‘Gone With the Wind’ and adult colouring in (meditative colouring in no less!).
Egg Retrieval survival kit! On the left is what I will be wearing and taking with me to Egg retrieval. On the right what I will mostly be wearing (pyjamas!), eating and entertaining myself with!!!

Feel free to add your Egg Retrieval tips below!! Share the love!!!

IVF Diary Vol II: 23-24 Jan 16

January 24, 20163 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Stimming phase: Days 9 & 10. PM: Saturday AM: cetrotide, Sunday PM: Ovidrel (the trigger!!!). I did the trigger injection myself and decided to record it and post the video to my personal facebook page #thisiswhatinfertilitylookslike. (the video is at bottom of my blog post :-))

Medical procedures undertaken. Monitoring appointment – ultrasound and blood test.

What are my symptoms? Tiredness – afternoon naps have been required!!!! Nausea that comes and goes. Sunday, I have felt a little bit better than I have done over the past few days, but the ovaries are starting to twinge with odd pains here and there :-s These eggs are ready to go!!!

How do I feel today? Excited. Nervous.

Any results? My follicles are looking great. Randomly, in my right ovary all the follicles look the same size and shape.

“My good English eggs are ready!!!”

(The Dr’s words…not mine!!! Every single time I have seen him he makes a reference to my Englishness)

What’s next? Egg retrieval Monday 0630 AM!!!! Trying to mitigate any potential mild OHSS symptoms like I got from last time.

Weight. I haven’t weighed myself, I need to do this before the surgery so I can monitor OHSS.

Waist. My waist is 6cm larger than the same time last time!!! Whoops!!!

Boobs. NSTR.

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 None. It’s winter. It’s cold out there. Oh and we were like the only city in Virginia to get a pathetic amount of snow, it was mostly rain for us! I am pleased so it hasn’t messed up any of this round of IVF. I hope other women didn’t face problems with the snow storm who may need to travel from further way.

The snow storm wasn’t quite so apocalyptic as it was in other parts of Virginia!

Fun Activity to keep Dani from going insane. It will be time to relax and recover, so no specific fun activities. However, I am quite excited to watch Orange is the new black – I have a lot of catching up to do!!!!

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

IVF Diary Vol II:21-22 Jan 16

January 23, 2016January 23, 201612 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Stimming phase: days 7 & 8. PM: Gonal-F 300 iu & Menopur 150 iu. AM: cetrotide.

Medical procedures undertaken. Monitoring appointment – ultrasound and blood test.

What are my symptoms? Tiredness – I had to have a 1.5hr snooze in the afternoon because I just couldn’t keep my eyes open! The headache was just awful yesterday, it was persistent, however, today it has not been so bad. My tummy generally hurts when I bend over.

How do I feel today? Awesome because I gave myself the menopur injection. MY FIRST SELF INJECTION!!! That’s right, I have managed to get this far without doing one single injection myself because I have been terrified to do it. Today I overcame my fear. Chris got excited because he thought this meant he was getting out of injection duty. Oh no dear hubby we will go 50-50 from now on with this job! I like that he is a part of this. I treated myself with some ice cream as a reward :-p

I played dodgeball last night, I’m not sure how I managed it…I really got into the game, played through any paing and kind of regretted it afterwards, my body is a bit sore today! But I very much enjoyed it, it’s a social league so it’s not overly competitive and we have a good laugh. I have no one to blame but myself for my non-stimming related aches and pains.

Any results? I am excited because my estradiol results are much higher than last time (but not too high!) this has to be a good thing for more mature eggies!!!! My follicles are also growing evenly i.e. they are all around the same size, which is a bit better than last time too.

What’s next? Tonight is hopefully my night of stims (mostly because I only have one vial of menopur left!), hopefully the final monitoring appt Saturday morning, trigger Saturday eve, then Egg retrieval Monday morning.

Weight. NSTR

Waist. BLOATED

Boobs. Bigger and squishier.

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 None. We are in the midst of a snow storm!

Fun Activity to keep Dani from going insane. I went to Michaels and stocked up on wool for two new knitting projects! A kid’s cat scarf, and a cable knit scarf. I have been practicing cable knit and it’s actually not too difficult. I probably won’t finish them this weekend, but I will make a good start at them.

Cat scarf knitting project

Cable Knit Scarf Project

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

Avoiding the Mirror

January 21, 20168 Comments

I have been avoiding the mirror a lot lately. I look at my face in the mirror, but not my body. I can’t even look down, when I shave my legs I avoid looking at the area between my legs and boobs. It’s the part of my body that feels disgusting to me (apart from feet – feet are pretty disgusting to me too). I don’t necessarily mean that I am disgusted with the way my physical body looks, but I have some strange issues with my stomach in particular. Both in the physical and emotional sense. I am slim build, lucky to have a fast metabolism, I don’t have any eating disorders, I love food and we have a good relationship (except for the sugar, sugar and I are always going at it head to head!!). So this doesn’t have anything to do with me thinking I am fat.

I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and this means that I suffer from random stomach pains and I get terrible bouts of diarrhea. Certain food and stress triggers my IBS. My relationship with my stomach has never really been a good one.

The worst issue I have are things touching my stomach – whether that is me, my clothes, the cats or even Chris. There are times in the day where I cannot bear for things to touch my stomach – even my stomach touching the stomach (i.e. when bending over). I hate the way it feels. I have tried to explain it to Chris many times and even to myself, but I just can’t put words to how it makes me feel. Disgusted is probably not really the right word, but it’s pretty close to how I feel. But then there will be occasions when I am absolutely OK with my stomach being touched – I am unpredictable, there is no way of knowing if it is OK or not. It is worse after I have just eaten, but I can often mitigate this by having a hot water bottle on my stomach, this helps for some reason.

The weirdness of not touching my stomach also extends to not looking at my stomach. I don’t know why, but may be I have so much hate for the pain and grief it has caused me over the years.

Add in the bloatedness from the stimulation drugs from this IVF cycle and the problem perpetuates. I hate squeezing my tummy ready for the needles, I hate touching it and I hate looking at it.

What will I be like when I am pregnant? Well from the short period of time I have been pregnant I think this weirdness will still prevail, will it get worse? I hope not! For Chris’s sake at least because I know he will be wanting to feel close to the little one growing inside of me!

Mirror, mirror on the wall…..

IVF Diary Vol II: 19-20 Jan 16

January 20, 2016January 20, 20169 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Stimming phase: days 5 & 6. Gonal-F 300 iu & Menopur 150 iu. I started cetrotide this morning, day 6 (20 Jan) – this is the drug that stops me from ovulating prematurely and losing all those eggs!

Medical procedures undertaken. Monitoring appointment – ultrasound and blood test. So for my last appointment there were loads of people in the waiting room – it was like chaos. This morning, there was no one except little old me. It made me nervous! I don’t know why, but it just did – I wondered if I was an odd ball with my cycle.

What are my symptoms? Tiredness – I am struggling to keep my eyes open today. I went into work after my appointment and this afternoon I taught a 2 hour lesson as part of our staff development training. I give a highly interactive class with practical tasks, so it is incredibly draining on the brain as the ‘students’ always have lots of challenging questions for me!!! I am amazed I survived. At the end, one of the organisers asked me if I was OK, was I tired? Clearly I looked pretty rough!

I also have a headache. It is not dehydration because I have hydrated constantly all day, carrying around my water bottle with me.

The bloat…the bloat….the bloat is on fire! Aghhh! How many days do I still have left? I’m just over halfway hopefully! I am currently sat in my fluffy fleecy pyjama bottoms. They feel sooooooo good!

How do I feel today? Apart from the tiredness thing, I’m feeling not too bad. I am excited to be on this IVF journey still and haven’t given up hope just yet 🙂

Any results? I have 6 follicles in the right ovary and 7 in the left, with a few smaller ones hoping to catch up!!! Last time around my right ovary was the dominant one, this time it is the left. It looks like I am responding well in terms of follicle numbers similar to last time. Which is good because they collected 9 last time (6 were mature, 4 fertilised) so I am hoping for some more mature eggies this time around!

What’s next? The same injections then monitoring appt on Friday morning. The Doctor says I am currently looking good for an Egg Retrieval on Monday!

Weight. NSTR

Waist. slowly growing 😦

Boobs. Slightly bigger.

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 None. Snow expected soon!

Fun Activity to keep Dani from going insane. Dodgeball season starts tomorrow evening, I am not sure if I will play yet! I am doubtful. But I will go along anyway to support the team even if I don’t play.

Rahhhhh – Dodgeball is a great place to let off some steam – But not when you are in the middle of an IVF cycle!!!! :_-(

13 follicles – with a few at 3-4mm left to catch up

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

IVF Diary Vol II: 17-18 Jan 16

January 19, 20163 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Gonal-F 300 iu & Menopur 150 iu. We tried the injections with me sitting down, Chris preferred giving them to me this way. It doesn’t make a difference to me either way, they still suck.

Medical procedures undertaken. Monitoring appointment – ultrasound and blood test. My appointment was at 0830 – I left at around 1000. There were waaaay too many people in the clinic today for my liking. Chris came with me because it was a holiday here – Martin Luther King Day, so we were both off work. That was really nice, especially as we waited for quite some time.

What are my symptoms? Little to report except for starting to feel a little tummy bloat, and a thumping headache. I bought a new water bottle last week so that I can take water with me everywhere. I ummed and ahhed between two and decided to buy the bottle that was $5 cheaper. Got it home and realised it was a piece of crap, can’t put it in the dishwasher and wasn’t BPA free. Bah that’s what I get for being a cheap skate! Anyway, I’m hoping my headaches are from lack of water (something I can control opposed to if it was being caused by the meds)

How do I feel today? Feeling pretty good! I had a lovely weekend not making any decisions. Chris took me on a surprise date – we went to Dave and Buster’s – a kind of modern day arcade thing with lots of games. We released our inner kid. Then afterwards we stopped at Ruby Tuesdays to have a virgin cocktail and share a sundae ice cream. It was great fun to do something random and just be silly.

Any results? My uterine lining is looking great. I have a few follicles, the Dr didn’t count them all, but I’m on track. I called in for my instructions, and the nurse told me start my cetrotide on Wednesday morning. This means that I am starting the cetrotide a day later than last time around. I’m hoping that is a good thing 🙂

What’s next? The same injections on Tuesday, adding the cetrotide injection on Weds morning, then monitoring appointment following that.

Weight. NSTR

Waist. slowly growing 😦

Boobs. NSTR

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 It snowed yesterday unexpectedly. It was very random considering the day before had been warm and glorious. Weather here in Virginia is CRAZY. They are also talking about 10 -20 inches of snow on the East coast maybe as far down as here on the border of North Carolina, this weekend. So long story short. I think it is going to be hard for me to get much sunshine this IVF cycle.

Fun Activity to keep Dani from going insane. We discovered that Tuesdays at our local cinema is half price entry and half price food so we will be going to the movies! I want to see the new Quentin Tarantino film The hateful eight or The Revenant.

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

IVF Diary Vol II: 16 Jan 16

January 17, 20166 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Gonal-F 300 iu & Menopur 150 iu. We started with the Gonal-F needle – this one needs a bit more force to pierce the skin. Chris didn’t do it hard enough and the needle bounced off my skin!! I like to think it’s just my strong abdominal muscles rejecting the needle – haha!! As if!!! Anyway, after that little episode Chris tried again, this time he went a little too hard and it hurt! The camera captured the moment well. It’s OK to laugh at me, I know it is quite a funny picture ;-p

Chris was oblivious to the ridiculous face I was pulling! The camera captured the moment well. Fortunately he was concentrating hard on the task at hand.

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil.

What are my symptoms? No hot flashes…nothing to report. I am thankful!

How do I feel today? Feeling good! Chris and I had a nice day together, we went to our local organic eatery and sat in the heated sun porch for lunch. It was a sunny glorious day so it was very relaxing. We played a game of cribbage, I have 5 games to win in the next 1.5 months to beat Chris for the whole year (ever since we got married we keep track of the number of games won in a year). Chris has taken the ‘surprise date’ idea and decided to extend it to the whole weekend – I am not to make any decisions, it will be a surprise and there will be fun!!! Which sounds weird, but so far it has been nice to just follow his lead.

Any results? After worrying about the LH and FSH results yesterday, I forgot that these tests were taken one day earlier than last time. The Birth Control Pill effectively switches off the LH so my body obviously hadn’t started to produce it again but I am sure it would have been higher a day later. Worry ye not.

What’s next? The same injections Sun, then monitoring appointment on Monday morning.

Weight. NSTR

Waist. NSTR

Boobs. NSTR

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 It was a beautifully sunny day and so caught a few rays whist we were out for lunch.

Fun Activity to keep Dani from going insane. I am going to finish this page of colouring in! This was a colouring book I was given as a Birthday pressie from my parents.

Fun activity for next 24 hours…colouring in!

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

IVF Diary Vol II: 15th Jan 16

January 16, 2016January 16, 20167 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Gonal-F 300 iu & Menopur 150 iu. Chris really is great at this injection thing. I prepared the Gonal-F whilst Chris prepared the menopur. We both read the instructions to remind us how to mix everything up, but like riding a bike, it was easy this time around. Chris was a little bit nervous, but he needn’t have been, he did a great job. I even looked down at the needle as he was injecting it – I am still not good at watching the needle break the skin though :-s. The menopur did burn a bit as it went in, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I remember it to be.

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil.

What are my symptoms? Period started right on cue yesterday morning! Hot flashes and a bit of dizziness a couple of hours after my 2 first injections of this cycle.

How do I feel today? A little bit annoyed that my plans to have a more relaxing stim period and 2WW are falling to pieces. Some short turn around-high impact work may fall on my plate next week. I would have to forgo some of my steadfast principles for quality work and accept that in this case a 40% solution can only be delivered in the time lines given. I have stuck to my guns though to some extent – where I was going to be taking the whole week off work, I am now only taking Monday and Friday off. Tuesday and Thursday I will be working from home, Wednesday I’ll be in the office. As we talked about this potential work, I started to feel sick to my stomach. I started thinking back to last time around when I was trying to get my project finished and how stressed I was feeling about balancing the IVF process and work. I let down my quality levels then – no one noticed (of course I noticed), in fact I got lots of praise for that piece of work. Last week when a senior boss praised this work in front of the whole division I sat there quietly proud, but felt a bit sad that I had accomplished that with little help during a shitty time of IVF, followed by the whole ectopic pregnancy thing and ultimately miscarriage. My boss has been great by not dumping everything on me right now, he quite easily could have done, but he didn’t so I appreciate that, but I can’t quite help thinking about how IVF is holding me back from doing my absolute best. I don’t think my colleagues around me think like that (fortunately they are all smart, intelligent people who know me), it is just myself I am fighting with these thoughts.

All that being said, I’ll talk about something positive. We decided to go out for dinner at our local restaurant to celebrate surviving and nailing those first two injections. Chris deserved his beer! As we were finishing our meal the power went out in some of the building. There was a storm that evening so it must have knocked the power out. I said don’t worry, we are on a different power grid to our neighbours over the road (the block our restaurant was on) and last time their power went out, ours stayed on. As we walked back, we realised that our grid was out and our neighbours’ over the road was on! Typical. Fortunately we are well prepared for such events (for hurricanes and other storms etc), and carried on with the power of candles 🙂 It was a little bit romantic…I snuggled up in bed preparing for the power to be out all night and the temperature to dip.

Power outage = Candle lit bedroom!! Fortunately we have quite a few candelabras left over from our wedding table decorations still 😉

But then came the hot flashes! I needn’t have worried about keeping warm, it seemed the drugs were doing a great job of that for me!!

Any results? Estradiol <20 (as it should be, the same as IVF 1). Progesterone <.2 (as it should be, the same as IVF 1). FSH 3.21 miU/ml (IVF 1 was 9.29, in 2014 it was 6.8) LH 0.771 miU/ml (IVF 1 was 3.48, in 2014 it was 4.9). My LH level came up as red in my results…this means it was out of the ‘normal’ range, it is very low. But not by much. So I looked into it. Although lower FSH is good, low LH is not good…apparently calculating the FSH-LH ratio and knowing the LH levels are good predictors of IVF outcome. Let’s just say that I read several scientific reports, plugged in my numbers and the stats aren’t good. But, the good news is that I don’t care! Why? Because women with this kind of level and ratio still got pregnant. And I am going to be one of those women in 4 weeks time 🙂 In your face science!!! **

What’s next? The same injections Sat, Sun, then monitoring appointment on Monday morning.

Weight. Work stress = nom nom nom bads. But I did do the mixed martial arts P90x3 routine and pushed myself hard, so I don’t feel so bad.

Waist. NSTR

Boobs. NSTR

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 Still NONE. Let’s see if the sun comes out this weekend!

Fun Activity to keep Dani from going insane. IT’S FRIIIIIIIIDAYYYYYYY!! I need say no more. Surprise date night.

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

** Reserve right to have science egg in my face later

IVF Diary Vol II: 4 Jan – 14 Jan 16

January 14, 201617 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Ovulation Control Pill (OCP) Reclipsen 0.15MG-30MCG x 1 per day – Last pill taken Monday 11 Jan 16

Medical procedures undertaken. Baseline monitoring appointment was today – including blood work and vaginal ultrasound!!! As the nurse said to me – you know the drill!

Baseline Monitoring Appointment DONE! We are go to start IVF 2.

What are my symptoms? I continually spotted whilst taking the birth control pill and as soon as I stopped taking it the spotting has stopped. I was concerned this morning because my period had yet to start. I recalled from last my IVF cycle that when I went in for my monitoring appointment I was bleeding, so I worried that everything would be cancelled! But then I discovered that my monitoring appointment this time around is one day earlier than last time, so I was worrying over nothing!

How do I feel today? Surprisingly chilled and relaxed. Even dare I say, excited to be getting this cycle underway. I went to my local Resolve support group monthly meeting last night and we talked about the new year and our goals…it got me inspired!!! So I am feeling pretty good after that meeting.

I spent a lot of time at the clinic today waiting around and so I ended up being really late for work – I didn’t get in until 1230. I told my boss I would be late in, but even I didn’t think it would be that late! Oh well. My best laid plans to work from home have been thwarted a little because of tech issues with email. I am trying desperately hard to not get stressed from trying to fit everything in before the egg retrieval. Work is closed on Monday next week because of Martin Luther King Day which just adds to shortening timescales to get things wrapped up!

Any results? 8 Follicles ~5mm in Left Ovary, and 9 Follicles ~5mm in Right Ovary. That’s 11 more than last time! My uterine lining is also good to go. Oh I have beautiful ovaries apparently, never turn down a compliment! Blood test results come throughto my account a day later, but I have been given the go ahead to start stimulation injections tomorrow evening. So it’s GO GO GO IVF 2!

What’s next? Starting injections tomorrow evening and next monitoring appointment is on Monday.

Weight. I mentioned in last diary entry that I was 10lbs heavier than my last cycle…well with a bit of P90X3 in the mornings and cutting out the crappy food I have lost 4.5lbs over the last two weeks, which is quite incredible!

Waist. NSTR

Boobs. NSTR

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 Ughhhh NONE. Have to change this status over this coming weekend.

Fun Activity to keep Dani from going insane. This is going to be a new feature to my diary – basically I realise that I need to have little mini exciting goals, things to look forward to to keep me from going insane and letting IVF consume my head. Thanks to everybody’s help with my previous post (you have no idea how much you helped), Chris is going to take me on ‘surprise’ date and I am going to relinquish all my desire to take control and plan things! He doesn’t know it yet – but it will be a test to see if he fully reads my blog posts ;-p Haha just kidding. He does read them, and I love him so much for supporting my blogging.

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.