Next Steps and Circle Back From 30,000 Feet

I have no idea how I carved the time back in the good ol’ days of blogging to post every day. I’m having a hard time with finding the time to just do it twice a week. I have tons of ideas I’ve jotted down, but it’s just finding the time to write them!

It’s probably because I’ve had to take a second job to deal with all the debt fallout out from the lying ass liar douchebag of an ex-boyfriend. So literally all my free time on the weekends I’m working. So that means all my evenings during the week, I’m doing all the weekend stuff like cleaning and cooking and laundry. And trying to find some time to squeeze in a few hours of sleep. It’s really exhausting. But hey! Maybe at least preparing me a bit for single motherhood, maybe?

Anyway, I really want to get back in the habit of writing more, and to share this whole journey, so I’m trying to make this a new habit. 

I thought today I would update you on where I am in the process and what the plan is.

The week before Thanksgiving I had my IVF appointments at my doctor’s office. They call it IVF Boot Camp because it is 4 separate appointments that you have to do before you can start. It includes appointments with a psychiatrist, the pharmacist, the nurse and the financial person. You can schedule the appointments separately, but it was good to just get them all knocked out on the same day and that way have to be out of the office less time.

First up was the psychiatrist. My fertility doctor’s office has 2 psychiatrists on staff that work there. I’ve been offered their help already in the past, in case there was anything I wanted to discuss.

I kind of got scared because I was like “does the psychiatrist decide if I can go ahead and do IVF?” Turns out no. That was the first thing she said. So apparently I’m not the only one who thought that.

Also, every time I type psychiatrist, I think of Animaniacs and Dr. Scratchensniff the P-sychiatrist. (Wakko was my favorite.)

Anyway, the psychiatrist appointment. It went really well. Infertility and doing fertility treatments is a super emotional process. It’s really hard to understand unless you’ve experienced it. And it was nice to talk to someone about that side of the process. She went through the whole process and how it would work and then we talked about sperm donors and what to look for when choosing a donor. And then she gave me some great advice about how to talk to your kid about who their baby daddy is and all the questions that will come up along the way. It was really eye-opening and I was happy to have talked to her.

After the p-sychiatrist was the pharmacist. And this was where we went over all the meds and how to inject myself will all sorts of hormones. It was very informative, but since I’m still a few months out, I’m sure I’ll forget everything she taught me. Thankfully there are tons of how-to videos online that she gave me links for.

Most of the shots are in your stomach/front of your body. But since I’m going to do a frozen embryo transfer later, I will also have to give myself progesterone shots in my butt. The pharmacist person said I would not be able to do these myself because of where they need to be injected. But I talked to my friend who has done IVF and she said she did them herself, so that was good to know. Otherwise I told my mom I’d come over every day after work so she could give me a shot in my butt. And those shots you have to do for 11 weeks!

I had to give myself a shot for both IUIs so I think I’ll be OK with it. I’m just worried about the quantity of the shots and how I bruise like a peach.

After the pharmacist, it was a meeting with the nurse. I really like all the nurses at my doctor’s office. They are so great and nice. And I’ve seen the doctor just a handful of times anyway. All your dealings are with the nurses. So I’m glad that they are so great.

She talked about the timing of the procedures and everything. Basically we’d start with an ultrasound on one of the first days of the cycle that we are starting the meds on. After the baseline ultrasound, then we start with the meds and then Wanda and I will become very close friends, since you come in for ultrasounds and lab work almost every day to see how things are progressing.

After things progress enough and we’re ready, they will schedule the egg retrieval. That’s a surgery and you get put out for it. Well, twilight, but that for me is sleep city. And hopefully I respond well and we retrieve a bunch of eggs, since most of them are chromosomally abnormal, we need some good eggs to make an embryo.

Because of my age, they will be doing ICSI, which is where they inject the sperm right into the egg. Normally they will just put the egg in a petri dish and put a bunch of sperm in there and hope one makes it in. But this way, they are ensuring that a sperm will meet the egg. Not that it means it will fertilize, but it has better chances.

Then we wait and hope they fertilize and turn into embryos. You want them to get to 5 days, which is what they call a blastocyst. That’s good. And then that’s either when they put them back in you to implant, if you’re doing a fresh transfer, or they freeze them if they are doing a frozen transfer.

I will be doing a frozen transfer because I’m going to test any embryos to see if they are normal. You can test to see if they have all the chromosomes, etc. to see what the embryo looks like. I am planning a whole other post on embryo testing and my decision, but basically I feel this is the best option for me.

Because the testing takes time, that’s why they freeze the embryos for transfer at a later date, once you find out which ones are viable. So that takes place a month or more after the retrieval.

After the meeting with the nurse was the meeting with the financial person. Which was super quick because my insurance covers nothing (also another post topic for another day) and basically it was just like “this is going to cost a lot of fucking money and we won’t let you do anything until you give over that large sum of cash.”

So that’s where I’m at. Because of the aforementioned financial stuff, I am aiming for my February cycle to start this all up. I applied for a grant which closes at the end of the year and I want to wait to hear about that before moving forward. (So please! Cross all your appendages that I get a grant to cover the cost of some of this!)

But don’t worry that I won’t have any posts and nothing to write about until then, because I have a whole host of things I want to discuss with you!