The Next Step

Ok, so for the past few weeks I have been taking 10 units of Lupron in order to suppress my ovaries. I go in every few days to check my Estradiol (E2) levels, and do an ultrasound on my ovaries, to make sure the Lupron is doing its job. And so far so good. Everytime we do an u/s, they find my right ovary right away and it always looks great. They always have a harder time finding my left ovary, because it is a little smaller. As Dr. C has said, it is a weak ovary. According to Dr. C that just means we won't get quite as many eggs from that side. So fingers crossed I can make enough to move forward.

That has always been a fear hanging out in the back of my mind about my ovaries. I remember after everything happened and my OB was talking to me about breastfeeding. He told me not to stress out if my milk never came in because my body was trying to compensate for all the blood loss. He said that the body protects the major organs by depriving less important organs of blood so that the major organs will have enough. So what if, because of all the blood loss, something happened to my ovaries? I'm trying not to think about that and hopefully it is a bridge we won't ever have to cross.

So on Saturday I will start my stims. I will be taking 150 for Menopur in the morning and then 300 of Follistim and 5 of Lupron in the evening. All my shots will got in my belly, since its nice and fatty. I am about to become a human pin cushion. But it will all be worth it in the end. I will take my stims for a little over a week. I go in pretty much every other day (MWF) for blood work to check my E2 levels, and we want them to start rising. On Friday, in addition to a blood draw I will have an u/s to check my ovaries. I am assuming we will want to see some follicles growing; follicles contain the egg. Depending on what Friday's bloodwork and u/s show it will determine when they will have me do my trigger shot of HCG to get the ovaries to release the follicles. 36 hours after my trigger we go in for a retrieval. And if you are looking at a calendar right now, you will see that my tentative retrieval date is also the first week of school. In fact, I will most likely miss the very first hour of the very fist day of school for a monitoring appointment. Fabulous! Good thing I have my awesome sub A on stand by!

Here are 2 websites that do a pretty good job of explaining IVF and gestational surrogacy.
http://www.crhivf.com/IVF/IVFStimulation.aspx
http://www.surromomsonline.com/articles/gs_process.htm