Saline and Mock

Well, everything went great today! I was worried for nothing, which does tend to happen.

We started off with a consultation with the doctor.  He is great and I really enjoy him as a person and a doctor.  He went over the procedure again, from the meds to the transfer.  There was something I was surprised to hear though.  I have read and heard that a lot of women who go through IVF are on birth control while they do the meds.  This is the wrong way to go about it.  I mean, each clinic has their own way of doing things, so shouldn’t say it’s wrong, but my doctor pointed out that if you do that, your lining is not growing like it needs to because the birth control won’t let it plump up like it needs to.  Huh.  Wonder why other places have women stay on birth control while they do the meds?

I also learned that he is fearful that because of my PCOS and my past experience with meds for IUI (the first round I was on the lowest recommended starting dose and I produced 9 follicles), he is worried about over-stimulation.  He says there are a few ways to handle that, which will come if and when we need to worry about that, but that might mean I’ll need more monitoring visits.  $300 a pop.  Eep.

I couldn’t get into a nursing class until September 11th.  Kind of stinks because I wanted to start, like, today!  It’s okay though, that will give me time to finish getting rid of this blasted cough!  It still lingers….

The saline showed that I had no cysts on the ovaries and my uterus has nothing strange in it.  He said it looked perfect.  Nice compliment for my baby holder.  Hopefully it will want to hold a baby or two for me.

The Mock also went well.  He had a little trouble with the bend in the catheter to get it to go in nice and smooth, but that is why they do the mock, so that they have the perfect measurements, bends and catheter size for the actual transfer day.  Don’t want any hold ups with your little embryos hanging out in there!

Both the Saline and the Mock gave me some wicked cramps.  I also wasn’t aware of how quickly the saline was going to revisit me.  I peed right after and I thought that should have got rid of the majority of it, but as I was checking out I felt it all come down.  Luckily you could only see it if you were really looking.  And if you were really looking, you’d think I had peed my pants.  Lovely what we go through for babies!

Now I sit here and wait.  I’m going to skip my next period by just continuing onto the next BC pack.  Then after the nursing class, i’ll stop the BC and start the meds.  He said I may bleed a little, but that it would not be a real period and the meds would stop it from coming all the way.  Then after about a week and a half of meds, they will do the egg retrieval.  They said by the time I wake up from the anesthesia, they will know how many eggs were retrieved.  Exciting to know so soon!  By the next morning they will know how many fertilized and by day three they will know how many are looking good.  He said worst case senerio would be that only 2 or 3 are still fertilized and looking alright on day three, and that means they will just go ahead and implant those on day 3.  If we have a lot and they are progressing well, we will do a day 5 transfer.  Let’s hope for a day 5!

Oh, and check out all the free swag I got!  He said it wouldn’t be enough for the cycle, but hey, every little bit helps!  I am very appreciative!

Anticipation!

I am becoming quite antsy thinking about next week.  One week from today!  Actually, less than that because it’s already 9:20pm here and my appointment is at 7:45am next Wednesday.  Ah!  So excited!

The appointment is for my IVF consultation (#2 — because it’s been over six months since we went to our first), Mock transplant, saline ultrasound and blood tests.  I know those things aren’t going to be very exciting (at least, they shouldn’t be!) but it means that this IVF thing is really happening.  It’s finally here… so close!

I hope that they let us start right away, but I’m afraid they may postpone us a little bit because they don’t have a nursing class available until mid-September.  Boo!  I don’t want to wait until mid-September to start!  I’m hoping they will be able to have us come in for a one-on-one with a nurse or a doctor so that we can start sooner.  We’ve already done IUI, so I hope my expertise with stabbing myself with needles can come into play and get us moving along a little faster.

Tick Tock, Clock.  It’s been nine months already since our last IUI failed.  It’s time to go!

Update on Sexual Education, Please!

Over the past three years, I’ve realized that I was never prepared for the possibility of having reproductive problems.  In school I was taught that if you have sex without protection, you WILL get pregnant and you WILL get an STD.  I get the scare tactics, it’s important to scare teenagers out of sex.  Of course, TV shows like 16 and Pregnant glorify teenage pregnancy so much, that I’m sure teenagers are now taking detailed notes on how to get pregnant so they can get on TV.  Scare tactics aside, there needs to be more information on what to do if your body is not functioning correctly.

I had a period when I was 13 years old.  It was my first one, seemed typical (from what I remember, it was 15 years ago) and afterwards, I spent a lot of time awaiting the next.  Not because I wanted another, but because I didn’t want to be caught off guard with an accident.  I’d heard the horror stories about that.  Well, a month went by with nothing.  A year went by with nothing… and before I knew it, I was 16 and finally getting my second period.  Yes, that’s right, 16 years old.  Old enough to drive.  I continued to have periods, but only every 4-5 months.

Did anything seem strange to me about this?  Sure! Of course!  My friends went on and on about them every month.  They envied me and my 2-3 times a year periods.  I guess I was pretty excited about it too.  Who actually thinks about the need to have one of those?  They are a pain in the uterus!  Shouldn’t I have had the notion to get checked out?  I guess I should have, but I was never taught to think about that.  Every time I told someone, I’d get a “Hey! That must be nice!”  So I learned to think of my missing periods as something that was considered a fantastic blessing.  Little did I know!

Sexual Education focuses on three things.  Anatomy, Sex and STD’s.  Did I know where parts were located? Yes.  Did I know how sex works? Eh… I had a pretty good idea.  Did I know that STD’s were out there, lurking in every penis that passed by?  Oh yes.  But did I know that not having a standard period every month was a sign of something wrong?  No.  No I didn’t.

Just from starting this blog, I’ve learned that there are more girls out in the world with infertility problems then I would have ever imagined.  We are everywhere, and we are just now learning that things we’ve lived with our whole lives are wrong.  Missing periods, cramps that literally feel like they are killing you, excess hair growth in places where hair doesn’t belong on a lady, no sex drive…  These are very big things.  Huge things, and yet, most of us didn’t even think to get these things checked out.  If you are anything like me, you shrugged your shoulders, picked up your tweezers and went to work to hide your embarrassing hair growth.  Or you bragged a little about missing periods, or maybe even talked about how you had to miss three days of work because your period was so bad you were hunched over a toilet.

Why don’t they educate on these things?  I don’t think it would add to the curriculum too much.  “Ladies, if you do not have regular periods, or vomit every month when you have a period, you could have a hormone imbalance or Endometriosis!  Go chat with your gynecologist!”  How long would that take to say?  Only took me a couple seconds to type!  Although I am only using two examples, there are many other symptoms that could point to problems, so it may take a day or two on the subject to fully cover it in a classroom situation.

Scare tactics are fine and necessary, but our health is more important than that.  If I had known when I was 16 what I know now, I might be pregnant, or at least have most of my symptoms under control.  My friend who had to take 3 days off of school every month because she was throwing up every time she had a period, might have been able to have her Endometriosis diagnosed 12 years sooner than she did.  Let’s get some EDUCATION into Sexual education.  Let’s try and make it about a little more than where the penis goes. Let’s make it about health in all aspects.  Let’s get the newest generation of women educated on their bodies, so that if they do have problems they don’t have to wait until they are 26 and ready to have children before they learn the bad news.

You can call me naive and scream that I should have known, but I am not the only one.  I am one of many, and as a sex, we should be aware that we have not been told everything we need to know.  We’ve all been to gynecologists for years and years and still came away with no answers time after time.  We need to be taught to ask the right questions so that we can get started on becoming healthier and happier!