Realization

On Saturday I realized that, barring any unforeseen problems or complications, I will be on some medication nearly every day from now until our embryo transfer. Wow. I confess, I am not good about remembering to take medications. (Ironic for a former nurse, I know.) I currently have two alarms set on my phone for my morning and evening doses of est.rogen, and so far so good.

As I currently understand my medication protocol--St. Mungo's doles it out to patients as needed, probably to avoid confusion--eventually I will be adding progesterone to the mix, then eliminating estrogen. After finishing progesterone, I will start birth control pills and remain on those for a while to sync my cycle with the donor's. Once I start my actual treatment cycle, I will be taking Lu.pron or something similar to suppress ovulation along with the estrogen to build my lining.

I'm sure those of you reading who have done your own IVF cycles are probably laughing or scoffing at me by now, since I know that the numer of medications and doses you've had to take for your cycles FAR exceeds what I'm describing. Nonetheless, it's a little overwhelming for me. I don't take any daily medications normally and am only able to remember to take my daily prenatal vitamins and fish oil because I take them with dinner each night (and yes, if I eat dinner out or am away from home, I tend to forget to take them).

My est.rogen instructions clearly list the following side effects: nausea, vomiting, headache, increased vaginal discharge, increased breast tenderness, and bloating. I have to say, so far, I haven't experienced any of these. That may change as I continue to increase my dosage; we'll see. (I have had a couple of mild headaches, but as I've written about here before, I am prone to headaches anyway and spend most of my days in front of a computer, so I can't fairly attribute them to the estr.ogen.)

The only "side effect" I've been having is irritability. . . . and honestly, I can't say for sure whether that is due to other people doing things that annoy me or to the medication. ;-)

Now that we are into April, early June for our transfer sounds very close! Theoretically, in just a little over two months, I could have embryos in me. LOL

We are also making slow progress toward completing our "to do" list of required items for our cycle. MM's infectious disease testing all came back negative, so that was good news. He also produced a specimen for another semen analysis last Friday, and I've had my blood drawn for my infectious disease testing and prolactin and TSH levels; we haven't heard the results of any of those tests yet. We have an appointment for a joint counseling session discuss the psychological issues involved with the use of donor gametes for conception on April 17.

Apart from finishing the mock cycle, my only remaining pre-cycle task is getting a sonohysterogram done. That will be scheduled once I finish the mock cycle.

I also haven't heard whether the donor has done her pre-cycle testing and what the outcome of that was. I am working on letting go of my control issues and trusting that this clinic that I've carefully chosen is on top of things. Their handling of our care so far has inspired my confidence. (Though that wouldn't keep me from asking about it if I had a reason to be concerned or if we were closer to cycle time.)

I continue to be very diligent with my eating and exercise, too. Although the new has worn off my eating plan, and I have had a few temptations, I have reminded myself why I am doing this and that it is just for a finite period of time and have stayed strong. I also started a 3-day-a-week fitness boot camp yesterday morning, which was good and challenging. In addition to reducing the risk of miscarriage, I want to be in the best physical shape possible if this cycle works!

In updating my feeds on goo.gle reader recently, I realized that all my donor egg blogs are now in the "parenting" or "pregnant" category. I think this speaks to the high success rate of this type of procedure vs. ART in general. Or maybe I just have a lucky sampling of bloggers.