Less than a Week Away!!!

We are less than one week away from IVF Transfer! This will be my last post for a long while. If transfer works we will take our time and make sure everything looks healthy before announcing anything. Or if transfer does not work, we will want some time to ourselves and to figure out our next step. 

I haven’t posted much since there has not been much excitement going on. I had my first ‘baseline’ check for transfer on June 20^th. They had to check my uterine lining to see how thick it is along with my estrogen and progesterone levels.  “The endometrium changes throughout the menstrual cycle in response to hormones. Estrogen causes the lining to grow and thicken to prepare the uterus for pregnancy”. My endometrial thickness at baseline was 3.7 (which is where they want it to be at the beginning of the cycle). 

After that appointment I started taking 4mg a day of Estrace (estrogen pills) and using an estrogen patch that I change every 3 days. This is to help my lining increase enough to make a good home for a baby. In a natural cycle this would all happen on its own, but since we are synced up with when the clinic does frozen embryo transfers we need to take the medication to be on the same cycle. 

During this appointment we also had to turn in a ‘consent to thaw’ form. This is the form where we give the clinic permission to thaw (an) embryo(s). We had to select if we wanted to thaw one or two and we could also select if we wanted them to thaw a boy or a girl or a surprise us embryo. If you’re hoping to know what we decided on…you’re out of luck because you won’t find out here! Gotta have some surprises left! 

Yesterday, July 3^rd we went in for our last appointment before transfer. They again wanted to check the lining to make sure it was the right size for implantation. Our clinic prefers the lining to at least be over 8. My lining was 11.2! Yay! It was also what they call, multi-layered. Basically you could see an outer, middle and inner layer- which I hear is exactly what they want to see. So it’s definitely looking good right now. I did get an estrogen shot (intramuscular shot on the backside) in the office to help the lining grow just a bit more before I start the next set of medications. 

*Funny story. The next set of medications include progesterone shots that must be given intramuscular on the backside (by the top of the butt/hip).  Since I am not sure how I will be able to turn around and inject myself Steven is planning on helping with these shots. I’m super nervous about that by the way! Anyway, I wanted to make sure we had the correct spot marked so we do it correctly. My coordinator took me in the back to mark the area with a permanent marker. We come out to show Steven so he knows…but we cannot find him. After looking around for a bit, I find my husband by the front desk rummaging through the candy jar. We pull him back into the office to show him as he is grinning ear to ear because he managed to get two dum dum suckers before we found him.*

Tomorrow, July 5^th, I start my next round of medication. I will still take the estrogen pills but I will be adding vaginal inserts (lovely, right?) twice a day, and progesterone injections every other day. The progesterone will help mature the lining. After starting progesterone the lining won’t grow anymore but it will prepare for implantation. The timing of all these meds is pretty cool when you understand it. In a normal cycle the estrogen builds up the lining (like we are doing), then when you ovulate progesterone starts being produced. Since we are on a synthetic cycle I will start taking progesterone around the time I would have ovulated. Since my embryos are already 5 days old, when they are implanted they need to have the same environment that a natural cycle embryo would. This means I need 5 days of progesterone in me prior to them being transferred in. So starting the progesterone tomorrow gives me 5 days until transfer. We are doing everything to make it nice and comfortable for an embryo! 

On July 10^th we will go in at 10:10am (our appointment is 10:30am) for transfer! They will enter a small catheter inside my uterus with ultrasound guidance. There they will ‘plop’ in our potential baby! I will continue to take medicine (shots, pills, inserts) up until around 10 weeks pregnant (or if it fails, until a confirmed fail). About a week/week and a half after transfer we will go in for two rounds of blood work to test the hcg levels. One will show if hcg is being produced (which would confirm pregnancy) and the second two days later to see that the hcg is at least doubling (which would show that the pregnancy is progressing). If things look good, we will go in about a week and a half later for our first ultrasound. 

Please keep those fingers, toes…everything crossed and say a little prayer that everything works! Thanks so much for all the kind words and encouragement through this whole process!