The first official appt.

On Friday we went back in to the dr. and had our official first appt. We did another ultrasound (which I should be used to by now, but I'm already sick and tired of having those done!) to make sure the girls looked good and were ready for this crazy ride. After that quick visit we meet our IVF nurse face to face and she was going to do our injection training, go over all the legal paper work, talk about our schedule for the next few weeks and go over all the meds. I first have to say that I love my nurse Kelly! She understands my obsessiveness and the fact that I call her all the time to clarify things doesn't bother her.

Today she brought us good news about the the dreaded intramuscular injections. Apparently as of last week, the entire clinic has officially stopped using progesterone injections and has moved solely to a gel. Yeah, no shots in the butt!!!! The alternative is kinda gross and apparently really messy, but who cares, no shots!! I was so overjoyed when she told us that and I really felt much better about the whole thing. The other good news is that the other injections for the Lupron (hormone suppression), the Follistim (ovarian stimulation) and the Ovidrel (ovulation trigger) are all going to done with an insulin needle, so they'll be really small. She showed us how to draw up the meds and to properly measure it out and she let me practice on this weird thing that was supposed to represent skin. Overall, it doesn't seem to hard. I found myself feeling my better about everything and can hopefully put my big freak-out from last night behind us. The doctor also decided to move up our schedule 2 days and we're going to start the Lupron injections on Saturday instead of Monday. Yeah!

That afternoon, half of the meds arrived via FedEx. It was a little overwhelming to see all those syringes, especially since I was going to be sticking everyone of those in my stomach! But I have to remind myself that thousands of people have to inject themselves with insulin everyday, heck even kids do it. If they can do it, I can do it.

Here's my tentative schedule for everything:

Feb. 13 - start Lupron injections
Feb. 17 - stop birth control pills, continue with Lupron injections
Feb. 22 - Dr. appt., base line ultrasound, mock transfer, start Follistim injections, continue Lupron injections
*while taking Follistim, come into the office every 3 days for blood work and v. ultrasound
March 4 - Ovidrel trigger shot, stop Lupron and Follistim injections
March 6 - egg retrieval
March 8 - start Progesterone gels, start oral meds
March 9 or March 11 - embryo transfer
March 20 - pregnancy test, stop oral meds, continue with Progesterone
April 2 - if positive test, first ultrasound and depending on lab work, continue with Progesterone