We just got home from orientation - while I am glad in some respects for clarifications that they gave us, I am still nervous as hell about starting to give myself injections tomorrow. They showed us how to do it all but I think until I actually do it, I am not going to feel better about anything. I am kind of a person who learns by doing.
New things we learned today:
1. Progesterone injections that start the day of the egg retrieval will last not only through the positive pregnancy test, but for 8-10 weeks into the pregnancy as well. (This makes Aaron kind of nervous because he is going to have to help me with this one and he is afraid of hurting me or doing it wrong).
2. My ovaries will begin the whole process as the size of a walnut, but by the time we do the egg retrieval, they will each be the size of a tennis ball. (YIKES!)
3. When we start stimulation (potentially 7/22), we have to keep my activity level low - this prevents me from jarring my ovaries and causing pain/damage to myself. This means I will be lying VERY low from that point on and will need lots of entertainment that involves me doing only a small amount of activity.
4. At one point, I will be on 3 injectable meds, antibiotics, plus my prenatal vitamin and metformin.
5. The most eggs we will have transferred during the transfer is 2 - the number of eggs is depending on your age, since I am under 35 recommendations are not to do more than 2 to lighten the chance at multiples (my specialist does not want multiples to be the goal).
6. My specialist's office prefers quality of the eggs over the quantity of eggs.
7. I am in the high risk for multiples category: I am less than 38 years old, have not had any failed IVF cycles, I have a normal uterine cavity, and I have not had endometriosis. This means that I have more than 33% chance of having twins (that's considered a high risk and that statistic is based on my specialist's office statistics from 2002-2009 as a whole). We are all right with this because that would mean we would not have to do this again because we only want 2 kids.
8. I have the option of donating my eggs to someone who could use them after we have had a successful pregnancy (we haven't discussed this at great length yet, but it is definitely something to consider, if we can help out another couple who is struggling, then I am pretty sure we will strongly consider doing this.)
9. The IVF process has the same % chance for miscarriage as a regular pregnancy, there is no difference in terms of chances for miscarriage.
10. The statistics for my specialist's office for a "fresh" (meaning we will use the embryos immediately) and "frozen" (embryos that are fertilized, but are not being used right away so they are cryogenically frozen to be thawed at a later date. ie. IVF didn't take the first time without having to re-do all the injections) fresh = 56% worked and frozen = 46% worked. That is an amazing statistic.
Hope the injections are going well! I know when I did my first injection I was hyperventilating and on the phone with a fellow fertility-challenged friend who had done them before. She had to talk me through it. I think it took about 20 minutes for me to actually jab myself. Then I saw how easy it was and I was a pro! Fingers crossed for a sucessful cycle!
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