The Schedule

I want to give everyone an idea of what I will be going through for the next month or so. I realize that not everyone reading this blog is familiar with the ins and outs of IVF, so here is my brief amature explanation. The process starts with Birth Control pills and a drug called Lu.pron to shut my reproductive system down. Shutting it downs sounds counterintuitive; however, it helps to get more mature follicles and manipulate the cycle to prevent less complications. If everything shuts down nicely, they will turn me back on high with stimulation drugs to make follicles grow. I will continue on the Lu.pron to make sure that I do not ovulate on my own. We will go in for daily ultrasounds to watch my follicles get to maturity. Once things look good, we will do the egg retreival. Basically, I will be given the Michael Jackson drug (my doctor's words, I swear), and with an ultraound as a guide they will retrieve eggs. The embryologist will inject Greg's sperm directly into them, then put them in the freezer to grow for a few days. After a few days, they will check up on them to see how they are growing. Depending on how they grow and what happens, we could either transfer them back on Day 3 or Day 5. That was not as brief as I would have liked, but hopefuly you get the idea.

Below is a list of what my IVF schedule looks like right now:

9/2 – Met with doctor to discuss IVF option
9/16 – Start period
9/17 – Start Birth Control Pills (BCP) , Day 3 tests. FSH – tests ovarian reserve 4.43 (anything over 10 is bad), Estradiol (E2 or checking estrogen level) – 40 decent, but not great, Thyroid – looks good. Prolactin – Looks good. Test for communicable diseases for GHuman and me.
9/22 – Turns out I never had the chicken pox. Go get chicken pox vaccine to be done 30 days before retrieval. It can be dangerous to get chicken pox when you are pregnant.
10/11 – Start Lu.pron – Drug that works to shut down my natural reproductive system.
10/17 – Stop BCPs
10/22 – Suppression check to make sure my system has shut down, ultrasound to see how many follicles might be there and blood draw for estradiol
10/23 – If everything looks good at suppression checks, things are shut down and I have no cysts we will start stimulation drugs (crank her back up) to help resting follicles to grow. I will take 300 ius of Gonal.F and Menoupau.r
10/28 – Start Daily checks to see what follicles are up to, and once they are mature (18mm) then they will do the retrival.
11/3 – Estimated date of egg retrieval. Sperm is injected into egg via a procedure called ICSI
11/6 – If it is a Day 3 Transfer – They check on surviving embryos. If there are two that stand out over the rest, then they will go ahead and put them back in me. If there are more than two that look outstanding and perfect, they will wait until Day 5 to transfer. Statistically, half of the embryos are lost between Day 3 and 5, and they want to get the very best ones to transfer.
11/8 – If it is a Day 5 Transfer
11/18 – Beta – Blood draw to see if I am pregnant

This is what this look like today pending any changes. There are many things that could happen to delay us, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it. One day at a time.