IVF Stims

I felt so horrible the whole time I was on stims that I could barely make it through a work day and spent all my time in bed or on the couch.

After my first 5 days of stims I went in for an ultrasound and blood work to see how my ovaries were responding. The RE found 2-3 follicles on my left ovary and 4-5 on my right ovary. Based on my AMH it was expected that I would produce 4-8 follicles so I was right on target for that. My uterine lining looked good and my estrogen was still low, so I picked up another 2 days of meds and came back 2 days later. During this ultrasound there was still 2-3 follicles on my left ovary and 4-5 on my right. The lead follicle was getting pretty big so I started a new medication, Cetrotide, to prevent ovulation, which means I had to do 2 injections each night. The Cetrotide burns going in, and the injection site was sore over a day later. I did Cetrotide with my stims for 2 days before my next appointment. At this ultrasound they finally confirmed my follicle number as 3 on my left ovary and 5 on my right ovary. My lead follicle was big enough to stop stims and take my trigger shot that night at 9PM. My blood work showed that everything was good to do a fresh embryo transfer. The trigger shot was HCG, the same hormone that is produced during pregnancy, and it helps the eggs finish maturing before retrieval. The morning after taking the trigger shot I really wanted to pee on a pregnancy test so I could finally see a positive, but I had no cheap tests left and didn’t feel like going to Dollarama to pick one up.

The great thing about making it to the trigger shot means that there was a day off from medication between trigger and egg retrieval. I started to feel really crampy, like I was going to ovulate, the day after my trigger shot. I was really worried about ovulating before egg retrieval, despite logical things like obviously the doctor know what they are doing and doesn’t want me to ovulate early, and that several clinics online do the same 36 hours between trigger and retrieval. My egg retrieval was scheduled for 8am on the Sunday of a long weekend, which actually worked out great because I already had the day of and day after retrieval off work to recover.