Follicle Growth

The good news continued on Thursday when we met with our Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE) again.  Ultrasound showed 11 follicles growing strong, and my estrogen level increased to 1920.  We were all smiles, and then we met with our RE again today.  Could we possible smile even more??  Yes!!  Today, ultrasound showed 12 follicles, and my estrogen level increased to 3813!  My RE expects to retrieve approximately nine eggs from those follicles (some smaller follicles might not have eggs).  My uterus lining is now at 11, which is incredible!  She claims that I am doing much better than expected!  We are so thrilled and are looking forward to the egg retrieval, which is scheduled for 9am on Monday 4/13.

In my last post, I shared a video of the Follicle Growth Dance that Andrew's sister and her friends created.  Since that video, at least three more have been made!  They are not on You Tube (rather, they are on Facebook), so I can't attach them to this blog.  But, I have to wonder if all of those dances have helped my follicle growth!  Thank you to everyone for so much support!

If you've never gone through IVF, you may not know exactly what goes into it.  We had no idea how much time, how many steps, and how much medication would be required.  We started this process in January, and we didn't start the stimulation phase until March 31st.  Once the stimulation phase started, we were hit with an incredible amount of information, steps, and medication.  Every day is not the same; the meds change and appointments are frequent.  For that reason, Andrew created an IVF Calendar that we keep with the mini pharmacy we built in the guest bathroom.  We update it every couple of days and it keeps us organized.  The colored items are the three stimulation injections.  The black items are all the other injections and medications that I have to take during this phase.  Today, we got to add the egg retrieval and potential embryo transfer to the calendar :)

Tonight was my last night of stimulation injections, which means that my belly is now free from being stabbed with needles!  Here is what my belly looked like after 10 days of injections (I took stimulation injections for a total of 12 days):

Swollen, round, puffy, bloated....and bruised.  I'm glad to finally give it a chance to rest.

I go back to my RE tomorrow, Sunday, for another blood draw.  (During IVF, my RE and her staff work every day, sometimes 28 days without a day off.)  As long as everything looks good, we will have the egg retrieval on Monday :)