HCG shot tonight - egg retrieval Monday morning!

Had a bunch of follicles ready tonight and many more that should grow a bit more so they're good to go come Monday morning. All in all I should have a total of about 30 ready to be injected w/Dan's genetic material via ICSI - a harsh introduction, but they'll finally get to meet each other after all!

So, done w/ Lupron - took last shot this morning.

Done w/ Gonal-F - took last shot last night.

Taking HCG trigger shot tonight at 10:00.


(Can you believe the size of this gut? This is one of my 3 bad bruises after several days passed. Was v. proud of myself for only having 3 during the span of all the injectibles. I gave myself mostly all of my own shots s-l-o-w-l-y, but on this one freaked b/c the needle became dull w/ the mixing, etc. so Dan did the honors - symbollic, being the "trigger" shot and all.)

Then tomorrow I get a day of reprieve from the shots - only need to remember to take the PNV + baby aspirin - just need to lay around like a poor beached mammal.

Gotta stop eating or drinking by 12:00 a.m. to prep for the anesthesia. I think my biggest paranoia here is that this OHSS makes me super thirsty and I tend to need water after one of my crazy bronchial coughing fits (which have escalated to ceaseless at this point - stomach muscles have literally become sore), so abstaining from drinking will be a huge challenge.

So aside from the fear of being utterly parched, I'm actually ready and excited for Monday's procedure. Excited despite having accepted the probability of the transfer/cycle being canceled due to these excitable and hard-working swollen ovaries of mine.

Speaking of the hyper gals, yesterday's ultrasound showed my ovaries "kissing." This evening's ultrasound showed them hot and heavy. Listen ovaries, you two should be NO WHERE NEAR EACH OTHER. YOU'RE NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO KNOW THE OTHER ONE EXISTS. No exaggeration, when he got them both within the same frame, they looked like a fucked up rendition of how it feels my lungs are looking right about now. Yeah, seriously - they formed that kind of butterfly shape, but with all the vacant pockets where the follicles have formed... where the eggs inside will start to hop to after I inject this HCG.

Under different circumstances I'd be wise to be scared by what I saw tonight, but I can't go there. I know this is a common side effect and I'll get through it. But I think it's safe to say the next week or so is pretty much going to be lost to all but me going through the surgery and recuperating from the escalated OSHH. Apparently, what I've experienced thus far is nothing compared to how bad it's going to get; should the various symptoms present themselves, we have been instructed we'll need to go to the hospital no matter the time. These are the moments during IVFing where we keep the end result in mind - you know, changing explosive diapers and having a child who grows up to despise you in their adolescence. No wait, the nurturing, cuddly, helping raise a good person part; hopefully someone who adds something to society. Yeah, that.

So in my mind, I will have gone through the hardest part of IVF - the stimming and retrieval.

We're prepared to do the FET for the next cycle and feel optimistic that doing FET could work fine. We've reset our thinking to: if we CAN do the transfer on the 27th, it'll just icing at this point.