bump #62: hit me with your best shot

And so it begins...

Am I the only one who finds it odd that our pharmacy doubles as a liquor store? Maybe the alcohol makes it easier, you know a round of shots before your actual round of shots :)

Here's the obligatory shot of "the goods." No pun intended. Andrew and I pick a different "shots" themed song to hum while he does the injections each evening.

Bon Jovi: "Shot to the heart and you're to blame, darlin' you give love a bad name."

Pat Benatar: "Hit me with your best shot."

LMFAO: "Shots, shots, shots."

Bob Marley: "I shot the sheriff."

I gotta say, so far these shots are nothing. The Menopur one stings a bit, but I've been working hard on my muffin top for a few years now and that extra layer of padding has come in handy. I hardly feel a thing! Thanks ice cream and candy bars!

bump #38: needles

So part of the protocol for this month's iui is injectables (75 units of follistim per shot) for 3 days. Today was day 2 and the shots haven't been too bad {a little worse than the ovidrel shot, but still not too painful}.   I finished 5 days of clomid and had no side effects, which worries me because that makes me think it's not working. The only thing I've noticed with the follistim is that it makes me sleepy, but I do the shot at night so it could just be correlation not causation. Yawn. 

I have an ultrasound on Friday morning to check on the size of the follicles so until then, who knows if any of this is working?!

In other news, my mom is coming to visit this weekend! {So Super Excited!!!} We will have to do our insemination while she's here, which is totally fine, but perhaps a little awkward for her.

Ok, so when I told her about it, her response was "I am so sorry, I am coming at the worst possible time... you need your "quality time", don't worry though, I'll just turn the tv up really loud."

So funny!

Hopefully I reassured her that she doesn't have to worry about interrupting anything. We're doing iui because "quality time" {normal baby making way} doesn't work for us. But I thought what she said was hilarious, so I had to share it :)

bump #37: stepping up our game

On Friday we met with our RE (reproductive endocrinologist) and OBGYN to conduct an ultrasound, collect bloodwork, and ask a lot of questions about what our next steps should be after 2 failed iui's. The doctors were super helpful and informative, but I learned that in dealing with infertility issues you really have to be your own advocate and do a lot of research on your own. So I did. You would have been so proud of me using big grown up words like luteal phase, uterine lining, and laparoscopy (except I kept saying it like lap-row-scopey and it's lap-uh-ross-cuppy). Ugh. I guess that's the difference between me and med school. The only difference I'm sure.



I will NEVER get used to "scooching" down on that stupid table!
Shouldn't they buy me a steak dinner first? Come on guys, I have standards!

The plan was always to do 3 iui's before moving on to more effective (read: expensive and invasive) procedures. I just didn't anticipate even needing 3 iui's because, duh, the first or second one will totally work. Right. So here we are again.

IUI #3: clomid and injectables

Is it just me or does that sound like the title of a horror flick?

In the past I've only taken a low dose of femara to boost my follicles and an ovidrel shot to induce ovulation with insemination on cycle day 14.  Easy peasy. As far as I know the medications did what they were supposed to, and increased our likelihood of conception, but not enough to make a difference. So for this third and {probably} final iui, we are stepping up our game and I am taking 100 mg of clomid everyday for 5 days and then 3 days of follistim (follicle stimulating hormone) injections. Initially we chose femara over clomid because clomid has a greater risk of multiples which could be complicating for my midget frame. But to that extra chance of twinsies, we say BRING IT ON! We decided to add injectables along with the clomid because they dramatically icrease the chances of success. There was also a voucher reducing their cost, and I'm a stickler for a bargain.  Even with that voucher the cost of this iui is significantly more {like $700 more} than our other iui's, which is why we will probably only do this once and then start selling our vital organs on the black market work on saving funds for ivf in the next couple years. 

There was talk of in vitro, or the "ferrari of fertility treatments" as Dr. Martin referred to it. Which leads me to believe that our past iui's would fall into the not-so-fancy el camino category.

Hopefully this new iui is closer to the luxury category like a Lexus or something.

But an SUV one just in case the clomid works overtime :)