Christmas - IVF style

Well, it has been two weeks since I have blogged. It has been a time of great excitement, frustration, and also stagnation all swirled into one. Of course, we were thrilled to know that they got nice looking sperm i.e. swimmers from my husband. That was a HUGE relief. I started my birth control pills that same day. I was happy to feel like I was "doing" something finally with regard to the IVF cycle.

The excitement wore off as we just waited - waited for the end of the 10 days of birth control pills and the next four until our appointment to actual start. During that time period, I received my IVF Christmas package. Like so many of the packages I had received earlier that week from online stores, this one came in a big brown box. In the large box was several smaller packages - a cooler for drugs that need to be stored in the refrigerator, bags AND BAGS of needles, more drugs that did not need refrigeration, alcohol wipes, and my sharp's container. Opening it up was both exciting (this was really happening) and scary (OMG - the number AND SIZE of some of those needles)!

I was also kept extremely busy planning part of our Christmas Eve program at our church. I wrote a short drama that had my husband, two stepdaughters, and two other kids from our church and another adult in illustrating the true meaning of Christmas. It was stressful, but in the end great. It seems that people were touched by the service and that is all I ever wanted. Christmas was nice but very hectic. My beloved's ex stays with us on Christmas Eve when we have the kids, we (the three of us) put out the last few presents, stayed up and talked about what we (beloved and myself were doing - IVF), and watched the Pope's Mass. It was nice. Christmas morning went fine as well - opened presents and had a great breakfast that DH (dearest husband) fixed with our next door neighbor. The true chaos started when the 14 guests that DH invited at the last minute for dinner began arriving and dinner was two hours late. It was fun but stressful trying to get all the food prepared and entertain. I think my oldest put it perfectly when she said, "It was fun having all our friends over for Christmas dinner, but I like it better when it is just us." I could not agree more. Next year, maybe we stick to all getting together for dessert instead of the whole dinner.

The day after Christmas is when it really hit me - the culmination of all the stress (stress from the Christmas Eve service, stress from Christmas, and stress from IVF).
I had just gotten off the phone with the hospital that will be doing part of my monitoring (my clinic is 2 hours away and so we made arrangements to have some of the monitoring done closer to home - it has to be done every other day towards the end of the cycle). The hospital still had no record of me (after a week of trying to take care of this) and so I could not make an appointment for my ultrasound. At that point, I could not handle it any more. I began to cry and did not stop for at least an hour. It is a small thing (not being able to make an appointment) but when you are stuggling with IF and feel like you have no control over anything, even the small things that you think you should be able to control and still can't, can really set you (me) off. I just cried about everything - fear of what my body was going to go through, fear of the shots, fear that it may not work, guilt over what my husband had already gone through...it went on and on about everything.

Thank God, my beloved was there because he got me settled down. Told me to not even try and take care of the appointment business that we would do it the next day (Thursday) at our appointment at the clinic and that they would teach us how to do the shots the same day. I finally got myself together and made it through the rest of the day - although I was not my usual perky self. I prayed Wednesday night for God to help me through this.

Thursday - the BIG DAY - went great. God answered all my prayers with a resounding "Yes, I will see you through this." Bloodwork and Ultrasounds came back normal so I was free to start my meds. The nurse took care of all the monitoring issues. I had my appointments set and at very convenient times. She taught me and my beloved how to give the shots. We each got a turn to practice with saline on me the human pin cushion. And weirdly, it was fun - I think because it relieved such huge amounts of stress from me. My husband was excellent at it.

Last night, I started with the REAL deal. I gave myself two shots. Only 30-40 more to go.

Right now, I am feeling pretty good. I am nervous about the effects of the drugs (the ovaries the size of grapefruits sounds awfully unpleasant) and egg retrieval. I hope I am one of those women that have fairly easy recovery.

But most of all, I hope all of this is not for nothing.