Chuggin' Along

Well, I guess I should start off by saying that I survived the first round of shots... and the second, and the third, and now the fourth. I know; I wasn't sure I was going to make it either. We've decided that applying ice beforehand helps. Other than that, I'm at the mercy of my injector, but thus far it's been fairly smooth. I did have one small snafu on Saturday night in which I didn't properly screw the small gauge needle on, so during the injection, the Menopur came out of the joint between the syringe and the needle rather than going into me. That was a rough night... lots of cursing as I had to be injected an additional time. Otherwise, we've been doing okay.

This morning I had my first monitoring appointment with Dr. Duffy. As I've never been monitored on CD 4 before, I had no idea what to expect. I didn't have my phone handy to write down all the numbers, but I'm guessing he called out 12-15 follicles between left and right... largest measured 8mm and smallest measured 4mm. I figured he was going to keep me at the same dose or even bump me down... 8mm seems larger for three doses of meds. He seemed to disagree. He's bumped the meds up to 225iu of Gonal-F and 150iu of Menopur, which means I definitely have to order more Menopur and most likely Gonal-F as well. Boo. I'm trying not to be too suspicious of this increase... I could second guess every decision along the way. I'm of course a little concerned Mr. 8mm is going to surge ahead and leave everyone else behind. I'm also concerned that I'll ovulate before I go back in, but he's got me starting Cetrotide Thursday morning, so hopefully that will be soon enough to waive off any ovulation signals my body may start sending.

As if venipuunctures and shots weren't enough, I also decided to do acupuncture during IVF. Obviously, as I haven't tried acupuncture until now, I'm sort of suspicious of it. Essentially, anything that claims to be able to fix EVERYTHING with the same procedure/protocol/pill, well, I'm a little suspicious of that. And thus far, I feel like my preconceived notions of it were fairly accurate. They all seem 150% confident that acupuncture will help A-get me pregnant, B-heal my body, C-keep me pregnant, and D-remove all the stress in my life. All right then, let me see it! Today was session one. Unfortunately the practitioner that I chose was unavailable this week, so she sent me to another lady so I wouldn't have to miss any appointments during my stim cycle. She was okay... she seemed to hint regularly that "western medicine" may call me unexplained, but she has already found many things that are wrong and she's confident that acupuncture can help/fix them all. The session was okay... not really what I'd call relaxing. I was freezing cold and obviously, couldn't cover up as I had a bunch of needles sticking out of me. Essentially, it was just odd. And I had a pretty fierce headache after that lasted about half an hour. However, this trip is all about no regrets. I figure acupuncture can't hurt, so I'll see it through till the end.

In other less tedious news, I got new makeup! Eekkk! As a high schooler I was all about Mary Kay makeup... as a newlywed I discovered that I couldn't rationalize twenty dollar foundation and ten dollar eye shadow. I've been using the same makeup for years (and years). The essential things that I run out of like foundation have been replaced with cheap drug store products like ELF. Well today was the day! Sam got me a gift card to Ulta for Christmas and my mom graciously filled in the gap. I am the proud new owner of some lovely Bare Minerals products! Soooo fun! I might actually enjoy wearing makeup again. Here's a pic to show off the new look:

Let's agree to pretend that I did my hair today and that
I'm not in pajamas at 5:30 when this was taken, okay?

So that's about it. Overall, I'd say I'm doing pretty well. I lost a few tears the night of the Menopur incident and a few more the morning Sam left, but otherwise, the emotions seem to be fairly stable. We will see how long I can hold it together on the larger dose. Next monitoring appointment isn't until Friday!