100 Times to Heaven and Back

To go along with the fertility treatment procedures, the daily hormones and medications are a huge part of the process. I wanted to give you a basic idea of the medicines that are involved. This is an aspect of fertility treatments that can be very different for each person, and I can't begin to try to cover all the bases, so I'll just give you an idea of what it's been like for me. Birth Control Medication: Surprisingly, each of my frozen cycles have started with 3-4 weeks of birth control pills in order to regulate or kind of "reset" my hormones. They do the hysteroscopy/HSG during this time and then begin shots that will be described below. You do not take birth control pills at the same time as the hormones, this is just beforehand. FSH/LH: For a fresh cycle, you might be given daily FSH/LH hormone shots for the first part of the cycle in order to regulate the growth of either just a few (for IUI) or many (for IVF) follicles. Ovulation: In a fresh cycle

There are several surgical and non-surgical procedures involved in IVF. Again, not everyone does all of them. You only do the procedures that are relevant to your particular medical situation. I'll just mention those that I've been through because that's all I know, but there are probably additional procedures that aren't listed here. Hysterosalpingography (HSG): This uses ultrasound and x-ray together to examine the uterus and fallopian tubes. It is used to diagnose/rule out certain problems like blocked tubes, tumors, polyps, etc. and was also used for a practice run for our upcoming transfer. This is done while the patient is awake, with no pain meds. They inject dye into the uterus, then x-ray to see what the dye does. It shows if there is a tube blockage, and if there isn't, the dye just leaks into your abdomen and is absorbed by your body. Probably considered non-surgical. Uncomfortable but not too painful. Here's an example of the HSG procedure (Ima

When I started this blog I had every intention to provide more information about IVF. But when I really began thinking about it, I told Cody "I'm pretty sure if I start writing about IVF it'll convince me not to do it again." So I had to back off and not write about it for a while. Well, here we are doing another round. The LAST round (for a very long time at least). So I figured I would take this opportunity to tell you about it as we go. Please remember this is only one example of IVF. There are so many versions of this process, with different varieties of medications, procedures, protocols, using donor eggs/sperm, surrogacy, etc. Since this is our 4th time around and we're all so dang sick of this, we're going ALL OUT with many of the "bells and whistles" you can add into an FET cycle. (Yay me.) Just so you know, I have no intention to convince anyone of anything, so I'm not going to cite articles or research, share statistics, or use much m