IVF#2 Stimming Day 7 – Lightning Bolts

As expected, each day I feel worse and worse. And I am so happy about that!!! Truly I am! Because that means these eggs are growing and becoming more mature every day! Does it suck? Absolutely! But my eye is on the prize!

The Menopur is not joke. It means business. Within 12 hours after my first dose, I became so bloated and could feel my ovaries more than I ever have before. I has now become more difficult to walk. Just the movement of walking through space causes discomfort and sometimes pain. Speaking of pain…lightening bolts in the ovaries is a thing. I had to use the restroom and as I was peeing I got this really sharp electrical pain in my right ovary that made me yelp out loud and jump up a bit…which of course caused me to pee on myself. Infertility is so glamorous! That was yesterday morning and since then I have had those lightning bolt pains on either side on and off. I did freak out a bit and texted Praying to Be Mommy, who assured me that, unfortunately, this lightning bolt pain was indeed a thing. Thanks, Menopur!

Honestly, it almost feels like it did the day of egg retrieval last time and we still have a week to go! That gives me so much hope that they will get a lot of good quality eggs! But it also makes me fearful of just how difficult this next week will be. I don’t doubt that I will be able to do it and I will do my best to get through with a smile on my face. So far I haven’t had too many emotional breakdowns. I have cried a few times over ridiculous things and almost caused a scene in Panera, but I have kept it together better this time around.

TMI Alert!!! In addition to the lightening ovarian pain, I still have a whole bunch of symptoms going on: nausea, fatigue, malaise, flu-like aches, diarrhea, vaginal itching, bloating, mild headache, difficulty walking. The vaginal itching has gotten so bad I had to end up calling the nurse. It took her 6 hours to get back to me because my doctor was in surgery. I am not to use any kind of cream or anything down there. I was called in a prescription for Diflucan and I took the pill last night. The packaging says I should feel relief within 24 hours and I cannot wait until it starts becoming effective! Until then, I have been keeping a heating pad on my stomach for the ovarian pain and an ice pack on my hooha to stop the itching. Did I mention how glamorous this process is?

Yesterday was also our 4 year wedding anniversary!! We didn’t plan on doing anything because we anticipated I wouldn’t feel up to it. We will go out on a date night to celebrate when the retrieval is done. I asked Chris to pick me up some gatorade and peppermint tea on the way home. When he arrived, he had bought me a huge beautiful orchid! I was so surprised I started crying. Then he pulled out Minion cookies and I lost it! I’m sure the estrogen had something to do with my reaction, but it was really sweet and unexpected. To top the night off we also got take out from our favorite hibachi restaurant.

Shot time came and it wasn’t as bad as the night before. I decided that Needle Roulette was the way to go so I didn’t know which one was coming and when. We did 225iu of Gonal F, 75iu of Menopur and 1 kit of Cetrotide. This time I showed Chris which syringe was what so at least he knew. We also agreed that he was going to try and inject the Menopur slowly to hopefully ease some of the burning, however if it burned just as much and I wanted it done with I was going to say “Muffin” and that was his cue to just inject it all and get it over with. I did NOT use the safe word. It was a LOT better being injected slowly. Instead of feeling as if I was being stabbed with a knife, it only felt like the knife was being drawn across my skin. Great analogy, I know, right? But it’s true. I’m not going to sugar coat it. Menopur still sucks!

Tomorrow is our second monitoring appointment! Fingers crossed for more growth!