Perfect Timing with an Added Bonus!

So as I published my last post, I went to check my email and boy oh boy was that perfect timing! I got my CYCLE CALENDAR!!!! This is the calendar that tells me what meds to take and for how long. It also shows the proposed dates of my transfer!!! As I was reading through this email I was then notified of a new email....can you guess who it was from? Yeppers, my IF's!!! What an awesome day!


As everything came together so quickly I find myself a little overwhelmed. It's in a good way but honestly, I was just absorbing the excitement and nervousness (good again) of signing our contract. The first thing I noticed in our cycle calendar was that I start my meds TOMORROW!!! Holy Cow!!! I am so excited to get pregnant and continue our amazing journey even though everything was put on fast forward, at least in comparison to how things had been moving.

The above pictures are my cycle calendar! I know they are hard to read but they are really just for show, not for actually reading them and understanding them.


I can't believe that I start my Lupron tomorrow :) I listed below what Lupron is:

Lupron acts by suppressing the pituitary gland (the gland which is normally responsible for triggering ovulation). However, before suppression occurs, Lupron will briefly stimulate the pituitary causing an increase in the pituitary hormones LH (luteinizing hormone) and FSH (follicle stimulating hormone). This is called the agonist or flare phase.. If the Lupron is continued, it will eventually stop the pituitary from producing LH and FSH. This is known as the suppression phase.

Since it requires an extended period time to reach the suppression phase, Lupron is usually started a few weeks before starting the other medications needed for a particular treatment. This allows the patient to “get past” the stimulation phase and into the suppression or desensitization phase.

During the suppression phase, spontaneous ovulation will not occur. You may hear the staff refer to the patient during this phase as being “down-regulated” or "suppressed". This suppression effect will even persist for a few weeks after the Lupron is stopped.

Today, Lupron suppression is used primarily for frozen embryo transfer cycles and egg donation cycles. Some programs may still use Lupron for fresh IVF cycles.

As of now our potential transfer dates are July 17th, 18th or 19th! We will doing a fresh embryo transfer. The egg donor will go in for the egg retrieval 5 days before I go in for our transfer. Once the eggs are retrieved from her, Dr. Boostanfar will take one of our IF's sperm to fertilize one of the eggs to make our embryo. Some people transfer more then one embryo to increase the chances of a positive transfer but we have decided to only transfer one because we would prefer to only end up with one baby. The chance of a single embryo transfer splitting into identical twins is 2% and I hope we don't fall into the percentile!


Our next step is receiving my meds and starting them tomorrow evening :) I will post our video and give you an update when we are done with the first injection!
  
 ~Rachelle