It's Beginning!!

Today was a good day. I was looking forward to this day ever since they called and made the appointment. Nothing really happened, but to me is signified the official start of the IVF process!
My appointment today was with Sara (a wonderful RN at Dr. Carnovale's office) where she gave me a packet...

In this packet was everything I needed to know about the upcoming "procedure." First there was my calendar, which has all the drugs I will be taking throughout the whole process.

•  I will start with the Lupron, which is a shot in my belly. This drug basically shuts down my ovaries to prevent them from helping us out!  That way Dr. Carnovale can control what my body does. I take that until the actual egg retrieval. 
• After a few days of that I start Follistim and Menopure which are both ovarian stimulating medications. These are also shots in my belly. I will also take both of these until the egg retrieval. 
• During this process I will also take aspirin and an antibiotic.
• After the retrieval I start taking Progesterone (a very important hormone in pregnancy). This shot is the one I am least looking forward to. It is an intramuscular injection and it goes in my butt. I have heard it hurts.....

Also in my packet are info sheets on some of the medications, instruction sheets on how to give injections (I have that one down!), and a 30 or so page consent that Matt and I both have to sign and have notarized! 

Sara told me how the retrieval would go, that I would be under conscious sedation (basically asleep) and then for the transfer I will take a Valium. I have never taken that before, so it should be interesting. 

After meeting with Sara, we were sent over to Dr. Boldt's office. He is the man that will put our "specimens" (my egg and Matt's sperm) together and watch to make sure they do what we need them to. This was very informative. He went through every part of his process and explained what he wanted to see and what he didn't want to see. He also mentioned several times how he thought we had a very good shot at getting pregnant. I needed to hear that because lately I have been wavering on that. There are some days where I think we will come out of this with a baby and then there are others where I don't. 

I got home and called a pharmacy that Sara had set up for my medications. They are like a mail order pharmacy that deals with specialty medications such as fertility, chemo/caner, etc. With this phone call, we made our first major purchase for the IVF......WOW. I am not ashamed to say how much this is costing us so I will clue you in on the cost of just the medications....$1769.31. That isn't including the aspirin or the birth control pills I have been on for a couple of months. This amount is less than what we budgeted for, which is a plus, but it is still a major cost!

Well, now that I have written a book on here I will go. My hysteroscopy is next Friday, the 13th. I will update after that :)