3 eggs, 2 Weeks & 1 Blog

As I said in my very first blog entry, I was always told that if you let a penis touch your leg, you’d get pregnant. This is the impression most 5th grade health teachers leave you with. If you were in a two-mile radius of sperm, you’d get knocked up, have no money and the baby daddy would end up working at a gas station. That was the deal.

After a little over a year of more unprotected sex than Ron Jeremy, three failed inseminations (including one involving a Starbucks bathroom), ovulation prediction kits, sperm friendly lubricants, Clomid, primrose oil, prayer, and desperation, I was still not pregnant and had thoughts of calling my 5th grade health teacher to tell her that she was full of crap. Fortunately for both of us, she died years ago.

Sam & I decided to try IVF. IVF officially stands for In Vitro Fertilization but in my mind, it stands for I’m Very Fertile. Go with me on this… you’re dealing with a hormonal woman and I don’t want to have to hurt you.

After thirteen days of seriously irritating hormone injections in my stomach (a.k.a. “the bagel”) so I could produce more eggs and one fantastically large HCG shot in my ass to help remove the eggs, it was time for the retrieval this past Thursday. For those of you who don’t know, they retrieve the eggs by putting a needle in your vagina and extracting the eggs from the follicles formed on your ovaries. When my doctor initially explained this to me, the only thing I could think was that the words “needle” and “vagina” should NEVER be in the same sentence. NEVER.

The retrieval went well. We had five viable eggs and I felt quite like the belated Easter Bunny. Well, an Easter Bunny with a pedicure and a bikini wax. I may have been unconscious for the retrieval but that’s no reason to not look my best for the four doctors’ in the room.

To prepare for the return of my eggs (sounds like a horror movie, doesn’t it? THE RETURN OF THE FERTILIZED EGGS!), I was given FOUR different medications. I’m taking an antibiotic and a steroid twice daily, plus I’m wearing an additional source of a steroid in the form of a patch that needs to be changed every three days. The bad news is this means that I can never compete in the Olympics, but on a positive note, my batting average is going to sky rocket.

I am also taking progesterone, a hormone that helps with implantation, three times a day, both orally and vaginally. This, I should mention, will be the only thing going in my vagina for the next two weeks. It’s doctor’s orders. Hormonal, bed ridden and frustrated does not look good at me but neither does horizontal stripes and I wear them anyway.

The antibiotic has to be taken on a full stomach and the progesterone has to be taken on an empty stomach. I’ve spent the last few days carefully timing my meals, determining how full my stomach was, laying around and taking a heck of a lot of pills. I feel like Judy Garland… the dying years.

Then, yesterday, we found out that three of the fertilized eggs were developing nicely so we would be transferring them back in Sunday, this morning, at 10am. Right before the transfer, the doctor handed us a photo of two of the eggs (the third egg was apparently camera shy). There they were, side by side, in black and white. I made a promise to myself that if this IVF were successful, I would put this in the photo album as our babies’ very first picture. I’ll even draw an arrow and put their names next to each egg. And before anyone asks, they look like me: Round and curvy.

As for the next week and a half, it’s bed rest, this blog, you and me. Tomorrow will be the beginning of the infamous “Two Week Wait” and I plan to not only write about it every day, but to make fun of it as much as possible. Please wish me luck, keep reading and please, most importantly, laugh with me. Laughter is way better medicine than the 40 million pills I’m currently taking.

Sending you my best… from the the Valley of the Dolls.