IVF – After the Embryo Transfer

August 11th, 2009

Tomorrow will mark a week since our embryo transfer. I know I’ve been mum on that event, and promise to divulge more soon. We just wanted to let some of this be ours for a little while and will resume our regularly scheduled too-much-information broadcasting very soon! (Read: Embryo Transfer Story: Part I) I did want to catch you up a bit on what we’ve been up to the past week and how I’ve been feeling.

I mentioned that following our egg retrieval I felt miserable. It lasted the Sunday of retrieval through the Wednesday of transfer. By Wednesday I was doing better, but still not 100 percent. I just wanted to curl up in a dark closet and stay there until this all went away. My abdomen was sore and achy, due to the three-times larger ovaries and two recent vaginal/pelvic procedures. I spent a few days dizzy and nauseated, even getting sick once. Dr. T blamed this on the recent surgery and possibly even the Doxycline, an antibiotic I’d started taking at retrieval. So I stopped taking that and it seemed to help. And no matter how much sleep I got, I was physically and mentally exhausted. Walking hurt. Sitting hurt. Laying hurt. Nothing was comfortable and everything was uncomfortable. Toward the latter part of the week I started getting around more and feeling a little more like myself.

We’ve been doing the progesterone shots since the day after transfer. I hate these. HATE!! I’d even go so far as to say they are worse than all the other IVF shots. For starters, the first two shots Shelton administered nearly center in each butt cheek. So to all the misery listed above, add to that that I couldn’t walk. I was literally taking baby steps, had trouble lifting myself into our tall bed, and avoided stairs at all costs. Then, the fabulous nurses at our clinic suggested this wasn’t right, that it should not be hurting like that. So they drew a big circle with a sharpie on each cheek, more toward my hips, and Shelton now just hits the target. This was brilliant – and I encourage your nurses to do the same for you! Now, the shots still suck, and hurt a bit, but I’m walking.

This weekend, the shot went bad again. Not entirely sure what happened. I was standing whereas usually I lay across the bed. Regardless, the next day I felt like my hip was shattered. The pain was excruciating. I was limping and no matter how I moved I couldn’t seem to shift the weight off of it. Fortunately, by today that pain seems to have dissipated. Only now it’s just the constant deep soreness in the muscles from the injections. And that’s livable.

Other than that, we’re just remaining hopeful and trying not to think about it too much. Although, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the main thing we think about. Or talk about. Are we? Aren’t we? It’s like this cloud hanging over us and we can’t get away from it. And frankly, we don’t want to get away from it. Soon enough, we’ll get to take that blood test and I think in a way, no matter what the answer is, we’ll feel a sense of relief like we’ve never before experienced.