When we decided to proceed with the IVF process we were given a checklist of things that needed to happen before we could go on. One of those things was to have more blood drawn. We both had to have tests for infectious diseases. Those included HIV, Syphilis, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C. I also had to have blood drawn to check for Rubella immunity. All of these things can cause problems with pregnancy and affect the baby as well. Since we haven't been told that anything is wrong with these tests, we think we are in the clear.
Another thing we had to have done was a sonohysterogram and trial transfer. Part of the process of IVF is to transfer the embryos back into the uterus after they are fertilized. Doing the trial transfer ensures that they can transfer the embryos in the right place. This is critical to the success of IVF. When they do the transfer they simulate the process with saline. They insert a catheter through the cervix and then insert an ultrasound probe. While they transfer the saline they do a 3D ultrasound to see where the saline lands. The transfer of the saline hurts like a (B****) the worst cramps I've ever felt. It's a good thing Nick was standing right next to me so I could squeeze the shit out of his hand. I'm pretty sure his hand was cramping after the procedure. Did I mention that I thought I was going to have to pee in a cup when we got to the office so I drank a ton of tea to make sure that I had a full bladder? Oh yeah and then I didn't have to pee in the cup so I felt like I was going to float away. It's a good thing that they let me pee before the transfer or I would have made a very big mess :) Everything went well with the transfer and we got moved on to the next thing on the list.
As soon as we walked out of the room from the transfer, we were whisked into another office to talk about medications. As opposed to the IUI cycles, there are a lot of medications for IVF. For the rounds of IUI I was only on one medication, Follistim. There's a lot more to this one. I'll go into detail with those later. The medications for IUI cost us around $900 a cycle. This time we were getting a ton more medication. One would think that it was going to cost us more money than the IUI. We got lucky. My job comes with a perk; insurance with infertility coverage including medications! All of our medications for this round of IVF were only $320. All of the medications had to be preapproved and then shipped to the house. This process took about a week. In the meantime, in order for me not to ovulate and have a period I was put on birth control. This also bought us time until the medications could be delivered. We had to have the medications in hand before we could sign the consents for IVF.
The last thing to check off the list was another semen analysis for Nick since he hadn't had one done at the new office. He'd been off the clomid since we moved and got put back on about two months ago. We wanted to see if it's been working. We were impressed! The sperm count was higher and the morphology was better. We still need to do ICSI (intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection) which means that they will manually insert the sperm into the egg. Since the little dudes aren't shaped right they can't penetrate the egg like they are supposed to. Doing the ICSI gives us a better chance of having an egg fertilized. Signing consents was a story in itself which I'll talk about in another post. For now it's time to go to bed and get up in the morning for more prodding...
No comments:
Post a Comment