Yesterday, at my LAST monitoring appt, the Dr. gave us the go ahead to trigger tonight.
Triggering is a shot of either Lupron or HCG that signals the ovaries to release the eggs from the walls of the follicles so that they can be aspirated via needle and then (hopefully) taken to be fertilized.
In order to use HCG (the trigger that results in most successful fresh embryo tranferes) is tricky business. It's like fuel to the fire of Ovarian Hyper-Stimulation Syndrome, where your over-stimulated and englarged ovaries can't quite slow down and just start dumping fluid into your stomach and chest cavity. Read: Extremely painful, very dangerous, and sometimes requires multiple surgeries to drain your body of the fluid.
Obviously, the goal is to avoid that at all costs, so they only do the HCG trigger if your E2 levels are low enough to add the HCG safely.
Long story short, my levels were low enough that we could use the HCG trigger. This is administered through either an intramuscular or subcutaneous injection - our RE prefers subcutaneous, so we mixed up the prescribed dosage and injected at the EXACT time.
The timing on the trigger must be exact - if you go too early, when they go in for retrieval they may have missed the window and you may have already ovulated. If you do it too late, the eggs may still be stuck to the wall of the follicles. The magic window is 35 hours from trigger. Since we're retrieving at 9:30 AM tomorrow, the time for trigger was 10:30 last night. You'd better believe I pulled the needle out at 10:30 on the dot.
FUN FACT: In order to make sure that the trigger was successful, you must take a home pregnancy test and get a positive result. As a long-time pregnancy test taker (I have wasted hundreds of dollars on pregnancy tests) I knew exactly which kind to take to make sure that even if the HCG levels were minimal, it would still pick up.
Lo and behold, at 8:30 this morning I had a pregnancy test as positive as they come. I took a picture and sent it to Jeff so he could see. And then a few hours later I took another just to make sure the HCG was still there.
We're golden,
Tomorrow is egg retrieval, which consists of two of my worst nightmares: anesthesia and giant needles up where the sun don't shine. Good news, these guys are pros and have done it hundreds of times before.
If all goes WELL, we will get several mature eggs, several of those eggs will be fertilized, and then we will get to 5 day blastocyst phase and be able to transfer 1-2 perfect little embryos.
Up to this point, I have to say, we have been extremely blessed. This treatment cycle could not have gone smoother, the appointments were easy, quick, and painless, scheduling has been a non-issue, and I haven't felt truly crazy once. This has been emotional cake compared to previous treatment months on lesser doses of medication and I know that Heavenly Father's been looking out for and helping me through this.
I will probably not be updating tomorrow since I plan on sleeping the day away in a pain pill induced haze. Any prayers would be appreciated - I can't believe we are six days away from finishing this IVF cycle.... if all goes WELL.
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