This is the diary from my third round of IVF. If you haven’t been following along, my fiancé and I have spent most of this year trying to bank embryos to use after our April wedding. While we thought we were being proactive, we quickly learned that our fertility story won’t be an easy one. Our first round of IVF failed miserably, resulting in just a few eggs and having to pull the plug on surgery. I chronicled it here. Our second round produced 7 eggs, but none of them passed testing, revealing to us that I have low-quality eggs. Below, please read my IVF diary from our third round of IVF where I took a few months off to try and improve my egg quality. (Spoiler alert — it worked: We’re Pregnant! Inside our Embryo Transfer)
Below we chronicle our third round of IVF and what it’s like to go through multiple rounds of IVF in our IVF diary.
Day Before shots:
Today I went in for my vitals to see if we can start IVF after a three-month wait. As you recall, we took three months off so that I could try to improve my egg quality. (You can read about the ways I have been trying to improve my egg quality here)
I go into the Doctor at 7am and bump into a friend also on her third round. I get my blood taken and sonogram which shows 16 follicles! This is an improvement from the last two rounds, so I am hopeful that the three months of DHEA I have been taking is helping. The more follicles you have, the more eggs you can potentially have. At this stage, every egg counts because IVF is a numbers game where your odds of viable embryos diminish very quickly.
We weren’t sure when we would start the shots, but doctor says we are good to go for tomorrow. We have a 5pm dinner with friends tonight that was made so early on my behalf because I thought I was starting my shots today. Luckily, we have very understanding friends.
Day 1: 8/18
AM: We set an alarm on our Alexa for 7:45 am and 7:45 pm daily. It goes off and we set about our first round of shots— two vials of Menopur. We quickly watch the video on how to mix and administer my dose, but if I’m honest, at this point we feel like pros. My fiance inject me and I feel the familiar sting of the Menopur going into my lower stomach.
Pm: Alarm goes off and we get the Gonal out of the fridge for our 300 dose. This is the easiest of our shots to administer, so we inject and head to a 9pm dinner with my cousin and his girlfriend. Our social schedule is pretty much full of really, really early dinners and really, really late dinners the next ten days so that we can take the shots at exactly 8pm each night. We are trying to make more plans this time around and be social so we don’t feel so isolated. So far, feeling good!
Day 2: 8/19
AM: We get up early on Sunday and mix some Menopur and inject it. We then get back into bed for tv and reading. I can’t workout, so we are trying to walk as much as possible to have some for of activity. During the day, we walk from our apartment to the NoMad and Flatiron areas of NYC and back, registering 10,000 steps before 2pm!
PM: My friend Alex asks us to meet him at Soho House for dinner. We explain the shot schedule and he plans a 5:30pm dinner for us, which we appreciate. We all catch up and have a great meal before leaving the restaurant at 7:45 pm to walk home (more steps!) for my dose of Gonal. I miss exercise, especially since I had been running around 5x a week prior to this round to get ready for our wedding, but I’m trying to follow the protocol to the T.
Day 3: 8/20
Am: We get up early to mix the Menopur between making breakfast and packing up our bags for the workday. Instead of taking the subway to work, I walk (3,567 steps!). My goal is to walk to and from work through the entirety of this round to keep my activity up. Towards the end of the cycle when my stomach bloats and walking is uncomfortable, I may have to reconsider this, but for now my stomach feels normal.
PM: Walk home from work for more steps. Cook dinner and we do the Gonal as per usual and do some work on the couch. Pretty uneventful. One bonus of IVF: I barely have to wash my hair. The inability to work out means my hair isn’t getting sweaty, so I can go three to four days on a blow out. During IVF, you seriously celebrate any good news, no matter how small it it.
Day 4: 8/21
AM: We get up early and while he prepares the Menopur, I make us breakfast and get ready for my Doctor’s appointment. As we chronicled earlier, once shots begin, you go to your doctor’s office around every other day for bloodwork and sonograms. We do both — Looking like 13 eggs, with a lot on my left ovary (8) this go round vs. 5 on the right ovary. Bloodwork comes back normal, which means that I can keep doing the same mixture of medicines for the next few days until I come back in for monitoring later in the week.
PM: Tonight one of my best friends came over for a low-key IVF dinner on my roof with myself and my fiance. I go home from work and prepare the foods. My fiance is at a job interview that ran long in a good way, so I start to worry he might not be home in time for my shot. I prep the needle just in case, but he gets home in time. He gives me my shot — in front of my friend, which is a first — and then we all head up to the roof to have dinner. So far, I am not emotional at all. My first round I was a bit of an emotional mess, but I think that either I am used to the hormones or have done a better job staying busy with this round.
Day 5: 8/22
AM: We get up early, and while I am on the phone with South Africa to schedule our honeymoon, the fiance prepares the Menopur shot. I am starting to bruise on my stomach from all of the pnin pricks, but other than that, there aren’t many changes. I’m hoping I start to bloat up soon like I did last time. Tomorrow is my next check up at the doctor, so will have a better understanding of what’s going on with my eggs at that point.
PM: I head to an event one of my best friends from out of town is throwing after work. I skip the champagne and hang for an hour before leaving to give myself plenty of time to get home. She also did three rounds of IVF, so is someone I can speak really candidly with. At home, we adninister Gonal and I have the worst tooth ache but can’t really do much to soothe it until after my surgery because I need to be off all meds and most pain relievers until the surgery is complete.
Day 6: 8/23
AM: get up early to curl my hair, make breakfast and take my Menopur shot before heading into my fertility doctor for the next check up. The check up didn’t go as well as I was hoping. The doctor detected one egg plumping up on the right ovary, with three “teeny tiny” ones near it. With IVF if it very important that all of them grow together around the same size. On the left side, she saw three eggs of good size.
It is still early days, but this news puts me behind my egg count for the last round, which is distressing. I put in a lot of effort between rounds to get more eggs and better quality eggs, so now I am super nervous none of it worked.
PM: I get through the rest of day at work in a daze, with my fears mounting that this will be a repeat of my first round where we called off surgery because I didn’t produce enough eggs. I hold it together until my fiance gets home from work, flowers in hand, and then I let myself cry.
Day 7: 8/24
AM: We get up early for the Menopur and I take the day off from work for some mental health purposes. Last few days have been a lot. I go to acupuncture at noon and when the doctor asks for an update my eyes start to well up. She tells me not to get too worried and that we are going for quality this round, not quantity.
PM: My paranoia continually sets in all day and night. I have this awful feeling that when we go in tomorrow for the Doctor she is going to tell me we dont have enough eggs to move forward, and will pull the plug on this round.
To make matters worse, we have a huge medicine scare today. Taking medicines at a certain time each day is very important for IVF success. Because of an unclear note from my nurse, we see that we were supposed to take a new shot— Ganirelix— before 9am this morning. We don’t see this until 4:45pm. I begin major panicking because Ganirelix stops you from ovulating. If I ovulate right now, this whole round is wasted. I frantically call the doctor but they are done for the day. I also email them and then take to Google where I see loads of other women have made the same mistake. In the message boards, they were encouraged to take the Ganirelix asap, so that’s what we did. Of course, less than five minutes after we take the shot, the nurse calls and says to wait until tomorrow morning as they made a mistake in my notes.
We go to dinner with the fiance’s friends but I am really distracted and worried.
Day 8: 8/25
AM: we wake up and I am super nervous to go to the doctor. I haven’t had any pain in my stomach and I’m barely bloated. My fiance goes with me to the doctor for moral support. After taking my blood, the doctor starts the sonogram and I brace myself for bad news. But shockingly, my doctor says she sees a “ton” of eggs on the right ovary. She counts 8-10 just on the left side alone. On the right, she spots another 7. I nearly cry with happiness. All of the eggs are looking really good, and she says surgery will be next week!
PM: We are super excited/shocked about the news of our eggs, so the rest of the day was a lot less stressful than the day before. We hang out on my roof before doing my Gonal shot and heading to a comedy show. I also come across a study saying that IVF success rates double in the summer months and I choose to believe that.
Day 9: 8/26
AM: alarm goes off and we administer both Menopur and Ganirelix. I had a bit of a breakthrough this morning and gave myself the Ganirelix shot to see if I could handle it. Up until now, the fiance has given me every single shot.
PM: This round I have been emotionally fine, but I swear I have IVF brain. When it comes time to administer the Gonal, I prepared the Menopur shot. We didn’t realize the mistake until it was already in the syringe. I email our nurse and scroll the IVF message boards (bad call) and get conflicting answers. Many say that Menopur has to be injected 30 minutes after mixing it or it loses its efficacy. Others say longner. We leave it on a shelf overnight and the next morning the nurse writes back that it is good up to 12 hours if we wanted to use it now. In the interest of now screwing up our cycle in its final days, we opt to instead throw it out and use a new one for peace of mind.
Day 10:8/27
AM: take our required shots and go to the doctor for monitoring. She sees 7 on the right ovary and 8 to 10 on the left ovary, all of different sizes. We are getting closer to retrieval!
PM: take our shots and bbq on the roof. Starting to have stomach pains when I walk, which happened last time too. Learned an IVF massage at acupuncture so I try that as we watch Sharp Objects.
Day 11: 8/28
AM: more morning monitoring. My doctor sees lots of eggs and is very optimistic. On the right side, she sees six eggs of good size. On the left, she sees eight. There are also smaller ones around each ovary that can grow in the interim. So, we are starting with at least for more eggs than we had last time at this stage and we all know that every egg counts. Doctor says to discontinue my Menopur, Clomid, Ganirelix and Gonal. Trigger shot is tonight!
PM: It’s trigger shot night, which always gives me anxiety. We set every alarm in the house again to make sure we take both trigger shots at exactly the right time. The first — HCG — is scheduled for 9:45pm. The second, Luprolide, is scheduled for 10:45pm. We watch both instructional videos on Freedom Medteach and set up all of the various needles we will need to execute on this and then wait until 15 minutes before each shot to get prepped. We killed the time by watching “Sharp Objects.” My fiance mixes the first one and gets it in the syringe without a problem. We do the next one an hour later — 80 units of Leuprolide — and frustratingly the needles don’t go up to 80 units, so we fill two to 40 units and do them back to back. We then go to bed knowing that there is only one more shot left tomorrow.
Day 12: 8/29
AM: I pack my remaining Luprolide with me for work. I kept it in the refrigerator overnight since we had opened it. The second dose of Luprolide has to be take exactly 12 hours after the first, so 10:45 am in our case. Because I have to go into the doctor for blood work this morning, anyway, the nurse says to bring my dose with me and she will do it for me rather than trekking all the way downtown to my fiance’s office.
Read More of Our IVF Coverage:
IVF Diary: My First, Unsuccessful Round of Egg Freezing
IVF Diary: My Second Round of Egg Freezing
IVF Diary: Egg Retrieval, Recovery & Embryo Results
IVF Diary: My Third Round of Egg Freezing
IVF Diary: Successful Results From Our Third Round of IVF
We’re Pregnant! Inside our Embryo Transfer
The Supplements I Take To Improve Egg Quality
Improving Egg Quality With “It Starts With The Egg”
Eliminating Toxins & Chemicals for IVF