Keep Your Day Job

My reproductive doctor told me I should be a uterus model yesterday. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Let's back up a bit....

Things are moving right along with the surrogacy. I just finished my "mock" cycle and everything looks great. The mock cycle, in short, is when they have me take all the medications and the docs monitor how my body is responding and if its doing what they want it to do. That way, they'll know if they need to tweak a med or make little changes for the real "transfer" cycle.

I had the joyful opportunity of giving myself estrogen injections in my hip. It took me about 15 minutes to muster up enough courage to do the first injection. I kept picking up the needle, looking at it, and then putting it back on the counter in fear. I don't actually have any kind of needle phobia. It's not a big deal for me to get shots or have my blood drawn. But, there's something very different about doing it to yourself. I finally picked it up and before I could think to much, poked it into my hip. I was a title surprised to find it didn't even hurt at all! Despite the needle being 1 1/2 inches long, I didn't feel it. After I got through the first one the rest were no big deal.

One major side effect of the synthetic estrogen is being moody or emotional. I didn't think I was having issues until I saw Athena at church and she asked me how I was. For no reason at all I started bawling! Poor Athena felt so bad and didn't know what to do. I had a few other moments like that, but overall, the side effects have been mild. That might change when I have to start some mo medications next month.

Yesterday I went to the doc to have an ultrasound of my uterus. They were measuring how think the lining got and making sure everything looks normal for when we do the actual embryo transfer. She kept saying, "Wow! Your uterus looks amazing! You should be a uterus model!" Ahh....what every woman wants to hear :-)

I am really happy that everything looks good. My estrogen levels were so good that I didn't have to take my last dose. All of this just increases our odds of an embryo sticking! Athena is getting ready for egg retrieval in about a week. She's a little bummed that she's only got 13 follicles growing, but I'm confident we'll get some great embryos.

 

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