As many of you may know, Burjis and I have a WONDERFUL almost 14 month old son. We conceived him via IVF, which was a rocky but ultimately fulfilling journey. Our son is the absolute light of my life and I can’t imagine it any other way. You can read more about that journey here.

We’ve recently started to think about planning for a sibling for Sebi. While I am by no means ready for another pregnancy and the thought of starting over seems daunting at this moment in time, we do know having a second child is our ultimate goal, and would like to get the first part of the process – egg retrieval – out of the way. We have no embryos left from the cycle that ended with success so here we are! In early May we went back to the RE and after running a few more tests, learned some new information about our infertility case and that an IVF cycle was definitely still the right course of action. We decided to both go on some additional supplements (ask me about which!) to help with egg and sperm quality and proceed with the egg retrieval starting in late June. I don’t know when we will be ready to even think about an embryo transfer, or even if we will be lucky enough to get to that stage again, so we are just taking things step by step. Day by day. Shot by shot. When you go through IVF, there are SO many failure points. So many different things that can go wrong or set you back on your journey. I am just so grateful we have even made it to today… Day 1 of “stims”. And this time around, I feel calm. I feel hopeful. But as corny as it sounds, I also feel blessed knowing that even if this doesn’t go as planned, things will be more than okay. This family unit we’ve built is so special already just us three (and the dog!).

Day 1 thoughts

Well… the day has finally come! Day 1 of stims is today, 6/24. Didn’t really document this the first time around, but I really wanted to capture all the feelings / thoughts / emotions through every part of the process. After all the big scary needles needed to support the first six weeks of pregnancy (muscular injections in glute), the subcutaneous injections (in abs) to stimulate follicle growth were easy peasy today. I say this now but as my follicles get larger and my ovaries get swollen over the next two weeks I am sure I will change my tune… 😂 Currently am taking 375 follistim and 75 menopur in the evenings and will be doing monitoring appointments at the office just about every other day. Many women opt to have their partners do these injections for them, but I’ve found for subcutaneous it’s easier if I do it (definitely not for muscular though). The anticipation of when the needle is going to go in almost makes it hurt more. 😆

First monitoring appointment is Monday. Wish us luck! They will do blood work as well as transvaginal ultrasound (wish I could say it was good to see you again “Wanda”). If all goes well, we will likely be doing the egg retrieval around 7/6. There’s always the risk a cycle can get canceled mid-way through, but we will cross that bridge if we get there (hopefully not). Besides the impending abdominal discomfort and possible bruising, life will pretty much be as normal during this time. Only thing is I’ll need to only do very low impact workouts and anything involving twisting is totally off limits as it is a risk to me. My ovaries/tubes will be more at risk to twist with inability to twist back because of their size. Some of you may know even before IVF back in 2020 I already experienced this phenomenon and it is definitely something I don’t ever want to go through again. I’m excited today but if I get grouchy over the next two weeks, you all know why. 😉 More to come!

Day 2 update

So far so good! I don’t have any bruising as of yet and no other side effects of note. The menopur burned a little more today during the injection than yesterday but it was so slight and went away immediately. I still feel like a normal person and we spent our Sunday like any other Sunday. Shopping with Sebi, hanging with friends, going out to eat. I’m continuing to feel calm and relaxed, and I can’t help but think that it will make it all much more bearable the second time around. Very curious to see when things will start to take a turn…

Day 3 updates

Nothing much to report. Had my first monitoring with the doc and he says all is well. They won’t do a follicle/egg count until my next appointment on Wednesday (day 5) so stay tuned til then! Still no symptoms to report but starting to feel a general awareness of the abdomen. Little eggies must be growing!

Day 4…. meh

Seems like today is the inflection point… Starting to get some slight discomfort but nothing crazy – mostly on the right side. Might stop wearing jeans to work tomorrow onward or just stand all day lol… Pleasantly surprised that so far the appointments and overall experience haven’t been a major disruption to work and home life. For some reason I remember it being all consuming the first time around. It is a smidge difficult though lifting the carseat with Sebi in it without majorly engaging the core. Probably need to stop doing that also… 😬. Side note – kept crossing paths in my neighborhood this morning with the local high school track team practicing for the summer and I had so much FOMO since I can’t run right now. So for now I’ll just keep walk, walk, walking. My god, it’s so much walking…

Day 5-6

Days five and six passed largely uneventfully, though the needle jabs have started to bleed a smidge. While I do feel a sort of fullness in my abdomen from my ovaries growing in size, there isn’t really “pain” per se most of the time. I did switch to dresses at work which also helped a ton. My second monitoring appointment was on Wednesday and so far it looks like I am responding well to the stimulation meds, which I am very grateful for! I’ll try to take a picture next time of what my ovaries look like on the ultrasound because it is pretty gnarly. 😆 Getting stir crazy because my only “workouts” have been morning and evening walks, though I did feel well enough to attend a summer beer bash at work with musical guest Dan and Shay 😉

Day 7-8…Murphy’s Law

So I’ll start with the good news. My day seven monitoring appointment went well. All is on track with my follicle growth and hormone levels. More frequent discomfort, usually if I need to pee or am sitting hunched over. I’m more than halfway through the egg retrieval process (already?! How did that even happen??) so when I first woke up I was on a cloud.

But then I woke up Sebi and he was feeling pretty warm and had a weird sounding cough. Two days prior, we had received an email from daycare saying a kid in his class had tested positive for strep so we were on high alert. We brought him to the doctor that same morning just to be safe. He tested negative for strep, but she was fairly certain he had mild croup and assured us he could go back to daycare and just needed to ride it out.

Well when I picked him up from daycare on Friday, he was totally out of it. By the time we got home, his cough had escalated and he vomited a bunch of mucus. And then his chest was sort of concaving in because he was having a hard time breathing. We immediately decided to bring him to the ER. Burjis jumped in the car and hauled over there, but I had to stay back to pack up all my fertility meds to bring them with me to the hospital and make sure I could administer them on time. I don’t think I can describe the feeling of not being able to be with your child when you know they can hardly breathe and are in pain. I was trying as hard as I could to get there extremely fast to be with him but also safely. Burjis had the stress and burden of having to drive him and not be able to keep eyes on him to make sure he wasn’t turning blue. Every red light he’d park and run over to check. And because we live in the boonies, the hospital is 30 minutes from our house… which believe me feels like an eternity in the right situation.

But we all made it to the hospital. By the time I got there he had already been triaged and the doctor was walking in to examine him. His croup had escalated throughout the day and they had to give him breathing treatments and steroids. They gave him Motrin for the fever, and then Tylenol because the fever continued to spike even through the meds. The nebulizer helped immediately but it wasn’t until a couple hours later than he started acting like his normal self. And his heart rate went down. And we finally were able to go home.

Today my love is doing so much better. He’s still got a mild cough and hoarseness, but he is breathing normally and acting normally so I am thrilled. This is a long winded story all to say that life happens at the most inconvenient times. I had to do my injections at the hospital. I still had to go for a morning blood draw today instead of cuddling with my sick babe. And now all he wants to do is be picked up for comfort but it’s starting to get dicey for me because of my lower abdomen discomfort. But one thing I’ve learned over the last four years of fertility complications, treatments and successes is that shit happens. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But you get through it anyway. Because there is no other choice. Because you are strong enough to. And because you can handle anything.

Day 9-10 updates

Day 9 passed largely uneventfully. Everyone at home and continuing to heal from the weekend craziness. I’m still feeling pretty good and was even able to do an afrobeats cycle ride on Peloton 🙌🏽.

On Day 10 I had my next monitoring appointment. Little eggies are growing! Sadly, the retrieval will be on Friday instead of Thursday since they still need some more time to grow, but it is what it is. I trust my doctor and it’s for the best! The drives to the appointment are getting frustratingly long though lol, 30 mins each way, every other day. Hopefully only one more before the big show! I keep forgetting to snap a pic of the ovaries but for sure I’ll remember on Wednesday.