Butterflies and bruises

On Saturday I met up with a lovely NJ Dreamer.  We had lunch and headed down to a cute little art studio for their 'Paint and Pour' event.  Basically, they have a painting picked out and teach you step by step how to do it.  Bringing wine is encouraged and the other ladies had multiple bottles.  As we were both in our IVF cycles, no drinking for us.  The painting for that day was butterflies and we had a blast.  We've always referred to my embryos as butterflies and hers as ninjas so her butterfly got a sweet ninja mask.  We definitely want to go back with the other NJ Dreamers!    

Dave headed up north to spend time with his best friend and would likely be spending the night.  I got home from painting and relaxed for bit, snuggling with the kitties on the couch.  A little after 8 it was go time.  The Follistim pen was very easy to put together and the needle attached with no problem.  Lupron was a piece of cake by now, just lowered to half the dose.  Menopur was the one I was most apprehensive about.  Each dose involves two small bottles.  One is filled with the powder and the other contains the solvent.  Using a special needle attachment you transfer the solvent into the powder bottle and swirl, allowing the powder to dissolve.  Then you suck the mixed Menopur back into the syringe, change the needle for injection, and clear the air bubbles.

I had to ice the injection area this time.  For some reason, be it nerves or sensitivity from previous injections, it hurt like hell when I tried to inject the Follistim.  After numbing the area the shot was much easier, but bled like hell.  The Lupron was easy as usual.  With the Menopur I knew there was a chance it would burn so it was recommended to inject slowly.  My hands were shaking as I removed the needle, it was done.  After a quick clean up with an alcohol swab I placed a gauze pad on the area and applied pressure.  It burned like crazy!  The Follistim injection site bruised up immediately and the area stayed red for a while.  I celebrated the successful stimming with chocolate chip cookies and went to bed early.

Sunday night's stims were much easier.  I had confidence on my side and preparing the meds went much faster.  I iced again before doing the injects and didn't bleed as much.  The Follistim site didn't bruise this time, but Menopur burned on the way in.  Before bed I had a terrible headache and had a hard time falling asleep.  Tylenol helped a bit and I was finally able to drift off to sleep.

We had a very early morning today, my monitoring appointment was set for 6:30am.  I was the first one there, but things were already running behind.  Remember the sad u/s machine from last week?  It was doing much worse.  The tech was able to input my information, but as soon as she went to the next screen the computer flashed an internal error and shut down.  Luckily they have two machines in the office so she swapped them out and had no other problems.  As usual I have to wait for the nurse to call this afternoon with the results.  My ovaries feel heavy and there was definite activity in there this weekend.  Hopefully things are looking good.