IVF 2: stims and a unicorn

I thought I’d do a quickie update as last time I managed to blog the way through my IVF cycle and this time I’ve hardly mentioned it! I am doing it, I promise!

Last night I tried Menopur for the first time. It wasn’t as bad as I expected (after the ease of the Gonal F pen, I thought mixing powder and solvent would be a faff, but it’s strangely satisfying). But it’s not as straightforward as Gonal F so I wouldn’t say I love it. Gonal F is super easy to use as you just click on the jabber (I’m sure there’s a name for it) and click the dial and jab it in and press the plunger. For Menopur you actually have to do some alchemist style mixing.

I now have my Buserelin (down regulation) down to a fine art. My usual time for doing it is at 06:30 in the morning, at which time I’m half asleep, half blind and it’s sort of a sleep-inject. It’s actually a bit of a faff doing Buserelin as you draw out the liquid in one needle and then change the needle to a smaller one and inject with that. I’ve never accidentally injected with the bigger needle (as it’s a big-ass needle and I’m not going to stick myself with that!) but I have dreamed about it, if that counts. (It doesn’t.)

Anyway, here’s the Menopur, London style. This geezer has been sitting in my fridge, occupying half a shelf which could have been devoted to pizza healthy groceries, and so it was a bit of a relief to get it out. They say on the schedule from the clinic that you’re supposed to bring it to your scan day so they can show it to you, but I wasn’t lugging that thing around and putting it in the work fridge next to everyone’s sandwiches (can you imagine?!) and so I apologised and then the nurse at the clinic said “Oh you don’t need to bring it anyway… I always tell people not to bring it” (as I guess in the old days they didn’t have the demo sets like they have now).

 

As you can see there’s a small vial of Menopur. It’s white powder. Then two syringes of solvent. Literally all you have to do is add the contents of the syringes to the powder and wait for it to dissolve. Then dose up from that with the other syringes which are in the big pack underneath.

I say “literally” – it did involve a bit of unpacking and wrangling with various stoppers and whatnot, but really it was quite straightforward.

The injections are in ready-constructed syringes so the main thing is that it takes a while to draw up the liquid because the sharp bit is so small. It was okay though once I had the hang of it.

The main PITA (pain in the… belly) is that the injection did not want to go into my skin. It’s a tiny one compared to any of the other injections, but it was kind of comical trying to push it into my flabby belly. It sort of just pushed in and didn’t break the skin. It was like my belly was saying “Nooooo… Get your stims away from me!”
Nevertheless I persevered and got it stuck in. I would have to say this is the one that hurt the most. On the whole scale of injections, IVF injections don’t hurt much at all – it’s nothing like that one where the dentist comes towards you with the medieval looking syringe to inject into the roof of your mouth (which even then is nice because lidocaine, amirite?) and so I really am probably over egging the whole thing by saying it hurt a bit. But it was sort of annoying.

On the plus side, you get a load of injection swabs so you can disinfect the site beforehand and pretend to be a doctor.

All in all, not too bad really. I’m mainly worried I’ll forget to take the injections in the evening so I’ve set alarms for it. I’m on 250 Menopur and now 0.25 Buserelin (half what I was on before). I can’t remember the dosage units but they’re the ones on the syringe so I think I’m doing what I’m supposed to!

As for side effects, I’m totally a fatty right now but I’m not sure if that’s the meds or me generally being greedy. My boobs have gotten a bit bigger, but I think that could just be as a result of being a bit pudgy or it might be the meds. I know they got humungous last time so I’m hoping that stays under control for a while yet. (T is in favour of big boobs so at least that’s something.) I feel sooooo tired which I think probably is a side effect. But aside from that I feel a bit better than I did generally on down regulation. It’s only day 1 of stims so there’s still time to feel terrible, though! I’m not looking forward to the bloat.

Anyway, that’s a short summary of stims so far.

What about the unicorn? you might ask.

For your reader delectation, here is my Unicorn of the Day.

  
Don’t ask me how I came by this unicorn. (It was work related!)

The subtitle to this image is:

You don’t have to google “sassy unicorn” to find this amazing unicorn image. However, if you do google “sassy unicorn” this is one of the top results.

Whose day wouldn’t benefit from a sassy unicorn? Exactly.