Baseline

Today is the official start of treatment number 26 or whatever month we are on now.

I went to the clinic this morning and had an ultrasound and bloodwork.
Just got a call with my results and am good to go for this month.

Like I've said before, infertility has it's own language so to catch you up, let me give you some definitions:

Lupron - injection I take to supress my ovaries so the doctors can have a lot of play with when the eggs grow
Follistim - injection I take to have my follicles grow, ideally at 2mm per day. The follicles are the sacs around my eggs and they measure the follicles rather than the eggs b/c the eggs are microscopic. When the follicles are at around 18mm they will give me the HCG shot.
HCG - This is the pregnancy hormone. I take an injection of 10,000 units of HCG 30 hours before they do the in vitro fertilization. The HCG shot will have my eggs travel down my tubes just in time for the IVF.
IVF - The process where I will be put under and they will take all of my mature eggs out through a suction process. The doctors will take Nathan's sperm and inject one in each egg. Then they will become embryos and will be stored at the lab for 5 days until the cells start to split.
Retrieval - After the 5 days they will take the embryo and inject the embryo straight into my uterus. Then we pray for two weeks that the two embryos they inject like my uterus and attach. After these two weeks we can test to see if we are pregnant.

So here's the predicted schedule:
5/8-5/10 lupron
5/10-5/15 lupron and follistim
5/15/-5/19 lupron, follistim, daily ultrasounds and bloodwork
5/19 hcg shot
5/20 IVF
5/25 retrieval

Of course all of these dates are dependant on hormone levels, follicle growth, etc. but it's a rough estimate. Thank God I'm good at schedules!

Hope this helps you know where Nathan and I are with treatment. I predict that I'll feel pretty well this week . . . next week on the other hand. . .lawdy!

It's all for a good cause though, have to keep reminding myself of that.