The entire month of July was medication free, but in August the doctor informed me that I was going to start a medication to help my body prepare for our scheduled September IVF cycle. Oh starting medication already? Yes! Progress! And yet, not what I expected...but, birth control. Wait, what?!!! Seriously, birth control pills? Isn't that like the complete opposite of what we are trying to do here? At first, I thought my fertility doctor was insane. All this time we have been trying to get pregnant and now he wants me to take pills that will prevent me from getting pregnant? This just didn't make any sense. I was starting to think that this doctor was a nut-job. Then again, who am I to judge? This man has managed to "conceive" over 5,000 babies and I can't manage to conceive one...I better take his advice.
Come to find out, birth control pills actually do serve a vital purpose in the IVF process. Could have fooled me. Warning: the medical explanation I am about to give is probably not even remotely close to accurate (remember, I was an English major y'all), but this is how I understood it as it was explained to me. My body has problems cycling properly when it is not being controlled by medication (such as birth control pills or fertility treatment hormones). Alas, the reason we could not get pregnant on our own. Reason #1 for the BC pills was to help my body get on a regular cycle before we began the IVF procedure. In addition, I had this estrogen-producing cyst that was causing the estrogen levels in my body to escalate to very high levels which is not good for starting an IVF cycle. Before you begin an IVF cycle, they want your hormone levels to be very low. This is because they are about to pump you up full of hormones, so they want to start out at ground zero and build up from there. Pumping your body full of hormones when your hormone levels are already fairly high is very dangerous. Therefore, reason #2 for the BC pills was to get my hormone levels down nice and low. We used the BC pills almost like a hormone cleanse to get my body all cleaned out and ready to start fresh with new hormones. And it totally worked.
Well that was a poor explanation on my part, but once it was explained to me by the doctor it seemed logical enough so I jumped on board. I religiously took my birth control pills for the month of August and enjoyed what I was hoping would be my final month of alcohol/caffeine/exercise freedom. A new school year had also started by this point which I was less than excited about, but I was confident that we were going to get pregnant this year and that this would be the last school year I would have to worry about for a while.
At the end of the month, we went back to the doctor for a baseline scan. The baseline scan is an ultrasound that they do before you begin the medications to make sure there are no cysts or complications that could prevent you from successfully beginning the cycle. I was so nervous for this appointment. I had this exact same appointment back in June, which was when I received the devastating news that we would have to postpone our IVF cycle to September due to that evil estrogen-producing cyst. Here I was again at a crossroads. Either everything would be fine and I would start my IVF medications in preparation for the September cycle, or that pesky cyst would still be there crushing my dreams.
Luckily, when we went in for the scan the cyst appeared to be gone and my hormone levels were exactly where they should be. Hooray! We were finally ready to begin our IVF cycle!!!! It was time to prepare myself for what was to come over the next month, a lot of pain and discomfort, and a multitude of large injections everyday. I was ready and I didn't care how bad/painful/uncomfortable it was going to be, I was determined to do whatever I could to make this work. Here goes nothing!
The "September" fertility journey post is going to be split up into multiple posts. I want to share each and every step of the IVF cycle and there is so much information to share, it would be way too overwhelming for one post. If you thought that things have been intense and emotional up to this point, just wait till you see what happens next. IVF is not for the weak or faint-hearted, that's for sure.
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