IUI

We went to meet with Dr. Cooper in May and he guided us down a new hopeful path. I was convinced that this would be the last infertility treatment that I would do. This month we were going to do IUI, artificial insemination, but while using an injectable medication. The medication was Follistim.  The drug is used to create more foliciles per cycle. If you don't know how the natural process works here's a quick review.

Each month we produce one follicle which houses the one egg. This rotates from ovary to ovary each cycle. So if the quality of your follicle is poor the chances of conceiving are poor as well. Well what the follistim does is creates 1-5 follicles between your 2 ovaries. It is very tricky to do this so much monitoring is required.

On days 3,6,8,10 of my cycle I had to go to Mid Iowa and have my blood drawn and an ultrasound completed. The ultrasound was vaginally and this was done to look at the follicles, measure them and count how many.  Then the blood work is done to test my estrogen level to make sure it is matching up with the results of the ultrasound.

This may not sound like a big deal but let me tell you, I work 7-3 during the week and overnights on the weekends. It is very unlikely that I am just sitting around able to attend a doctors appointment at the drop of a hat.  Not to mention the office only performed these appointments from 9a-11a.  This made it very difficult to find coverage from my shifts. Also, I am an apparent hard stick, which means, I have small rolling veins that are hard to find and get blood from. Most appointments required two different attempts. I guess it has made me tougher though right?

Oh, I also forgot to mention that the Follistim is administered subcutaneously. A needle in my abdomen. These shots started on day 3 and continued to usually day 10 or when they felt your eggs were of adequate size.  On day 10 they told me that they were good to go and that I would need to perform my trigger shot. These shots "triggered" my ovulation. I had to do two, one in each side of my abdomen. Let me tell you how hard it is to force yourself to do those shots!! Yikes! The clinic did hold classes for all of this information as it is all so overwhelming.

36 hours from the administration of the trigger shot is insemination time. They perform this the same way as before when I was on the oral medication.