Yesterday I had my BT to make sure my hormone levels were baseline, and when I called for my results I was given the all-clear to start the stimming drugs this morning. I'm on 125iu of Gonal-F, and I'm also staying on 10iu of Lucrin, so two needles every morning. I've started getting small bruises on my belly from these jabs; so attractive.
The nurse emphasised about three times how important it was to keep my fluids up, so I've been drinking water all day, which is a challenge for me as I am not someone who naturally has the urge to drink a lot of water. However, I have noticed over the past week that I'm tending to get headaches quite easily, so maybe my body is telling me something. Drinking heaps of water and eating protein are the two main things you need to do to try and avoid getting Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS), a nasty condition that can see you get so bloated and sick that you are in a lot of pain and can't breathe properly. You can be hospitalised and it can be very serious. Hopefully I don't get anything close to that bad... it's hard on your first cycle as they don't know how you're going to respond, so they have to start you on a lowish dose, and if nothing much is developing follicle-wise, they may need to increase your dose, but then you can risk OHSS....
To cover the protein side of things, I've been making sure I eat some form of meat every day the last few days; beef, chicken, fish, tomorrow will be pork loins.. Plus I've been trying to have baked beans for brekky every second or third day, and I've bought a carton of eggs for the first time in forever so that I can have a couple of eggs this week too.
Anyway, I know that it's quite common once you start stimming to get headaches and nausea and other lovely side effects, but hopefully I don't find it too hard. Eye on the prize and all that... as long as there is a mother-flippin' prize at the end of all this.
So a week of double-jabs, then next Mon (28th May) I've got my first BT to find out how my body is responding to the drugs. Sometime that week I will probably have a scan too to see how many follicles I have growing.
I keep fluctuating between being so positive and convinced this is going to work, and then the next minute chastising myself for being so hopeful and naive. Mostly I'm just taking everything one day at a time, and trying to forget why I'm doing all of this; just doing it and getting on with life. Fortunately we are so distracted with other Brisbane-related stuff right now that the IVF/ICSI just seems like an on-the-side project. I'm sure it will seem less so in a couple of weeks though when I go through EPU and *fingers crossed* ET. Less fortunately, things are really stressful at our place right now, which is the worst thing ever for IVF, but hopefully once we've got a few more things organised I can spend more time putting my feet up and relaxing.
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