Day 35 (cycle day 7) – baseline ultrasound.

The one thing I like about ultrasounds is that at least you know the results right away. No dreaded phone calls and starting at the phone the rest of your afternoon.The objective of today’s appointment was to ensure that there were no cysts and to measure my uterus for transfer. For me of course, what I wanted to know was my antral follicle count.

I was surprised that this was not part of what they were looking for today. I guess they figured they had that count from the past? Still, I did ask the ultrasound tech to count them.

This was my very first u/s appointment where DH was with me. He was there to ask any remaining questions about the next set of injections. So he got to see the ultrasound as a bonus. I could tell he was a little frustrated. At a base day ultrasound there isn’t really much to see. All he could see was a rolling image of mush. Not even an egg to focus on.

I was thrilled when the ultrasound tech announced that he could see 9 antrals in my left ovary. Nine for me is good. He saw 7 in the right one, so I figured with a total count of 16 I should be good to start, and hopefully have a good chance.

The nurse discussed the plan with us after the u/s. So I am to begin on Sunday with Follistim and take 300 units of it daily for 4 days after which point I will be back for u/s and bloodwork. She told me to schedule out appointments for all the days she had indicated on the calendar – that I may not need all of those, but it would be good to have them scheduled in case I do. Basically for the first 4 days I just do the shots and then its monitoring almost daily.

I had my list of questions to ask.

So the first one – with the daylight savings time change, that really didn’t matter. I should just try to get the shots in between 7 and 9.

Exercising in this time? Perfectly OK. She said all restrictions begin after retrieval.

I asked whether me starting my stims on Sunday will be better for my progesterone level, and I got a very interesting response. She looked at my chart and said my lab was perfectly normal. The reason I’m starting on Sunday is that they have too many patients starting on Saturday!!! So they broke them up into two batches so that not everyone is on the same day. Great! Why did I have to be in the “Sunday batch”. Grrrrrr. Figures I’d fall into the group I would not have preferred to be in.

My husband asked about administering the progesterone shots. She told him they would be just like the hcg one, and that they’ll talk about it as the time draws near. She also showed us once again how to pinch my skin for the shots in the tummy. I didn’t know this but you are supposed to pinch, get the needle in and let go. I was pinching the whole way until the shot was done!

I looked down my list of questions and realized I had asked them all. So this was it! Next time I’d see them will be next thursday at which point things will start to get really interesting…

All the final payments were due to the doctor today too. Wow.. we’re really doing this.