Here we go AGAIN!

I am going public with the blog? Holy crap. Okay - Not yet. I still have some serious milestones to get through before this bad boy gets to you, but I am so excited for that day. This go around I wanted to throw some videos into the mix. I felt a lot more confident going into my second round. I knew what I was doing. I knew what to ask, and what to expect. There was so much more than a successful retrieval and successful transfer to pray for… There was that whole Day 1, Day 3, Day 6 thing!

I took one month off before my second egg retrieval. I had to let my insides calm down. 37 eggs is no joke, and I was covered in cysts. To be honest, at one point, I wanted more than a month to get my body right. I read this book called It All Starts with an Egg. I’ve mentioned it before. At this point in time, is when I actually read the book. Mom ordered it for me, and I am so glad she did. I learned it takes two to three months for your eggs to react to your lifestyle changes. AKA Read this book when you start to think about starting a family. You don’t have to be struggling with infertility to educate yourself on how to have the healthiest eggs possible for fertilization. I learned a lot, and changed a lot. I changed my toothpaste, makeup products, hair products, tampons, face wash, soap, lotion, moisturizer, deodorant, our cleaning supplies, laundry supplies, even our tuppaware. How did I go this long without glass tuppaware? I wanted all natural everything. If you read the book, you’ll understand why. My spark-note version: There’s so many unnecessary chemicals and toxins in everything, and we are constantly polluting our bodies with all of it, and then asking ourselves why we can’t make babies. There’s a reason this is becoming more and more common. The other day, I drove past a billboard that said ‘Win a Baby!’ You can win money for fertility treatments via radio stations, that’s how common it is. Just saying.

Anyways, this book became my bible, and so did Sarah Armide’s Youtube channel. I had a new obsession with healing my PCOS naturally. I started juicing, I increased the amount of protein I was getting on a daily basis, which was challenging considering I am a vegetarian. I avoided unnatural sugars and gluten, and I became really strict with my diet. I wanted to make the right decisions 90% of the time, so I wouldn’t feel bad about the 10% of the time I chose to ‘live a little.’

I became ‘that girl’ that started prepping for the week on Sundays. When I started to feel lazy, I thought about my future child. I was motivated to be the healthiest version of myself. I never thought of health outside my salads and 3+ mile runs. I fit in my clothes, and that was good enough for me. But not anymore. Egg quality meant everything to me. I ate my weight in vitamins. Okay, that’s exaggerating a tad, but seriously, I am quite the pill popper these days. I believe in supplements and our lack of. I was doing everything I could for a successful second round.

My Doctors’ wanted to do their part as well. They explained to us a lot of the IVF journey is trial and error. Everyone and their individual cases are so different. Now that we were through one round, and they were able to document my response, there were some changes they wanted to make. My IVF nurse, Rachael recommended we meet with Dr. Kuzbari. She said he was the expert when it came to analyzing and executing a more suitable plan. She was right. Dr. Kuzbari had a lot of helpful diet and vitamin recommendations. He also told us he wanted to see me go with a lower dose of injections for a longer duration of time. He said it would allow my eggs more time to mature properly. It all made sense, and we were on board with his game plan. A lot of the diet and vitamin suggestions, I had already learned about in my book, and to be honest, I was a tad annoyed we were just talking about these recommendations. They should have been apart of our very first consultation, but I wasn’t going to cry about spilled milk. I was focused on taking it day by day. My time and energy only went to what I was able to control. The rest was out of my hands.

I managed to remain positive through all of my injections, and this time seemed to go a lot quicker, even though it was longer. Towards the end I did start to get tired. I was so over feeling like a push pin. My last week before the retrieval, I was poked with 23 needles. I had Doctors appointments every single day. I was bloated and I was uncomfortable. I made it to Day 10, which means my retrieval would fall on Day 12. That’s two days longer than last time. I dreaded my trigger shot. Especially because this time they wanted me to do a dual trigger, and the second trigger looked like it was going to be complicated. There was so much mixing involved, and I was too tired to pay attention in the instruction room. Luckily, Michael was there taking notes.. Couldn’t they just do it for me I thought? Last minute, they changed the plan. I only ended up having to do the Lupron trigger, because of my estrogen levels and because of the amount of mature follicles I had growing inside. Thankfully my second time injecting the Lupron shot went way smoother than my first time. We were all set for our second retrieval. My work was done. The Doctors’ work was ‘almost’ done. The rest was out of our control, and so I prayed, a lot, to the only one knew what would come next.