Day 1: Lupron Starts Today

I'm going to call this Day 1 of IVF #4 for the McFarlands. It's a very sunny & hot day here in Florence, KY - the sun is shining & the humidity is through the roof...as someone that sufffers from seasonal allergies - the air is less than ideal! It's July 10th (the day after Richard's birthday) and I'm hoping only good things come from this cycle.

Today starts "Lupron" and in very simple terms - it's tricking my body into stopping the natural production of estrogen and allows my body to create more so more follicles can grow during stimulation. There are articles & articles online about what it does / side effects etc. but I won't bore you with the details of all that.

Here is my set-up for Lupron - the bottle has the actual drug in it, the needle which goes into me and alcohol swamps to clean the top of the Lupron bottle every time and to clean the area where I'm going to stick.

Here is the needle - to be honest, Lupron is the easiest drug through the IVF process to give myself - I usually do all of them myself now because I can :) and I only have to give myself 10 units per day. I do this for 23 days so it is a lot of sticks but at least the needle is small and I'm able to do it myself. I just pull the bottom down & push back up to get all the air out and then put it in the bottle/pull down until it's below 10, then back up to 10 and then it's ready!

Here's the bottle and I can travel easily with it because it's so small and I know what I'm doing at this point now! Sometimes I bruise because I hit something and that does hurt a bit more than normal but the bruise isn't big at all with these. Typically I give it to myself around 8pm each night because I know I'll be home and can keep myself on a schedule - it's quick & easy and I usually just want to get it over with. I can give these shots anywhere - my leg, my arm, my stomach so I choose my leg because it's the least painful and I can cover it up with pants/shorts/capris etc. The follistim (the next round of shots) go in my stomach as do the Lovenox (which are my least favorite/bruise really bad) so I tend to give my stomach as much of a break as I can!

The whole process seems to take forever and fly by all at once - it'll be interesting to see how this one goes since we've gone through 1 fresh / 2 frozen cycles already and this is only our 2nd fresh cycle - hopefully it goes well & we have good results.

That is all for now - if you have any questions along the way - feel free to ask me, email me or leave a comment on the blog & I'd be happy to answer anything - there are no limits! I've probably been asked the question before so I'm happy to answer anything!