Today was the big day. Dayne and I met with our fertility doctor, the great Dr. Shane Lipskind. I had an ultrasound and a progesterone blood draw to make sure I ovulated last week so I can start my first round of shots tomorrow.
I was nervous sitting in the waiting room, bag full of meds and needles. Dayne kept making jokes about how every time the grandfather clock went off (every 15 min) someone was giving a sperm sample. Oh, this guy.. Not sure I could’ve made it through the day without him making me laugh. From suggesting we lock the ultrasound room door while I was undressing for the ultrasound to cracking jokes about how good looking our doctor is, he made this much less stressful. I was surprised at how much attention to detail he had when the nurse was showing us how to mix the medication.
After we figured out how to mix what, when and how and what angle to insert the needles (I don’t care how little the nurse thinks they are, they scare me) we went over the over 60 pages of paperwork given to us to take home and fill out. I never thought I would have to sign a paper stating what to do with our embryos if one or both of us died. Deciding what tests to do, what not to do, to freeze eggs first round, have a round two then fertilize all at once.
We decided to do fertilize and freeze round one. We can’t afford to do two rounds back after back.. we can barely afford to do one round. We have paid total, as of today $4966. Not counting the retrieval, it will be $2900 for genetic testing to find out if our embryo (pending we get a good one) is normal chromosomally normal, $1900 to cryogenically freeze it and $550 a year for storage (pro-rated obviously) and ladies and gents that puts us at a total of $10,316. We will need $5.350 due by March 15 and any other medical procedures (the IVF itself etc.)
Trying not to stress about more than one thing but that is easier said than done. Those needles look big but my hope is bigger.. for now.
IVF Got This 