the one with the start of FET

Sunday was CD1.  I called the clinic and they instructed me to come in for blood and US the next day.  Unfortunately, since Monday was a holiday, the clinic location 4 minutes from our house was closed and we had to go to the one that’s nearly an hour away.  Lucky us, we had to get up at 5:30 am on a holiday where we didn’t have any other place to be until 1 pm.  But oh well, there was no traffic, and the clinic’s staff were nice.

When I talked to the nurse on Sunday, I asked her how it worked in terms of timing and ovulation and all that stuff I had been wondering about.  She said I’d come in on CD2, and then again 10-14 days later.  The Estradiol (Estrace) that they would instruct me to take, starting CD2, is meant to keep me from ovulating.  When I come back, they do blood to check and make sure I didn’t ovulate through the Estradiol, and an US to check my lining.  If I have ovulated, they cancel the cycle and we try again.  If I haven’t, and they think I need more time, then I come back and repeat.  Once the timing is right, I’ll start PIO and the transfer is scheduled for 5 days later.

So I got my instructions to start Estradiol, one 2mg pill, twice a day.  They didn’t specify timing, but I know everyone else spaces them out evenly, so I just figured I’d take the first one at 8:30 pm since that’s a time that works for me to do any kind of meds.  Except that I forgot to bring it with me to fireworks (it was 4th of July) and I didn’t end up taking it until 10:30 pm.  I figured I’d take the next one at 9:30 am at work and then at 8:30 pm to get myself onto that schedule.  Then I forgot to take it until 10:30 am at work…. hahaha.  Now there’s an alarm on my phone for 8:30 am and for 8:30 pm so that I don’t keep doing that.  And the bottle is in my purse so it’s with me wherever.  Good thing I don’t just take one with me in the morning for the one I take then, because we went to my in-laws last night for my brother in law’s birthday and I didn’t even think of the timing.  We were totally still there when my alarm went off for it.

The clinic told me to come back on the 16th.  I’m hoping everything is good to go and I start PIO that night (I can’t believe I’m wishing for that sh*t).  That would put transfer on Thursday the 21st.  We leave for vacation on the 23rd.  So I’m hoping the stars align and we can get it done before we leave.  There’s not a lot of wiggle room.

Assuming the cycle doesn’t get canceled (FX!), there’s something I’m debating about injections on vacation.  We’re sharing a house with DH’s family.  Some of them know about IVF and some don’t.  It’ll be his mom and stepdad, his sister, her husband and their 2 kids (7 and 4 and a 1/2).  They all know and are supportive (I mean, except for the kids, they don’t know obviously).  But there will also be his Gram, an aunt and female cousin (our age-ish, but not in “baby-mode”), and then 2 other female cousins (also around our age, but not in “baby-mode”) will be coming for a few days here and there.  His whole family is pretty close, and everyone is extremely nice and they all genuinely care about each other (which also extends to me, thankfully).  Part of me thinks that we should sneak off and do my injections in our room, so as to not give away timing of the cycle (we want to wait until at least hearing the heartbeat around 6 or 7 weeks to tell his mom and sister, that’s still really early.  And then wait a more ‘normal’ time to reveal to the rest of the family).  However.  I think that they might notice something is up with the sneaking off (especially since I’d have to hide an ice pack from the freezer, warming my heating pad in the microwave, and possibly my husband’s bloody hands (sometimes I bleed kind of a lot), and my teary eyes, since they often make me cry).  Plus I already have to tell them that I’m not drinking (which I can blame on drugs instead of the fact that I have an embryo in me).

The other part of me says “screw it!”.  We don’t have to be specific about what we’re doing.  The cat will be out of the bag to the family members that didn’t know (but we always planned on revealing that with a pregnancy announcement anyway), but we can fudge the truth and say that the drugs are to “regulate my cycle” so the Dr’s can “control” it, so that I can have a transfer in a few weeks (they don’t know how it really works).  It only gives us a few weeks leeway on having to tell them whether it worked, but I think we’ll still be able to get to the point we wanted to.  Plus, I sort of don’t think it’s a bad thing for people to actually see that small part of what we’re going through to have a baby.  It’s one thing to know someone’s doing IVF, it’s another to actually witness DH doing a few injections in my ass!  I think it’ll just be easier to not hide it, and I think that everyone that didn’t already know will be supportive, so I suppose there’s not really a compelling reason not to.  I might have just convinced myself…

Thoughts?