Color-Coded Madness

Once we knew we were moving ahead with a frozen embryo transfer (FET), my new FET nurse emailed me my schedule and sent in all my prescriptions to the pharmacy. 

Folks, as the blog title implies, the schedule is pure, color-coded madness. 

And I thought egg retrieval was a crazy process with lots of medications and injections. It’s got nothing on our clinic’s protocol for an FET. 

See for yourself…

One of the first things I did was send it to my sister to ask her if her protocols with Duncan and Connor were anything like mine. She sent a picture of hers; it was two columns and no colors. She only had two medications, estrogen and progesterone. 

I did ask Dr. C. about this in our regroup as well, and she said that other clinics she’s worked for in the past have had similar protocols to what Emilee had. And really, the biggest medications/hormones needed for pregnancy are estrogen and progesterone. 

One of the reasons our clinic’s is a little different is a couple of reasons. First, Conceptions is a maximal effort clinic, according to Dr. C. They basically want to give it everything they’ve got and this helps them maintain their FET success rate; it’s the highest in Colorado. 

Second, the amount, type, and dosing instructions of the estrace pills and estrogen patches allows for flexibility. If my body doesn’t react well to one type of medication, they can scale that type back (or remove it entirely) and make up the difference with another type. 

The lupron injections were another thing I was surprised about. Apparently, they use it to keep me from ovulating while they’re prepping me for the transfer. This whole process is used to fake my body into thinking it’s had a normal cycle and then also fake it into thinking I got pregnant. 

One of the things I’m really not looking forward to on this schedule is all the progesterone in oil (PIO) shots. Those all have to be done intramuscularly (in the booty). I wasn’t looking forward to them before I got the schedule, and when I saw the notes for when I had to take it, I was looking forward to those shots even less. 

Because my FET will be in the afternoon, I’ll have to do my PIO shots in the morning. (My sister did all hers in the evening). Those who know me know that I’m not a morning person. On days when I have bloodwork done (usually around 8/8:15 a.m.), my PIO shot will have to be done two hours prior to that appointment. 

So on those days, Nick and I will both have to get up extra early to ice the booty and then do the injection. Ugh. If I’m going to wake up that early, I’d at least like it to be for something fun. 

If we’re lucky and get pregnant, I’ll have to do that every day until about 11-12 weeks of pregnancy. Dr. C. mentioned that after pregnancy, we could transition the shots back to the evening, but it would have to be done incrementally (meaning shots at very weird hours during the transition period). 

Nick will be switching to third shift in late August, so middle-of-the-night shots are out of the question. 

One other thing I wanted to mention before I sign off for this week… You may have noticed I blacked out some info and removed the dates in the photo of the schedule. Some of that is for privacy of my nurses and clinic. And the other is for our privacy.

I’m not trying to be all cloak and dagger about this process (obviously I am blogging about everything), but I’m also trying to find a good balance of sharing everything I can about my experience, while also maintaining some privacy on when certain things will happen and when we’ll know we’re pregnant. 

One of the things Nick and I haven’t really discussed yet is when we’ll share the news if we get pregnant. Our chances of miscarriage due to genetic abnormalities are much smaller than if we were to get pregnant naturally, but there’s still no guarantees in the first few weeks. 

I will continue to share about the FET process — particularly where I can speak in general terms or about injections/medications that last multiple days, but I will also likely take this time over the next couple of months to talk about some of the news surrounding infertility and IVF.