The Stimulation

First step is to take medication to increase the number of eggs which is called ovarian stimulation protocols. 

I had to administer an injection a day for 4 days (D-1 to D-4). The nurse briefed us on how to mix the drug from one vial to another vial and finally, to the syringe. The husband was taking up this job so he listened to the nurse attentively. As for me, I learned on how and where to make the injection. I did the first injection in front of the nurse. She did offer to do it but I insisted to do it on my own as I wanted her to provide me feedback if I had done it in a wrong way. We were going to be on our own at home for the next 3 days so I needed to get it right. The moment I injected the medication, I could taste/smell the medication. 

Initially, I would think this is the most difficult part throughout the treatment and boy, was I wrong. Personally, I think this is the easiest part because wait till I share the later stage.

Before we left the centre, the nurse had to collect blood from us - blood test for both of us and hormone test for me. Hormone test results will decide the medication for my second stage of ovarian stimulation as we were to come back on D-5 of IVF treatment to check if my ovaries are responding well to the medication. 

Fortunately, they are responding well. Hence, for the second stage of ovarian stimulation, I had to administer 2 injections a day for another 4 days (D-5 to D-8). The second syringe's needle is longer so it was really painful when I first injected it. It bled a bit when I took out the needle. Dr. Eeson also informed us that we could do egg collection on D-11 but he will share the details with us again when we went back to the centre again on D-9.

What I really like about Dr. Eeson is he will not give you too much information on future process as he wanted you to focus on the current process since it was stressful enough. To me, it felt like 'go with the flow' kind of thing and I am never worried on what's coming next. Maybe, it's just me.

Oh, did I mention that I was craving for char koay teow a lot during these 8 days? I had CKT for at least 2 days in a row!

So, what happened on D-9 when we were back in the centre again? We were being prepped for egg collection which I will share in my upcoming post.

PS: I received questions on where did I inject and the answer is my tummy (the picture above is not my tummy). To be specific, it is the same row as your belly button but 2 fingers away from it - either on the left or right and you can go all the way down. I considered myself lucky as I had one injection a day for the first 4 days whereby I could inject on a different side each day. My trick was I would put the ice pack on my tummy until it felt numb and really red, wiped with an alcohol swab, squeeze the targeted area hard and cucuk. For the second type of medication, as the needle is longer, I put the ice pack longer.