What does this mean?
Medically speaking, it means that over the last two and a half years, the two of us together have experienced the following:
- Charting ovulation for 20 cycles
- At least 7 sit-down office visits with three different specialists
- Two rounds of Clomid
- 11 months' worth of supplements
- Two ultrasounds
- Giving 13 samples of body fluids for testing
- 1 sonohysterogram
- 1 surgery
To date, we've spent close to $2,500 and still no baby.
What's next on the menu?
- 1 to 2 months of birth control (oh, the irony)
- Many more ultrasounds
- Up to three subcutaneous (under the skin) injections a day for roughly two weeks to turn myself into an egg factory
- Many more vials of blood to be drawn for testing
- 1 injection to bring the eggs to maturation
- Retrieval of the eggs with, oh hey, another needle
- Fertilization of the eggs with a process called ICSI
- Three to five days of waiting before transferring the healthiest embryos back
- 8 weeks of intramuscular injections with a truly terrifying-looking needle
For those of you uninitiated, this means we're moving forward with IVF (in-vitro fertilization). We just need to save up to pay for the approximately $18,000 procedure first.
