Part 2: In Vitro Fertilization!
The first (pause to count) 14 bullet points also apply here if you're starting off knowing you're doing IVF.
Take a birth control pill for a month or 2. This gets everything on a predictable schedule.
Your fertility clinic will connect you up with a special pharmacy that ships hard-to-get drugs straight to your home. You'll schedule a date for them to be dropped off (a few days before the medication cycle starts). Some of the vials have to be kept in the fridge so you're gonna have to sign for it when it gets dropped off.
Take the day off work because these things only ship like Tuesday-Friday. UPS will tell you they'll be there between 11am and 4pm. Like all deliveries, this means they will come at 6:22pm. Or perhaps 1:30pm while you're on the toilet.
Joyfully unpack your many boxes. There'll be a list of what's in there. Confirm everything is in there. Read the storage instructions. Some of it needs to go in the fridge. Some of it needs to be stored in the dark. DO NOT PANIC ABOUT HOW BIG SOME OF THE NEEDLES ARE. The big ones are for drawing up the medications. The little needles are for injecting.
Contact the fertility clinic to let them know the drugs are here. They'll be like, cool, call us when your period starts.
The drug box will likely come with a link to the pharmacy's website, which'll have videos on how to safely administer a shot in general, and all these meds in specific.
Watch all the videos. If someone's going to be helping you, make them also watch the videos.
I recommend getting a shot blocker. It's a cheap little plastic thing with blunt nubs that you press lightly against your skin. Helps the muscle relax, and you feel it less when the needle goes it. Huge quality of life improvement when you're taking this many injections.
Start your period. Call the clinic. Clinic says okay we'll email you your drug instructions. If your clinic's website says We Stop Responding To Emails At 5; check the portal at 5. The last thing they do for the day before going home is send out these instructions.
Night 1's instructions will be something like "inject this amount of X into your thigh at the same time every night for 3 nights. Morning of Day 4 fast and come to [clinic closest to your house] for monitoring."
The clinic opens at 6am. It is absolutely fine to walk in at 5:55am. If they're not ready for you the lady at the desk will tell you to sign in and take a seat cuz they're not ready for you. Everybody understands you're hungry, nervous, and still need to make it to work on time after this is done.
It's first come first served so it you get there at 6:10 there will be 6 women already in the waiting room and you will be there until 7.
Monitoring part 1: You'll be put in stirrups like you're getting a pap smear. A tech will put an absurd amount of lube on an ultrasound wand and slide it into your vagina. She'll twist it around a bit to figure out which of your ovaries is producing and how the eggs are coming along. She will talk to you the same way a dental hygienist does while cleaning your teeth.
Monitoring part 2: just a really normal blood draw. 2 vials, and the vials are fairly small.
Check the clinic portal at 5 that night. They might say to add a new medication, they might not. This'll repeat every 2-3 days for the next week or so.
Like halfway through this process you're gonna start to be able to feel your ovaries. And that they're too full. It's weird and it's gross and it's temporary.
Eventually, the tech at the clinic will be like woah, several of these eggs are X centimeters wide! So big! That night the instructions on the portal will be to stop everything else and take The Trigger Shot at a very specific time. This drug makes you start ovulating. Exactly 36 hours after you take this shot, you're getting your eggs retrieved. You're gonna be uncomfortable tomorrow, but you can still go to work, y'know?
On retrieval day, someone will drive you to the main clinic, which is always 2 hours away from you no matter where you live. You won't be in the most pain you've ever felt, but you're grateful you don't have to drive.
Once you're there it's really the same as any other surgery prep. You have to hang out in a bed attached to an IV for half an hour but it's all pretty chill. You'll get wheeled to another room, they have you breathe in something that knocks you out. The doctor uses a little vacuum to suck up all your eggs. You wake up back where you started except now you're high. You hang out in bed for a bit until you don't feel high anymore. At some point a nurse tells you how many eggs you retrieved. Your wife takes you out for brunch after and you have to take pain meds for atrocious cramps half way through. Go home and rest. You did it.
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