19 Days and Counting

19 days....say what?! In 19 days we will have my sisters egg retrieval. We will know how many eggs we have to work with. We will officially be waiting and hoping to be able to have at least one or two embryos to transfer. We will finally be able to call these growing embryos, ours.

I have a calendar at home on my refrigerator with every important "next step." And everyday I cross off another day from our fertility cycle. I cannot believe that after 8 months of talking about this potential egg donor cycle that we really only have 19 days left before the egg retrieval! I've been on birth control for 5 weeks and Lupron now for 1 week. Today is my last birth control pill and I am happy to say "bye-bye birth control!" My sister's last day of birth control is tomorrow and tomorrow will also be the completion of her first week on Lupron. Step one of our cycle, shutting down our ovaries, is just about complete!

This coming week we will start step two. On Monday my husband starts his 14 days of antibiotic. On Wednesday I start taking Estrace which is used to plump up my uterine lining, Prednisone which is used to suppress my immune system so it can't attack a growing baby, and Lovenox which is used to prevent blood clots in my uterus and everywhere else throughout my body. On Friday I finish my antibiotic regimen, and my sister has her baseline ultrasound and blood work to make sure her ovaries are nice and quiet and full of follicles that are ready to be stimulated. If all looks great for her on Friday, she starts her stimulation meds next Sunday. Both me and my sister will continue to take Lupron for the remainder of the 19 days that we have left of our cycle....for me to make sure my ovaries remain quiet, and for her to make sure her ovaries don't get a sneaky egg who tries to escape before the egg retrieval.

So...we may not have 19 kids and counting (nor would we want to, but seriously...
how did they get so lucky?!), but we do have 19 days and counting and for that, we are still blessed!