Day 11 egg freezing
Here’s a video of me doing my final round of hormone injections. I developed a ‘bang bang bang’ method towards the end of my egg freezing process which basically means I lock and load up all the syringes with the solutions and medicines, replace the caps on the needles to ensure they’re 100% sterile, lay them out on the bathroom counter then BANG BANG BANG shoot em up one after the other. That may seem a little extreme to some and even warranted a “Oh Sylvie, NO!” from my mum but I didn’t do this for shock value I can assure you. I actually found this method safer for me for a number of reasons. Keep reading for more details on Day 11…
1. Allows better concentration & focus while mixing up solutions and powders
2. By making up all the syringes first, I knew I had done them properly – it’s easy to make a mistake if you feel light-headed or sore or upset after the first injection and still have 2 more to go.
3. Saves some time.
4. My brain was just not on point and clouded by cotton wool at this stage so going back and forth between organising syringe to injection to mixing up solutions to injection and so forth was just too hard. Much easier to do all of task A then all of task B (for me personally – not saying this is right for everyone)
Towards the end of the process I found myself getting so tired that I was off-balance, off colour, extremely nauseous and incredibly fatigued. I felt sick. I could barely see straight and in fact decided I was unfit to drive several days ago because I was becoming slow to react and see double or triple.
On day 9, I made two stupid mistakes while trying to do my injections the ‘normal’ way because I simply wasn’t concentrating.
1. I did the most painful injection first which unusually REALLY hurt me. This was a shock because I hadn’t experienced significant pain while injecting before. I started crying, which meant that my tears were disturbing my vision and I wasn’t concentrating properly while mixing up and injecting myself with the next two.
2. I got very light-headed from the shock I think and ended up slicing my finger on one of the incredibly sharp needles and drawing blood on my stomach twice while taking the needle out at a sloppy angle instead of slowly and straight out. The cut was not bad but the bleeding didn’t help.
I decided it would’ve been better to have all the syringes full and ready to go next time so that if one of the injections did hurt me, I could administer the others without worrying about doing the complicated parts.
It was like 36 degrees in Sydney today and all I could really do after I’d done my final injections was lay on the bed, mostly naked and draped in wet face cloths with the ceiling fan on full blast and the air con set to below freezing. I was still hot. I could barely think all day. I had to duck into Genea mid afternoon to my last 37.5 units of the Gonal-F injection that I’d only just run short of.
A combination of the heat and the hormones, I just couldn’t cool down. Luckily, I had a wonderful man friend take me to the pool where I got to show off my enormous egg-pregnant belly in my maternity bikini. (For those of you who are expecting a short, 13 day egg-pregnancy like mine and don’t want to invest in a maternity bikini like I didn’t, just wear your regular bikini but use your strategically placed hands, slow waddle and pained expression to accentuate your giant belly. Fantastic money saver!) For the next 3 hours I just lay on my back in the shade, gently swam and floated. The pressure release off my back and belly in the water was bliss. We stayed there till 6pm.
After eating my body weight in thai food, I had my 6 puffs of Synarel – the “trigger” as they call it. This is a nasty nasal spray that essentially stops you from ovulating. I was told to have this at 8:30pm so that in exactly 36 hours I will be ready to have my egg retrieval. No more hormone injections. Just rest and waiting. No gonna lie, the nasal spray was horriffic. I couldn’t breathe out my sinuses at all, I had a chemical drip running down the back of my throat that tasted like a meth lab and my face was aching like a bitch. By bedtime thank god, those symptoms had subsided and I was able to sleep peacefully (mostly thanks to my guided meditation I listen to through one earphone in my right ear every night).
Mixed emotions after having the trigger – today has been tough and I’m seriously feeling the effects from the hormone injections. Particularly the nausea. Holy balls. However, that brings me to the near end of my egg freezing process and means no more ovulating little eggies in my giant incubating ovaries. Strangely sad. A part of me can’t wait to have my old body back but the other isn’t ready to say goodbye. I liked being fake pregnant at the pool… Certainly shocked the regular lifeguards who see me several times a week after I train at the gym. Nek minnit I’m 8 months pregnant. They’ll get a real fright when they see me next week and I’m sans-child…