Once you determine that you’re ready for IVF, you’re assigned a Nurse Coordinator.  Ours is Rachel and she is so sweet and very organized.  Rachel gave us our checklist and guess what…..more tests!  I am actually grateful for the testing. We are about to put $20K towards IVF and we want to make sure we have the best chance of it working.  Here is how the testing breaks down….

Cycle Days One-Three

Baseline Ultrasound and blood work:  The nurse practitioner performed the ultrasound to look at the lining of my uterus and each ovary.  When looking at the ovaries, she counted my follicles (which ideally will each hold an egg).  On this date I had 32 follicles total and the lining of my uterus was the proper thickness.  Awesome….next step!

Cycle Days 6-11

SIS/Mock Transfer/Doppler Ultrasound:  I arrived at ORM for a 45 minute appointment covering three different tests.  Patrick came with me to hold my hand because the word on the street was that these tests were going to hurt!  They first did the mock transfer.  They feed a small catheter up to my uterus and use ultrasound technology to make sure it passes easily and accurately.  Everything looked good and we could move on to the S.I.S.

The SIS uses a catheter to feed saline solution into the uterus and check the lining.  This one hurt and I could tell the nurse practitioner didn’t like what she saw.  It was hard to see what she was seeing, but she walked me through it and gave us pictures….

There are two polyps on the inside of my uterus, each the size of an eraser that sits on top of a pencil.  The word “polyp got me panicked.  I was very upset with the news, but I also had a third procedure to complete. More on the polyps in my next post since it is a bigger story.

OK- onto the Doppler ultrasound.  This test measures blood flow in the uterus.  If the blood flow isn’t quite right they prescribe acupuncture.  Since I am already doing acupuncture, I was anticipating good results on this test.  Luckily this test went very well.  I needed a measurement of less than 3 (something).  All of my measurements were less than 2.  Thank goodness!  Being still so focused on the earlier news, I didn’t ask more questions about this test. I instead was just thankful I “passed.”

After the tests were over, I broke down crying in the exam room.  Patrick didn’t quite know what to do with me, but reassured me we were going to get through this.

We met with Rachel again and she let us know I would need to contact my OB to have surgery to remove the polyps before proceeding with IVF.  So defeating, but I just focused on what we needed to do to keep progressing forward towards Baby David!