We are now in another waiting phase. These things seem to never end. We met with Dr. Amols on Tuesday to discuss finances and our options. A cycle of IVF with a transfer is going to end up costing $4,800 minus whatever the insurance company feels like paying plus the medications. Fortunately for us, our prescription insurance is pretty awesome and will cover most of our medications, which can get really pricey. The problem we are having now outside of the financial part is the process we would have to go through for the IVF cycle. How a normal cycle with Dr. Amols works is 3 subcutaneous medications a day leading up to the retrieval of the eggs and then an intramuscular trigger shot 36 hours before the retrieval, then after the retrieval I will go on birth control until we are ready for the transfer, then we’ll do 2 weeks of daily intramuscular progesterone shots until we find out if we are pregnant, and then 12 weeks of daily intramuscular progesterone shots. This causes a problem because of my needle phobia. While I can do the subcutaneous shots now, most of that is due to the numbing cream eliminating the pain aspect of the injection which helps with a good chunk of the phobia. The numbering cream can only go skin deep, so an intramuscular shot is still going to be incredibly painful and probably cause severe anxiety and panic attacks for me. Neither of which are good when you are trying to get pregnant. The IVF nurse we spoke to at the appointment is going to talk to Dr. Amols for us and see if we can do all subcutaneous shots since there is a subcutaneous trigger shot, and if we did a ‘natural’ transfer cycle we could possibly do progesterone suppositories instead of shots. The ‘natural’ transfer cycle would be basically doing the same prep for an IUI and doing the transfer instead of the insemination 36 hours after the trigger shot. This would effectively make my body think it was a natural pregnancy so we could just use the suppositories and I should be able to generate the hormones I need myself. If we can’t do the alternate method we may not be able to do the IVF cycle (read: decide not to do it because of the additional stress it would cause) and would then look more into adoption. We are hoping Dr. Amols will be open to the alternate method and we can still try doing the IVF cycle.
Unrelated note, on Saturday Matthew and I were in a car accident on the freeway. We were rear ended on the 60 when the vehicle in front of us slammed on their brakes which caused us to have to slam on our brakes, and the guy behind us had looked down and so he ran into us. I have some stiffness in my neck and shoulders and Matthew has some pain in his neck and back, but other than that and some damage to the car we are safe and fine.
Are They Twins? 