Let’s get stimming! Stims injections begin.

This is it. Everything we have been working towards. Stims. Or stimulation injections.

This is the part of the IVF cycle where I inject myself daily with hormones (Gonal-F and continuing with Buserelin but on a lower dosage) which will stimulate my ovaries to grow more follicles than usual in the hope that my body will release more eggs than usual.

In a normal month for the average woman, her body will grow one follicle, which is a fluid filled sac that houses the egg, and when the body releases a particular hormone called the luteinizing hormone, the follicle will release the egg. This is the phase of a woman’s cycle called ovulation.

The difference with IVF and the role of the Gonal-F is to stimulate more follicles to grow so that more eggs will be released when the doctors collect them. The more good quality eggs you release, the more likely they are to be able to fertilised with the male sperm to produce embryos.

I have a good level of AMH (ovarian reserve – this shows a rough idea of how many eggs you have left in your body basically…) so the clinic have put me on quite a low dosage of Gonal-F because if I was on a too high dosage, I would be at risk of something called OHSS – Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome – where your body releases too many eggs and it can make the female incredibly ill.

They have said that even with the lower dosage, I should still respond well to this treatment and release a good amount of good quality eggs.

So yeah, this is a pretty important injection to begin. It’s much nicer than the down-reg injection because it is in a pre-filled pen injection so I don’t have to worry about drawing the fluid out of a vial and making sure it is the right amount etc.

I have also found it is much nicer to inject with too!

Right now I am feeling hopeful. I don’t feel excited because this isn’t an ‘exciting’ situation to be in, but I am trying to feel hopeful. Each new step is a lot closer to holding our baby than we have ever been. So I remain hopeful because our hope in God is all we have to keep us going.