The progesterone shot is another intra-muscular shot, so the needle is longer than the ones used for the sub-cutaneous one. The needle also appears to be slightly thicker, because the oil is thicker than the other solutions/liquids that we have had to inject. This shot is the one that is said to be the most painful among all of the IVF shots for most women, but I don't think they're that bad. I've only had one that kinda burned a little - but most of them don't really bother me. I wonder if it seems more painful to the other women because it's the one that continues after all of the retrieval/transfer excitement is over with? I'm not sure - maybe I'm just crazy-lady-with-no-nerves. :) They tell us to keep taking these shots even if we start to spot (or appear to get a period) and to only stop these when they tell us to stop.
This afternoon I got a call from the nurse that my progesterone level was at 24.1. They just want it to be over 15 - so I'm well over that. She just told us to continue with the nightly shots as we have been and that they'd be calling next week with the results of my beta test (first pregnancy test). It is crazy to think that next Thursday I'll go in for another blood test and we'll have the results of our first test that afternoon to see if our little embryos attached or not. Of course a positive pregnancy test isn't a definitive answer since it's still really early in the pregnancy, but would definitely be a step in the right direction! We are definitely anxious to find out the answer - but just because there is a chance that it may be not-so-good news, part of me would be okay with putting it off for a few more weeks (if that makes any sense!). Only 7 more days! My IVF buddy is getting ready for her retrieval - so at least I will have their retrieval/transfer excitement to distract me during our waiting time. Everyone say some prayers and good thoughts for them as well! :)
We also got a call from the Reproductive Diagnostics lab this afternoon - it was actually, Kelly, our embryologist from our embryo transfer procedure. She said that of the 10 remaining embryos, they were able to freeze 6 of them. :) Four of them were frozen the day of the transfer and the other two were frozen yesterday. We are definitely relieved and grateful that we have some extra embryos for future use - not all couples end up having extra embryos to freeze. If we elect to do a frozen transfer, then we could skip right to the embryo transfer and save lots of time and money. I think they would still have me do the Lupron shots to "reset my cycle" - but we would definitely get to skip the Gonal-F shots, the many ultrasounds & blood tests, the HCG trigger shot, the egg retrieval, and the insemination/fertilization steps.
When we talked to Kelly about the freezing process on our embryo transfer day, she explained that they now use the vitrification process. Vitrification is ultra-rapid IVF embryo freezing instead of the traditional slow freezing process. To a science dictionary, vitrification is the process of converting something into a glass-like solid that is free of any crystal formation. This is important because ice crystal formation can be very damaging to frozen embryos. Vitrification in IVF can allow freezing of spare embryos with better post-thaw survival rates and higher pregnancy and live birth rates from frozen embryo transfer cycles. So we are glad to hear that they used the best method to freeze our embryos! If you want to see a little video that talks about the lab where our embryos are currently being stored, follow this link to my doctor's website and scroll down to the article from September 21, 2009. (I couldn't figure out how to link to the video directly - sorry!)
Last night I was talking to one of my friends about our IVF journey and she was saying that I should do infomercials for IVF and be their posterchild. We were joking about how at the bottom of my infomercial we'd have to have a disclaimer that said, "Results of this experience not typical." :) We are very, very, thankful for our smooth and pretty uneventful IVF journey thus far.