The injections are getting more routine now, Louis is a pro. I only had a headache that first day, and then a little bit of nausea for a couple days. But now I mostly feel normal again. My resting heart rate is starting to climb, so that’s the only indicator that something is happening.
Tomorrow is finally follicle check ultrasound #1. Eventually we’re hoping to see as many follicles of equal size as possible, and hoping not to see a “lead follicle”. Having a lead follicle would mean that all the LH I’m injecting is only growing one egg, and that would be quite a waste of an IVF cycle, since that’s what the body does naturally. We need to get as many eggs as possible so that there’s a chance for one of them to fertilize and be chromosomally normal and growing properly.
As far as the follicle size we’re looking for, according to this paper: Follicle Size on Day of Trigger Most Likely to Yield a Mature Oocyte , “Follicles 12–19 mm on the morning of trigger administration were most likely to yield a mature oocyte”. So that’s what we’ll be hoping for towards the end of this coming week, very broadly. It’s more complicated than that, because you have to take into account estrogen levels, cycle day, and many other factors, so in the end we may not entirely understand or be able to predict exactly when the Dr. thinks it’s time to pull the hCG trigger. There are thousands of research papers on the subject of just this topic, and the internet is full of speculation, so I won’t even begin down that path!