ivf - day 34 - calendars are of utmost importance

I'm speaking to the choir to those who've gone through IVF, but if you haven't, trust me on this: you live, breath, die, and inject by your calendar.

It's seriously what you live by.

I think of it kind of like a syllabus in college classes. You know EXACTLY what you're doing each day, down to the very minute.

Just for fun, I thought I'd share my first cycle calendar with you. This was from my IVF cycle back in the summer of 2009. I was brand new at this and had no idea how much information would be thrown at me, so I just printed some calendar pages from a template in Word. As you can see, I filled them up rather quickly.


1st month (not so bad)

2nd month....oh my! I'm writing all over the place. You can see I'm tracking my follicles and my bloodwork, not realizing this is not NEAR enough room for that. I think I got one or two appointments on here and surrendered.

I had also pre-filled the important dates, like the egg retrieval and different appointments, not knowing they could change by a day or two here or there. Silly me.

3rd month....I've finished highlighting my days to the pregnancy test. I can still remember what a relief it was to highlight off that last day.

This cycle, I thought it would be more fun to make my calendars pretty. Considering it's a brutal process, I figured it needed some style, right?



To create my calendar pages, I just used 4 products. Very simple, I know.

• Calendar Pages - sold out, but we will manufacture something similar at the end of 2010, and you don't want to miss out :)
  
• Months Stamps - These will be back in stock by Tuesday
  
• Noah Stamps
• Stampin' Up! Ink: Old Olive, Rose Red, Summer Sun, Going Gray, Not Quite Navy
  

At the top of each calendar page, I've just documented a few sentences about what's happening that month, or what I'm hoping to happen. Then, I'm documenting my appointments, injections, oral meds, etc, so I don't forget anything.

These are hanging above the desk in my office on a magnet board. I like having a visual in front of me at all times. Before, I highlighted the days off, but this time, I'm not doing that, just keeping the calendar in front of me helps tremendously. So far, so good, I haven't forgotten anything yet.

I'll be sure to post the entire calendar toward the end of my cycle so you can see how it compares to last time.

If you've been through IVF before, I'd be interested to know how you kept track of all your appointments and such (especially if you kept track of your follicles - more on this later). Just comment here or shoot me an email if you'd like.

Last, here's the update for me this cycle:

• On Tuesday, I was lowered to 5 iu's of Lupron.
• Saturday, I started my stimulation meds: 150iu Follistim at 6:30am and 75iu at 6:30 pm. I also have 75iu of Menopur at 6:30pm and 5iu's of Lupron at 6:30am.
• My first Estradiol check (E2) and ultrasound will be on Wednesday.

Grow follicles grow!