Alright today’s a super fun topic. Not.

If you go down the IVF route, you need to get used to giving yourself needles daily. The meds you’re prescribed might be different depending on your age and fertility needs but here’s a run through of the ones I was using. Reminder, always check with a medical professional about how to use your meds and what dose you should be on. Extra research and YouTube videos can be helpful to learn techniques but you want to be very careful to follow your doctor’s instructions here as mistakes can screw up your cycle.

IVF medication

Menopur

Menopur is a medication to help stimulate ovaries to make eggs by providing different hormones such as follicles stimulating hormone (FSH) to increase egg production and luteinizing hormone (LH) to assist with egg maturation.

You’ll get supplies from your clinic and instructions on how to mix your own medication. You’ll get a vial of the Menopur and a vial of a diluent. Menopur is a powder so you have to mix it with the liquid diluent to get an injectable medication. This will be done with something called a Q-Cap which basically let’s you withdraw the amount of diluent you’ll be using and inject it into the Menopur bottle to convert the powder into an injectable solution.

Once your medication is mixed and the needle is ready to be used, always remember to do two things. First, sterilize your injection site to avoid risking an infection. Second, tap your needle upright to bring any air bubbles to the top and depress the needle plunger a little bit to push the air out of the needle tip until you see a drop of liquid come out. Always do this for any injection, regardless of the medication.

Then you’re ready to go. You’ll pinch you’ll skin around the injection area, for me that was my abdomen, and then you quickly drive the needle in and calmly inject yourself.

I found this video of instructions very easy to follow.

Honestly, after the first few times it’s not as scary as it seems. Remember to alternate which side of your body you inject yourself with each day to help with pain and bruising.

Gonal-F

While I was taking Menopur, I was also instructed to take Gonal-F.

Gonal-F is another medication to help stimulate the growth of your eggs in order to help them reach the size they need in order to harvest at the end of the month. It’s a follicle stimulating hormone or FSH.

I’d say the Gonal-F process is far easier to use. The medication comes in a sort of pre-filled pen so all you need to do is dial the pen to the correct dose and put on a clean needle tip for each use. Then you inject yourself the same way, cleaning and pinching an area on your abdomen and depressing the end of the pen to push the medication into you.

This is the video I used to learn how to use a Gonal-F pen.

Cetrotide

About 5 days after starting Gonal-F, Cetrotide was added into my medication routine.

Cetrotide basically helps control the LH in your body, remember it’s responsible for maturation and ovulation. You want to control when an egg is released so you can time the cycle to retrieval as many as possible at once. No one wants some being naturally discarded through your regular cycle when you’re trying so hard to grow them, right?

This is another one you’ll be mixing yourself. You’ll get a syringe filled with a diluent which you’ll inject into the Cetrotide solution and mix. Once the liquid is mixed clear, you’ll draw it back up into the syringe and change your needles to the one you’ll use for your injection.

Much like the others, it’s a shot in your abdomen once a day.

Here’s a video I used on how to do it correctly.

Trigger shots

I had two trigger shots before my egg retrieval. They were hCG/Ovidrel and Suprefact/Decapeptyl. Big words that basically mean they cause or “trigger” ovulation. This happened about 35-24 hours before my egg retrieval and like all the other meds, were injected into my abdomen.

Side effects

You can get a whole host of side effects from these meds from headaches, to nausea, to bloating and more. Each med has different potential side effects so read all your documentation carefully to know what to expect.

For me, I had headaches the first few days as my body got used to the new regime. I also had bruising and redness around my injection sites. Eventually these went away but as you can see below, my abdomen was not pleased with me at first.

Always talk to your doctor about any side effects you experience. They may want to change your meds or your dosage depending on how your body reacts.