Progesterone Injections

For those of you who have never been through IVF or egg donations, one of the highlights of the entire experience is when your Dear Husband (DH) gets to give you progesterone injections in your booty. The only nice part of this is the recommendation that the site be rubbed for 10 minutes after the injection so the oil does not leave lumps in the muscle and heat should be applied to aid absorption. This my DH has done quite faithfully, however he does time it for exactly 10 minutes.

I am a nurse and my DH is a software engineer so you can imagine how happy we were to step into this new phase of the fertility journey.

For those of you who know my DH this also has significantly high humor value. He is very technical and likes specific directions and wants to know what to expect. He does not do well when the unexpected happens. Here are just a few of the situations in which he has found himself over the last few days.

One night he removed the needle and immediately poked himself in the finger. He gave my shot with blood dripping from his own finger.

One night a trickle of blood came from the injection site, he stopped the flow of blood with his finger, not the same night that he had the bloody finger.

One night the progesterone and oil erupted from the injection site like a geyser, he damned that leak with his finger as well.

One night the injection left a nasty bruise, which he thought was his fault because he did not rub it for the full 10 minutes and apply the heat as recommended.

I have to say, he has done much better than I could have hoped, but my hips are getting a bit sore now. I have actually flinched to hard that I thought for sure that the needle must have been pulled out.

If we are pregnant the injections continue for a total of about 12 weeks, if not they weill stop after the beta HCG (blood pregnancy test). Wish us luck as we continue our journey!

Bottoms up!