these shots bled a lot.

i managed to do all 3 shots in 4 minutes. they're fast and i pre-primed them (i made sure there was a bead of medication at the tip of the needle) i prepared the menopur prior to recording. see previous post about how i did that. this time it went much more smoothly.

and yeah, you can see it

you can tell by watching that i wiggled the follistim pen around too much. i bet there'll be a bruise there tomorrow. theres a bruise on my belly where the follistim pen injection was yesterday. its cause i'm trying to twist down the plunger and i'm moving it too much. i contacted a nurse about that. they're going to get back to me.

the needles had 'issues' with breaking the skin. i think it might have to do with my slow entry and less than 90 degree angle. the sharp angle of the tip of the needle has a lot to do with the efficiency of the cut. i'm going to make sure i have the needle tip turned to the place it would most quickly break skin. like pointy tip in first. i hadn't paid any attention to that before.

this one is so bloody its almost comical. 

side effects to report -- aside from the physical reminders of multiple subcutaneous injections. there are a few red dots that are in the healing process. a couple small dime sized bruises at the injection sites.  my breasts haven't swollen to an uncomfortable size. they're kinda half sensitive. its not as bad as i thought it'd get.

and i do feel sexually neglected. this is the longest i think i've been abstinent with my husband. we usually have a very healthy sex life. Its strange not to do "it" for so long. thats the only thing that would make me think i might not want to do this again. 

i value the intimacy i have in my relationship, and i have to temporarily sacrifice my sex life for what? my fascination with fertility technology? my desire to be part of this new high tech world of tissue transfer? my drive to experience a real life application of the TDNA technology it takes to even synthesize these hormones that i'm taking? my respect and sympathy for an infertile rich woman who wants a baby so bad, she'd accept somebody else's ovum to make it work? is it the potential to make one of the MOST WANTED CHILDREN in the world? how badly must you want a child to go through this process that the 'intended parents' are going through?

is it altruism? 8 or 10 grand? the fact that this process is so easy? this experience is definitely making me re-evaluate how much i appreciate my own healthy sex life and how much i value intimacy with my husband... however temporary the delay. i mean, its only like a couple months. that is about 62 days. *sigh*

overall, though, i feel good and energetic. we CAN still be intimate. we just have to regress to our pre-sexin' times of more creative sexual expressions. 

i've been doing a lot of research about anti-egg donation organizations. there are people who think paying egg donors for this process is exploitation. it really fascinates me that people would feel so strongly about the process - and not even have any obvious religious bias towards the whole thing. theres a lot of misinformation at the core of these anti-egg donation people's philosophies, and thats that 'egg donors are not informed of all the risks involved' and therefor 'unable to make informed consent'

  i signed 3 legal forms disclosing every worst case scenario. i'm going to have to give routine blood tests and ultrasounds to make sure i'm doing okay and things are going as planned. 

they even go as far as to take out an insurance policy in my name in case of any complications with the process. the policy covers problems that might come up after the extraction. I signed up with 3 different agencies before getting chosen by an infertile couple. and each one disclosed the same risks that i hear about all over the internet and elsewhere. 

the funny thing i learned looking into anti-egg donation people's sites, though, was some crazy woman who donated like 11 times (which i hear most places wont let you) she wrote a book called 'confessions of a serial egg donor' i kind of want to hear what happened to her.