April 19th to 25th is Infertility Awareness Week.  As Tara and I were going through IVF this past Fall, I found myself picturing each step of the process in fun, obscure ways and decided to try and articulate it photographically.  These have all been published on my flickr, but now seemed like a good time to actually present it in a single body of work.  So check them out, and then go find someone who is suffering infertility and give them a hug.

Shoot Up

The number of syringes pictured here is only a fraction of the number of shots I had to give Tara over a span of 4 weeks leading up to the procedure.

 

Sharps Refuse

We were given a legit Bio-Hazard sharps disposal bin, which we basically filled up. 

 

Trigger Shot

Nearly all of the syringes were small, un-intimidating needles for subcutaneous injections.  But the last one, the trigger shot, was a massive intramuscular injection.  The nurse drew a target for me on Tara’s hip and gave instructions to pull the plunger back after inserting the needle to ensure I had not hit a vein.  If I had, blood would be pulled into the syringe and I would have to remove and inject in a different spot.  That’s if I had not already fainted.  Thankfully, I did not hit a vein.

 

Retrieval

The most invasive part of the process is the egg retrieval for which Tara was sedated and the eggs were removed from her ovaries in a manner that will not be described here, but involved the uterine wall and some kind of needle…

 

ICSI

Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection is the process in which the sperm is injected into the egg used for those whose sperm can’t do it on their own either due to Motility or Morphology issues.

 

Tara About to Become Pregnant 

Arriving at the clinic to have 2 fertilized eggs implanted back into her.  

 

Twins

We were fortunate to get twins on the first round of IVF.  Does that make us awesome?  No, it makes us damn lucky.  Here’s to those still waiting for their luck.