I was pretty dang confident. We had passed our IVF prep course with flying colors. I was injecting foam balls like a champ, attaching and removing qcaps with ease, alcohol swabbing lids like there’s no tomorrow, and mixing meds like a mad scientist.

Keep in mind, I was introduced to most of this with my previous IUIs. Not to mention I’d also been known to vaccinate my horses on occasion. So yeah, confident.

The only difference this time, was that with my menopur shot, it was not going into my stomach like all the prior shots, but into my bum, also the first night I was to start my bum shots, Tim would be out of town for a conference. But no worries, the nurse showed me how to inject myself if your partner was not around. It just involved twisting your torso completely around while leaning forward at a 27 degree angle, standing on one leg, and facing due north.

Like I said, easy.

So I got my supplies out, mixed my dillutant with the powered medicine, drew it up in my needle, and walked into the bathroom to give myself a pep talk in the mirror. I slowly s l o w l y pushed the medication up the needle trying to get just one bead on the tip. All of a sudden 3-4 drops spilled out and I nearly cussed. You have to understand, every one of these vials costs around $100, so my nightly dose at the time ran me about $400. Every drop was liquid gold. I couldn’t understand why it happened but I returned to the task at hand as the injection time was getting close. (your shots have to be timed 12 hours apart)

Another aside, until now, as I mentioned, I had done shots in my stomach. Shots for your stomach come in much smaller needles. When you are injecting into the muscle, the needles are obscenely larger. I knew to expect this, but expecting it is one thing, holding it up in front of your widening eyeballs, hard metal glinting in the light, waiting to plunge down into your soft flesh is an entirely different matter.

But I psyched myself up, I used one hand to spread the skin taught, and stuck that stupid needle all the way in. Then I did cuss, loudly and lavishly. Adding insult to throbbing injury, you cannot just stick, inject and get it the hell out of there, you have to stick, and then, carefully draw back on the plunger to make sure you’ve not hit a vein, this is the worst. After confirmation that I was in the clear, I injected that precious medicine and withdrew the needle, with plenty of gauze at the ready.

Here’s the thing, I have a pretty high pain tolerance, when I’ve dislocated my shoulder, hyperextended my knee, and taken serious tumbles off my horse, I’ve dusted it off fairly easily. So when this shot was approaching the upper levels of what I can tolerate with a grin on my face, I started to think.

That needle was huge.

Like, not dissimilar in size to ones I’ve used on my horses. HORSES.

It was very thick and long, I started to think back to the ones I used in my IVF class, I was sure they were different.

So I hobbled over to IVF supply basket. (Pro tip from a friend, get one large and shallowish basket where you keep all your supplies and use it to set up your IVF station.)  I pulled out my bag with needles and syringes. I saw more of the fiendishly large needles in the bag, but upon closer inspection, noticed a pack of different needles, the same length, but about 1/4 as thick. With growing horror I pulled them out and realized, I had used the needles for withdrawing the medicine, to inject my poor bruised and bleeding bum. You can see a photo at the top comparing the sizes of the horrible needles.

You guys, fertility treatments are hard, there’s a lot of math, attention to detail, science, and stress, (not really my favorite things) and sometimes you just have to laugh when it all goes wrong. I confessed my mixup with my nurse who winced sympathetically and I’m sure wrote on my file after I left that bless my heart I was a little slow and required more clear and simple instructions in the future. I confided in another friend who’s done IVF who made me feel loads better by telling me she had also done the same thing.

So what do you when it all goes wrong? You laugh, you learn, and you move on, stress and dwelling on mistakes are harmful at any time in your life, but especially so when undertaking IUIs or IVF. So relax friends, breathe in deep, and focus on the things you CAN control in your life, your diet, your thoughts, your activities, what you read and watch, and do your best to let go of the mistakes and things out of your control.

After all, “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet.”

– L.M Montogomery