My 2nd donation cycle is underway. Luckily for me, it's at Boston IVF again and it's certainly made everything much easier this time around.

I didn't have to go back for a screening trip since nothing should have changed since my first one. They just told me to rest for a full menstrual cycle after my last retrieval, and then they sent me my birth control pills. But, rather than taking the sugar pills in the 4th week of the pill pack, they had me skip that week and go straight into another birth control pack. What this means is that I won't have a period at all until they tell me to stop taking the pills - this is to synchronize my cycle with the Intended Mother's. I actually had a coworker explain to me before that she does this too. She is able to manipulate her periods with birth control pills so she only gets her periods every 3 months this way.

So, again I just have to be patient... still waiting to hear from my nurse when the egg retrieval week will be and when to start my injections and stop the pills. Nothing should really be different, but I'll keep up with my blog when I start the injections again - I'm expecting my body's response and side effects to be different, hopefully.

OHSS TIP: Speaking of side effects, I had spoken with another egg donor who told me that her clinic is instructing their new egg donor patients that they could try taking a decongestant, like Sudafed, to minimize the side effects of OHSS. That apparently the purpose of the medicine is to dry up the secretions in your body and that it could also work on the fluid in your ovaries. (When your eggs are retrieved, your ovaries fill up the empty follicles with fluid, and OHSS is caused when they pump out too much fluid.) Anyway, I wrote an email to my nurse at Boston IVF and she took it to Dr. Berger to find out if anyone had heard of this tip. He had not, but said it couldn't hurt and approved me to try it out. My nurse just added the caution that Sudafed can make your heart race and not to take it before bedtime.