Injection day 1: the voicemail.
After I got home from my baseline appointment, I completely crashed.
I was exhausted. Between the early alarm, the commute into Manhattan, the appointment itself, and everything that had been emotionally building over the last few months, my body was done. I took a nap.
When I woke up, I had a voicemail from the fertility center.
Everything looked good.
I was officially cleared to start my fertility medications that night.
It felt strange hearing those words. For months, this had been something I was researching, planning for, budgeting for, reading books about, and mentally preparing myself for. And then, with one voicemail, it became real.
This wasn't something I was going to do anymore.
I was doing it.
Also in the voicemail
My next monitoring appointment had already been scheduled for Thursday morning. I didn't need to call back or confirm anything — they had already put it on the calendar. During a process where every day seems to involve another phone call or another thing to remember, it was nice to have one less decision to make.
The bloodwork results
Not long after, I got an email saying my bloodwork results had been uploaded to the patient portal.
I immediately opened them.
And honestly... I found it frustrating.
There were numbers. Abbreviations. Reference ranges. But no explanation. No context. No indication of what any of it actually meant. Just lab values sitting on a page.
I found myself staring at results labeled hCG, E2, and FSH, wondering whether I was supposed to feel relieved, concerned, hopeful, or indifferent. How could I possibly know? It felt like being handed the answers to a test without ever seeing the questions.
Baseline bloodwork — June 14, 2026
| hCG | <4.0 mIU/mL |
| Estradiol (E2) | 62 pg/mL |
| FSH | 11.6 mIU/mL |
At the time, these numbers meant absolutely nothing to me. I didn't know if they were good or bad, what the clinic was looking for, or why these specific hormones mattered. I just knew that whatever they saw was enough to tell me to start injections.
You spend so much time waiting for test results. And then when they finally arrive, they're often delivered without anyone explaining what you're actually looking at. You're left trying to decipher whether the numbers are good or bad by Googling medical abbreviations or waiting for someone else to eventually interpret them for you. For a process that's already filled with uncertainty, it felt like one more place where patients are expected to navigate the unknown on their own.
And with that one phone call, everything shifted.
Tonight would be my very first fertility shot.
Injection night
I don't remember the exact time I started, but I think it was somewhere around 5:30 or 5:45 p.m.
I'd purposely set aside enough time before dinner because I had a date that night. We'd planned it over a week earlier, before I knew this would be my first injection day, and I really didn't want to cancel. In hindsight, having somewhere to be afterward was probably a blessing — it forced me to keep moving instead of sitting with my anxiety all evening.
The Follistim
Of the two medications, Follistim felt much more straightforward. I watched the instructional video while I followed along with everything laid out in front of me, and thankfully the supplies actually matched what was shown. That sounds like a small thing, but when you've never done anything like this before, every little confirmation that you're doing it correctly matters.
The Follistim pen itself was pretty intuitive. It wasn't enjoyable by any means, but it felt manageable. One thing to remember: the pen needs to go right back into the refrigerator after you've inserted the cartridge and finished your injection.
The Menopur
Then came the Menopur. That was an entirely different experience.
Suddenly there were multiple needles, multiple syringes, vials, alcohol wipes, sodium chloride, powder medications, and all these tiny steps that had to happen in exactly the right order. It wasn't just giving yourself a shot anymore — it felt like becoming your own pharmacist.
You have to mix the sodium chloride into the 75 IU Menopur vial yourself before you can even inject it.
What made it even more stressful was that my syringes and needle sizes didn't quite match what was shown in the instructional videos. The overall process was the same, but visually it looked different enough that I kept second-guessing myself.
What was going through my head
Was I holding the right syringe? Was this the right needle? Did I mix it correctly? Was I about to do something wrong?
The moment I almost cried
Right in the middle of all of it, my brother FaceTimed me.
I answered — mostly because my hands were already full and I wasn't really thinking. He immediately saw the look on my face. I was trying not to cry.
I hadn't expected this part to hit me so hard emotionally.
I told him I'd have to call him back. Apparently he hung up and immediately called my mom. A few minutes later my phone started ringing again. Now it was her.
Guys... please stop calling me. I'm trying really hard to keep it together.
It wasn't that anything had gone wrong. It was just... this isn't a normal experience. You're voluntarily sticking yourself with needles for the first time because you're trying to preserve a future you hope you'll have someday.
That's a strange sentence to even write.
There's a real mental hurdle you have to get over before you can push that needle into your own body. The videos show you the mechanics. They don't show you what it feels like to be alone in your apartment, deciding to do it. No one really prepares you for that part.
How the first night ended
By the end of the night, I had done three injections.
Injection log — night one
One Follistim injection on my right side. Two Menopur injections on my left side. The Menopur definitely burned going in — not unbearable, but a noticeable stinging sensation that the Follistim didn't have.
When I finally finished, I remember thinking how bizarre it felt that, all of a sudden, I was expected to know how to mix medications, change needles, calculate doses, and inject myself. One day earlier, I had never held one of these syringes. Now I was doing it alone in my apartment.
Looking back, I'm actually grateful I had dinner plans immediately afterward. It forced me to shower, get dressed, leave the apartment, and think about something other than fertility treatment for a few hours.
Physically, I felt completely normal that evening. No pain. No bloating. No side effects that I noticed. Everything I would feel came the following morning.
But emotionally, that first night was one of the biggest hurdles. Because it was the night the process officially became real.