PIO SHOTS

4 more days to go until our next embryo transfer, and last night was my first progesterone oil shot of the cycle.  I had to give it to myself which is extremely harder then you would think (and apparently I'm a bad ass - just keep reading LOL).  It took me 30 minutes & a phone call to my husband for encouragement to actually follow through and pull the plunger (literally).  I have to take these shots every night until the pregnancy test, and if pregnant all the way until the doctor says to discontinue (typically anywhere in the ballpark of 7-9 weeks gestation).  So lets discuss what these PIO shots are like in the eyes of a fellow blogger.  "This is not a school lesson, so let's have fun":

PIO shots are a pain in my ass! PIO stands for progesterone in oil, and seem to be a staple medication for many fertility clinics. Progesterone is essential for building and maintaining the lining of the uterus, as well as supporting the developing embryo.  There is a ton more information about progesterone, but this blog is not a school lesson, so let’s have fun.
They are not bad once you get a system down, BUT after having close to 100+ over the course of my journey, these still are the least favorite. SO since my FET (frozen embryo transfer) is right around the corner, let the PIO shots begin! 
1. It is an inch and a half long! You could actually spear fish with this needle. When someone comes at you with an effing 1 1/2 inch humongous needle you tend to not be okay with that. If you are, well frankly you are a sadistic freak. 
2. The medication is in oil. That makes it THICK which requires a fat gauge needle. So allow me to recap, long-A scary as hell needle, and it is also a mega large thick gauge. Boy, how did I get so lucky? Another thing about this oil awesomeness, it goes in so SLLLLLLOOOOWWW, You can’t lightning fast dart this crap in like the heparin shots, nope, it is like a 90’s Usher, nice and slow. 
3. We got a bleeder! Yep that’s right. Want to make your husband pass/flip the eff out? If you hit the wrong spot, you can hit a blood vessel which then turns things into a C budget horror movie. It doesn’t hurt when this happens more just shaves off a few years of the poor supportive partner administering your shot. 
4. This is a 2 person party.  Look, there are some hard core ladies out there who give themselves their own intramuscular butt shots.  They are the Chuck Norris’s of infertility patients.  I do not fall in that category.  This shot requires your dearest partner to jab you.  Partly because of the angle, more so because you have to check for blood in the syringe.
5. Did I tell you they are a pain in the ass.  Literally.
6. Ever waddle like a duck from shots?  Yep, 1 out of 7 shots I found will be a “bad” shot.  This means you will walk with a stylish limp when this happens for about a day.  If you are lucky to have 2 in a row that are bad, commence the non-pregnancy waddle.  Other nod to infertility being a jerk.
7. Heating pad, you are my only friend.  It heats the site where you had the shot.  Since it is oil, it helps disperse the medication and reduces knots.  It is also KNOT <- haha get it? a bad idea to stick the vial of medication in your bra about 15-20 minutes before the shot.  Although it is in a slow administering oil, this will warm it up and help it go in with less knotting.
8. EMLA-U-Lah-Lah! EMLA cream is a numbing agent and you can get/beg for an RX of this if you know you are in it for the long haul with these shots.  To spare you the trial and error stories, a tegaderm patch will help immensely.  Keep the cream on for 45 minutes prior to the shot and BAM, you won’t feel a thing.
9. You kinda need to take this around the same time every night.  This  makes planning evening/life activities down-right difficult.  We have had to sneak away in run-down bathrooms, abandoned areas of weddings, in the middle of dinner with friends, and my favorite: a close friend’s bedroom where there in-laws barged in on us in the middle of an injection.  Yeah, he totally narked on us too and my friend (thank God she knew our situation) had to delicately explain to her soon to be father-in-law we are not heroin addicts, just going through infertility procedures.  AWKWARD!
10. Early pregnancy symptoms and PIO shot side effects: THE SAME.  Eff you infertility for making me even more insane.  My boobs hurt from air, does this mean? I have weird cramping, could it be?  I have hormonal outbursts and want to strangle even Gandhi, COULD I BE PREGNANT? {insert infertility’s evil laugh} MUAH HA HA … That’s the progesterone my friend.

Husbands take on PIO:
Here’s the thing, there is no way to put a circular saw in someone’s hand that has never used one before and say, “Go ahead and cut through those 2x8s.” and expect that they will be totally comfortable with it.  But, that is kind of the situation with the PIO shots.  Sure, the fertility clinic will go over every detail with you as many times as you want.  But, I don’t care how many times you stab a foam block, it is an entirely different feel when you are sitting there with your dearly beloved’s butt in your face and have to stab her with this needle.  I did find a few things out though that may be of interest to share:
1.  First, don’t hesitate.  Nope, go for it like a dart motion.  If you hesitate and fail to fully commit, it is going to hurt her more for you to start stabbing again.  Also, quick out seemed to be the best thing for us.
2.  Next, I found out that certain points on her target area were better than others. She did better towards the inside and low.  You will see the quadrant thing that splits the butt into 4 sections and be told that it is the upper outside quadrant that these shots need to go into, so it is the lower-inner portion of the upper-outer quadrant  that I am referring to.  Confusing right?  But, if you pay attention to which regions were better than others (more importantly, which regions are worse) you can try to make everything a bit more predictable.
3.  She did not like a countdown and I did not like giving one.  It was just something else to stress about.  She knew she was going to get a shot and I knew to give it to her when everything was ready.  No fuss, just go through the motions.
4.  It is super important to initially pull the plunger back to see if you hit a vein after inserting the syringe needle.  We probably went through 100 PIO shots and never hit one.  Then, just the other day, it happened.  Just make sure to do this check!
5.  Make it fun in any way if possible.  We always had silly band-aids to use for her shot sites.  Scooby Doo, Angry Birds, Looney Toons, whatever can bring levity to the situation.

***A review then: stab her like you mean it, find her PIO “G” spot, sneak up on her to do the injection, always look for red leaks, and finally, laugh at the sticker you put on her butt.  Sounds like another great night in the House of Infertility.