Triggered!

Thank God. I've never been so happy to do an IM injection in my life.

I mostly coasted yesterday, with 37.5 units of Menopur in the morning and 37.5 units of Follistim in the evening, because my estrogen level shot up quickly. It was only 1,100 on Wednesday, but on Thursday it doubled to 2,200, and by yesterday it reached 3,700.

The coasting seemed to help, because it was back down to 2,700 today. Retrieval will be Monday morning. We're going to stick around for at least two days after retrieval, because the clinic wants me nearby to monitor for OHSS.

On a much more fun note, I slept in until 11:15 today. Well, technically, I dragged myself out of bed at 6:45 to be at the clinic by 7:15, but as soon as I was done there, I came back to the hotel room and went straight back to bed. It's been a long time since I've slept that long!

Once I finally got up for good, we went to Vail. We've never been there, so it was fun to see. It was absolutely beautiful! We walked around Vail Village, which features a very picturesque creek running through it. (Being from the Southwest desert, we're easily excited by any scenery that includes water, or trees for that matter. And trees ever-so-lightly dusted with real snow - it's almost beyond imagination! :-) )

On top of all the gorgeous scenery, we also got our pooch fix. We're missing our furbabies; we've never been away from them for this long. In Vail Village, there was a couple walking around with a pair of Bernese Mountain Dogs, and another person also had a BMD.

I love big dogs, and I've wanted a BMD for a while now. The gentleman who was part of the couple with the BMDs told us that they rescued theirs from a breeder. They said some of the top breeders destroy BMD puppies that aren't show quality, because they don't want them to wind up in the gene pool for future breeding if they aren't top quality. He said some of those breeders will let you rescue a puppy for a fraction of what their show pups cost, as long as you sign a contract agreeing not to breed the pup.

I was horrified. I worked for a while at our local animal shelter, and our entire zoo is comprised of rescues. Two of them are purebred Australian Cattle Dogs, and I belong to a couple of e-mail lists for that breed and another. Most of the breeders on those lists have the motto "if you don't rescue, don't breed." I've never heard of breeders destroying puppies that aren't show quality.

I think we'll consider a BMD at some point, as long as we can find one via rescue. But right now probably isn't the best time for that; as much as it pains me to think of any of our babies passing away, right now our furbrood is big enough, so we don't need to be adding to it.