Once the Ultrasound Techs have noticed you have atleast one mature follicle which I mentioned previously is atleast 18mm they will have you "trigger." A trigger shot is another name for Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) which is a pregnancy hormone that encourages the production of progesterone. It ultimately triggers your ovaries to release eggs and ultimately narrows down the best time for conception. Trigger shots are usually given to women who have irregular cycles and those that do not ovulate which ultimately is the factor in why it was hard to conceive in the first place. It is often given to women like myself who is trying to conceive naturally, via IUI or even IVF. This shot can be administered by your doctor or at home. Typically once you have triggered your eggs are released within 36-46 hours. As you may have guessed prior to triggering you should have already begun having intercourse atleast every other day, the day of the trigger and every other day after then.
From this time you wait until day 21 of your cycle when you will have an appointment to check your progesterone levels. This test will determine if you actually ovulated or not. I've have heard and read that as long as your levels from the test are atleast 15 ng/ml you have ovulated however my fertility specialist says a minimum of 10 ng/ml when medically assisted. If your numbers are lower than that it typically means the cycle was anovulatory, meaning you did not ovulate. I fortunately did ovulate and up to this point all seemed well with the medically assisted cycles.
The last step was determining if the cycle was fruitful and you actually conceived. 7 days after the day 21 Progesterone test confirmed you ovulated you are to return for a pregnancy test and that is if your next cycle hadn't beaten you to the punch. I returned for the test and learned later that day unfortunately I was not pregnant and if I wanted to try again the next month to call them once again on cycle day one so they could call in my next prescription for Clomid and schedule my day 13 follicle check.
