Retrieval is Thursday!

We have a retrieval date! I am so happy that I won't be stimming till the day I die! The retrieval will be this Thursday, 7/21, with an expected day 5 transfer of Tuesday, 7/26.

Tonight I will take my final dose of Lupron (which I was provided by the nurse this morning -- hopefully it was worth six hours in the car today). Tomorrow morning I take my last stims. Tomorrow night, at a time TBA, I trigger, and sometime Thursday morning is the retrieval.

Right now I have six large follicles on my right ovary (as the u/t said on Saturday, "That ovary is JUICY!"). I have two sizable follicles on the left (underachiever).

I am done feeling inadequate with my follicle count. I have chosen to love my body and appreciate whatever it gives me. I can feel that it is really trying and for that I feel nothing but gratitude. It must be hard to do more than six times your normal workload!

I am thankful for the eggs that I do have growing and I do not wish to have any more. Honestly, my right side is uncomfortable enough with the six and their smaller buddies that I can't imagine how it must feel to have more, or to even overstimulate.

I'm also very thankful that my lining is at a 10. It has doubled since Saturday! In all my clomid cycles, my lining never got thicker than a 7.6, and it still has a few more days to grow. I feel like this time it will be a nice squishy inviting-looking home.

I am hoping for four embryos. Any more than that are an added bonus. I'm hoping for two to transfer and two to freeze. That may be an ambitious goal but it's my goal nonetheless.

My mom went with me today because I didn't ask A to take a day off work just for bloodwork and an ultrasound. It was a very cool experience for her, as she has been just dying to get involved in this process. She got to see all my follicles on the screen and she was amazed by all of the science behind the process. The follicles on my right side are all squished together, so the nurse kept saying "I can't really measure this guy, he's getting squashed by his friend." It made me laugh.

I'm feeling positive despite some discomfort, but I have not yet started hoping. I can't let my mind wander to belly bumps and fetal heartbeats. I need to remain detached for now.

Hope you are all well.

When plan A fails, and plan B fails, and plan C fails...

What a crazy day.

I went to the hospital this morning and had my ultrasound. I have a 17, 14, and 11 on my right ovary, along with a bunch of smaller ones. The left has a 13 and a bunch of smaller. I'm a bit wary of how many mature eggs we're going to end up having.

Then I went upstairs to get my blood drawn. They didn't have my orders. I told them I needed LH, estradiol, and progesterone, but they refused to draw it without the doctor's orders. It was 9:30 am and my doctor's office's phones were already off because they're only open from 8-10...in a different time zone.

Oddly enough, there was another patient there who also sees my RE, but in a satellite office, and her blood orders were missing too. I blame the hospital, not the doctor's office. This hospital has been known to be incompetent.

Anyway, the other girl was on the phone with the satellite office -- and they were still open! So I spoke to that nurse who called the top secret "back line" at my office and got the orders faxed.

The nurses woke me up from a nap later with the news. Obviously, we're not ready for retrieval yet. It's getting pushed to Wednesday, possibly Thursday. Which means I need way more drugs, which means I don't have enough. And tomorrow is Sunday so there's no way I can get them in time.

So I'll be taking an unexpected day off on Monday to drive 6 hours and go to the RE for my ultrasound/bloodwork instead of doing it in town. They'll give me enough Lupron for the rest of the cycle.

All of this took about three hours of phone calls/waiting to get figured out.

I know my ovaries are still small but I'm starting to feel a little bloated, and after 9 days of stimming I'm disappointed that I still have several more days ahead of me.

IVF is officially not fun and easy anymore.

bloat.

Oh, so this is what everyone means when they talk about bloating.

Appointment tomorrow morning. I can't wait to find out what they see in there because I have felt a lot of activity the past two days. Tingling, twinging, just general busy-ness.

My pregnant friend at work got put on bedrest for the last few weeks of her pregnancy and a C-section is scheduled for 8/3 (the baby is breech).

Incidentally, my beta is currently scheduled for 8/3.

Things are about to get interesting.

Blah.

I’m disappointed. I have five follicles on my right and six on my left. I was hoping for more than this…like twice as many as this.

Can I hope to get more still or do I basically get what I have now and watch them grow bigger?

The good news is that they are all pretty uniform in size. Hopefully I don’t need to worry about a dominant follicle.

Now the waiting by the phone game.

Edited to add: We have kicked it up a few notches from 1 Bravelle, 1 Menopur to 2 Bravelle, 3 Menopur. That should get those babies producing! I go back on Saturday.

IVF word vomit

Note: this is really jumpy and random, sorry!

Today is day 4 of stims (FSH) and it’s going very well. I had A mix the first two injections and I mixed yesterday’s and today’s, but I’m still having him inject me. I’m doing the Lupron on my own consistently each night, but the FSH just seems scarier. It seems like that syringe gives some resistance and I’m a bit nervous to try it.

I don’t feel bloated at all and I’m a little worried. That will come later right? It’s probably too early to feel bloated.

We did the first FSH injection in my belly like we’ve been doing the Lupron, but I noticed it was sore every time I bent over and my waistband touched the injection site. So we switched to using the thigh and it’s working a lot better. Lupron remains in the belly.

I’m superstitious about this process. I had a hard time mentally adjusting to thigh shots because in my unscientific brain, the shots should go in my abdomen because my ovaries are located in my abdomen. My ovaries aren’t anywhere near my thighs.

Don’t bother explaining how irrational this is to me. I know. I understand that the medicine isn’t getting injected into my ovaries when I use the abdomen and that my bloodstream is my bloodstream no matter where I inject. But it was still a silly little mental hurdle.

I like doing IVF. Please don’t hold this against me later when I am crying about how much I hate doing IVF. What I mean is, I like it a lot more than IUI. There’s more to do, I think the injections are interesting, and it feels like I’m really doing something as opposed to just taking clomid for five days. I realized with a jolt of excitement yesterday that my retrieval is next week – wow!

I’m a bit nervous about the cryopreservation factor of this equation, since that was just introduced last Thursday. I’m nervous both that we won’t have enough embryos to freeze and that we will have way more than we could possibly use. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My pregnant ex-BFF that I write about all the time completely ignored my birthday. Not so much as a text or a facebook message; this is the first in many years that this has happened. But I am a good person and I am still sending her a shower gift. I really, truly, hope this doesn’t go unnoticed.

I am keeping a detailed spreadsheet of costs for this cycle. So far, just for drugs and two office visits and blood work, it has cost me $363.88 and my insurance company $4505.41. I am thankful for my insurance coverage with every breath I draw these days.

I go on Wednesday for my first follicle check. Keep everything crossed for me.

I won't say it's been the worst birthday ever...

Last night A and I loaded up the pups for the second time to start the long trek to the RE. This time we had to be there in the morning, so we spent the night at my parents' house last night. We slept fitfully on an air mattress all night while our dog paced around because she hates when her routine is broken (me too, sister).

Luckily, the drive went smoothly this morning. The first thing they did when I got there was take my blood, and it was the most painless needle prick I've ever had, which is saying something considering I had barely had anything to drink all morning.

Then, I went into the ultrasound room and was reunited with my old flame: the dildocam. It had really been too long since I had felt its probing touch. It was determined that my ovaries were sufficiently suppressed. (Thanks Lupron!)

This is where it started sucking. I have had what I've been calling "a fake period" for two weeks now. Light-to-medium spotting, enough that I need a tampon at all times, while my body tried desperately to have a period despite the BCP I had been taking. Well Tuesday I took my last BCP and that has opened the floodgates. My flow is pretty heavy and I'm crampy.

I hopped off the exam table and got dressed, moving directly to the rest room to return a tampon in its rightful spot. Some stupid dude was in there and would NOT come out, leaving me to hop around outside the bathroom hoping I wasn't bleeding too much all over my clothes. The nurse who was to do my appointment kept asking me if I was ready and I kept saying no.

Slow bathroom dude finally came out, so I rushed in there to do my thing. Such was my hurry that halfway through the tampon insertion (which wasn't going so smoothly since they were the dr-provided ones and not my usual brand), some girl just walks right in the bathroom, because I had neglected to lock the door. I was mortified.

Then we proceeded to our calendar/consent meeting. We got our calendar with the remainder of our injection information and our tentative retrieval/transfer dates. She showed us how to do the Bravelle/Menopur injections.

The hubs and I had previously decided not to do cryopreservation. But we had misunderstood the procedures the doctor's office follows, which means we pretty much must do the cryo. So that was a $1200 expense we were not planning on and that kind of shit stresses me out.

We left the doctor's office and I didn't even make it to the elevator before the tears started. I had a good hour long cry. I lamented all the things we could do with the money we're spending on the cycle. I cried because I was so broken that we had to do this in the first place. I cried because I'm scared, I have no idea how I'm going to react to the hormones I'm about to inject into my body, and because I was completely confused and overwhelmed by the injection demonstration.

I wept because there are just so many hard decisions to make, and I also wept because my husband is so good to me and says things like "The cost of this cycle is such a small price to pay to start our family" and "You can do this, we are already at the finish line, we just have to sprint the last few feet" and "You are so strong and you have no idea what you are capable of". I cried because I don't really deserve him.

I also cried because, goddamnit, it's my birthday, and why did the emotional breakdown have to come now??

Hopefully I sweated out all the stupid.

Tonight I did a bit of shopping. I am that girl that the retail workers hate because I take in a thousand items and purchase one (maybe). It's not my fault that I am a medium in some brands and an extra large in others. I always have to take in an 8 and a 10 in pants no matter what. So really it's the retail industry that is faulty, not me.

So I am pulling on and off lots of shirts and tank tops and capris and bras and the dressing room is tiny and all of a sudden I feel like I'm going to die. I am dripping with sweat and my heart rate is accelerated and the walls seem to be closing in on me (probably because I have cluttered the already small room with so many damn clothes).

I left the dressing room and tried to find a quiet place. I called my husband.

"I think I might be having a hot flash."
"Really?"
"Yeah. It feels like a panic attack. I'm incredibly hot and my heart started beating really fast. It was weird. I think it's the Lupron."
"It is supposed to do that?"
"Yeah."

So he said some supportive things and we hung up.

I proceeded to the checkout with a self-satisfied smile on my face. I am so strong. I am going through this difficult IVF thing and I am remaining cool headed about it. I am making so many personal sacrifices for my baby. I am so superior.

That's when I noticed a lady fanning her face with a coupon. And a guy fluffing out his shirt for some ventilation. And someone else dripping in sweat.

And it dawned on me. The air conditioning was not on. I was not having a hot flash. I am just an idiot.

Lesson learned.