IVF #5 Journal

Friday Dec 28:
Awesome. I've started AF.  Or whatever this is...bleeding from stopping BCP's. Is that the same thing? At least I don't have any cramping or pain issues. My u/s and bloodwork were fine. All good to go for stims!

Wednesday Jan 2:
Sigh. Not the u/s I was hoping for.  I've had four days of stims (375 of Follistim, 75 of Menopur) and I knew I wasn't feeling much activity in my ovaries.  U/s confirmed my thoughts.  Tech said I had 13 follicles.  12 of which were too small to be measured (one measured 11mm). That is NOT good. I'm waiting on a call from the IVF nurse in Birmingham to tell me what to do next.  I went back and read my blog from my last IVF and I had a slow start just like this one but they did eventually catch up.  I'm hoping the same thing happens.  My local nurse said I should prob expect around the same numbers as my last round.  I guess that's decent for being five years older....although it causes me great disappointment.   Up until this point, I wasn't rattled by all of this (well, that's not counting the Houston post office losing my injectable medications from overseas but that's another story).  I actually felt calm through all 4 days of stims and was just curious what other peoples follicles were like on day 5...I shouldn't have googled and I shouldn't have compared my body to others.  What it did was cause me to loose sleep and have total unnecessary anxiety about something I can't control at all.

With us freezing all embryos (if we can even get to that point that is) my uterine lining measurement isn't a "thing" this time around...not until the transfer anyway. At least that's one less thing to worry about.  Will we even be able to get any mature eggs? Will any fertilize? Will ANY make it to freeze?  If I don't have any to freeze, surrogacy isn't even an option.  Sure, I might be borrowing trouble right now but it's really hard to not think about it.

I'm on the brink of tears and now I remember why IVF is just plain hard.  Oh Lord, calm my heart and mind.  I'm just miserably sad and I don't know if it's just hormonal or what...I honestly didn't want to put as much hope into this as I am.  I really tried to stay emotionally unattached but with the amount of money one has to shell out for this, it's really hard not to be.  I haven't let my mind wonder to the thoughts of being pregnant again or the joy/dream of having another baby...and yet, it happened and it's crushing me.

I just spoke with the Birmingham nurse. Pretty much this is worst case scenario happening.  I'm just not responding to the meds like I should and the nurse is leaving it up to us if we want to cancel the cycle.  We were given three options. 

1. Cancel now and wait until AF to start a more aggressive protocol
2. Go in Sunday at 7:30am to Birmingham (which is a 2 hour drive) to check growth after 4 more shots and decide to cancel or continue based on my numbers
3. Go in to the local RE clinic Friday to get a growth check-but with only 2 days of stims, it's prob not worth it

As of right now, we decided to try for 4 more days and see what happens on Sunday.  I feel like I can't catch a break.  It's never easy, is it?