Friday, July 13, 2012

Catching a bit of a break

Wow.  Much has gone on in the past month or so, and I have about 3-4 posts worth of stuff bouncing around in my brain, but I guess the big infertility related news is...
... IVF #5 is off and running.  (But holy Sh*t.  Five?  That is waay too many needles.)

It's actually pretty amazing that this is working out.  My d&c was May 29 and the OB/ RE both said my period should come back in 4-6 weeks.  My clinic was closed for cycle starts until July 11, so if it came back early, I'd be on bcp's until just before the 11th.. AND, the complicating part about that is we are going away on vacation for two weeks on the 27th.  We will be driving distance away, but it would be pretty much impossible to be mid cycle while I was on vacation (especially since my clinic does daily morning monitoring the second week of stims).  So if I had not been able to start on the 11th or 12th, we would have just bagged this month and waited to start until August. And I would have been pissed off, since I already resent that I had to delay so much for the pregnancy that wasn't.

But, despite my fears that I would never get my period again and that this whole miscarriage and d&c sh*tshow had ruined everything, my period arrived at 9pm on July 10.  Pretty much exactly perfect timing.  Everything looks normal (although thanks to the new Dr. wielding the wand, I was too uncomfortable to really look at the screen. I have much to say about how I'd prefer not to be a training ground for vaginal ultrasounds, but perhaps another time) and there appear to be 10 or so antral follicles. (Back to the training wheels on the ultrasound wand.  He had an awfully hard time finding my left ovary, so I thought, what better way to break this uncomfortable tension than with a joke "Oh -- looks like they took it out when they did my d&c in May."  That got his attention and perhaps communicated the point that I was not entirely amused with all of the poking.)

So I am doing it -- tonight is 3rd night of shots and it's just like riding a bike, except with sharp needles and no fancy bell to ring.  Actually not like riding a bike at all, except that I remember what to do.

I'd really really really like this to work.  Out of the 4 cycles I have done, I've gotten pregnant 2x.  We've put back in a total of  9 embryos over those 4 cycles.  It took 5 to get to the one that is probably having a nap right now and another 4 to where there was a visible heartbeat.  Not terrible percentages. Not fabulous, but neither is being 42 and trying to have a second child.  (Incidentally, can you all tell that I retreat to numbers and meaningless analysis when I am stressed? There are so many statistical errors in how I am thinking, it makes my head spin.  Yet somehow I find it comforting.)

Please please work.