A whole lot of nothing

Not a whole hell of a lot to report from these parts, except that (gasp) I am still not pregnant. Period came and went, and so now I am prepping for our last shot with our frozen embryo.

The Boy and I have spent a lot of time talking about what's next and making plans, since we never thought we would get to this place and still find ourselves somewhat surprised to be on the statistical short end of the stick.

What have we recently learned?
- After putting back in 4 embryos (2 5day and 2 3day), I am still not pregnant, although I did manage to have a very low-beta chemical pregnancy.
- My hormone levels are all still good (my FSH is under 7, for chrissakes)
- My thyroid appears to be working too hard, as my TSH was 4, but all other thyroid and antibody levels normal. With daily synthroid, I'm at 2.1.
- I am heterozygous for the MTHFR mutation (no, I don't know which one), so am now also taking folgard and baby aspirin in addition to my prenatal.
- Despite everything, I continue to have clockwork cycles and ovulate regularly.
- We have blown through our insurance coverage, and will soon be paying out of pocket for everything.

So what are we going to do?
- We are going to switch doctors from the "very convenient, like our RE, like the nurses, takes our insurance, really don't like the clinic overall" to the "across town, very smart very nice RE, great lab, nicer space, more individualized attention, noticed some things in my chart that he would do differently" but can't start right away because their lab closes for a while this month.
- In the interim, we are going to do a non-medicated FET and use our last frozen 5-day blast this month. In fact, it's CD8 and I am all estrogened out (2x daily) and then will go in Friday for a lining check. Transfer date scheduled for June 15. Really looking forward to the 3x daily progesterone suppositories. I should buy stock in whomever makes pantyliners, since I'm keeping them in business. (I hate that word -- panty. It's ridiculous. Makes the whole situation seem like something out of a 1960's era sitcom.) Incidentally, I think it's pretty entertaining that they consider 2x daily estrogen, 3mg cetr.otide, and 3x daily progesterone to be unmedicated. I guess it's the lack of lu.pron that earns it that label?

How do I feel about all of this?
The FET is a throwaway -- I have no hope that it will actually result in a pregnancy or child, but I figure I might as well use the embryo since I already have it. I was kind of hoping to have 2 shots on goal, and be able to try naturally and transfer the embryo back in, but apparently they frown upon that at my current clinic, so this weekend I will be shooting up with cetrotide to prevent ovulation. I think it sort of stinks, but I'll live.

I'm anxious about switching clinics, not because I don't think they will do a good job, but because I know that I will expect it to work the first time there. And that's a lot of pressure on me and on everyone else involved in this process. And, although this is probably weird, I feel bad about leaving my RE, as she has been really quite nice and pretty responsive most of the time. I wanted our relationship to end with me heading off to the OB with a healthy pregnancy, and somehow I feel disloyal for even meeting with other REs. That said, I can't keep doing the same thing over and over, and so need to go with something different. But I feel bad, all the same.

Am I excited about any of this? Hard to say. I'm starting to believe that this never is going to work.

Where are we going now?

I like to have a plan. Because having a plan means that there is something that I can do to change things and that means that I can have some control over what is going on. So I have a plan

In fact, let me be more clear: my husband who has been just awesome throughout this whole process, made a plan for me on Wednesday morning (day of test), and since he is pretty thorough, he made a plan for both a positive and negative result. Obviously, since my life generally sucks, we are now executing on the "negative" plan.

Here it is:
- Email RE to ask (a) what she thinks she has learned about my ability to actually have a baby from this 2nd failed cycle; (b) get her impressions on this cycle vs. the last one; and (c) discuss next steps
- Make a second opinion appointment with another RE and arrange to get records for that visit
- Make weekend plans so that I don't just stay in bed and mope.

We've actually made pretty good progress with this plan, and have learned at least some useful stuff:
- RE still doesn't see anything that leads her to believe that I am going to have a hard time getting pregnant. In her view, I'm just falling on the lousy side of the stats, but there is nothing she sees that leads her to believe that there is anything wrong other than the fact that I am old and so the percentage of good eggs I have is lower.
- We are going to run a bunch of bloodtests just in case: genetic karyotype for me and the boy, and then a bunch of immunological tests for me, even though I am not exhibiting any of the indicators that this is a problem (e.g., recurrent miscarriage. I'm more of a recurrent implantation or embryo failure). We will then have more info, and that can't be bad, right?
- I have a 2nd opinion meeting on Wednesday at 8am, and will get my pile of med records tomorrow.
- Boy made a ton of weekend plans, so we were out of town all day Saturday and then Sunday went to a museum for an exhibition preview and then to brunch. And then yesterday pm we had time to nap and then I went for a long-ish walk with the dog in the park, which was lovely. So limited moping time.

I also managed to slice the tip of my thumb off on Wednesday (yeah, banner day, I know) and so have had some dealing to do with that. Again, better than moping. (Ok, maybe not the optimal way to keep from moping, but pretty distracting!)

So yeah, I feel sorry for myself, and yeah, I think that this is all horribly desperately unfair, but we have a plan and are moving forward and my body is moving along just as it always does and I got my period right on time 3 days after stopping the progesterone. And like always I will ovulate on day 14, and get my period on day 29. Because this part of my body is reliable like that.

Next steps? Bloodletting for the tests, try on our own this month, and then another cycle next month unless we learn something surprising from the blood tests.

Sigh. I'm so tired of this. I'm really emotionally and physically beaten down by the whole thing, but somehow having all of these activities to do and interim deadlines to think about make me feel just a little bit better. Honestly, though, I'd rather just have a baby.