Tuesday, June 1, 2010

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.