Wow, this week has been busier than I anticipated! Fortunately, I am finding healthy ways to cope with my anger and am starting to feel more like myself again. Sandra and I did a 4-mile run in my neighborhood on Tuesday before meeting Elena and the taco gang for tacos, and I rode my bike with Ellen today after I got out of class. Richard is also off for the next few days, so I'm enjoying having him around more.
It also helps that this IVF cycle is looking more promising than the first one. At this point in our first cycle, we had to make the difficult decision to move forward with four follicles or convert to IUI. My RE was hesitant about triggering on day 7 of stims but was supportive of our decision. This cycle, we have more follicles, and they don't seem to be growing quite as fast as the first crew.
After our ultrasound and bloodwork appointment this morning, we learned that we have three more follicles than we had on Monday! That brings our total up to ten. I have been chatting with a few friends who've been through IVF, and one told me she was hoping for more at our next scan, and another said he'd hope for 10 or more for us. I was doubtful, but then we had three more today! Our nurse told us not to be surprised if we needed to come back tomorrow, but she would call with instructions later today.
When the nurse called this afternoon, she told me to keep doing all of my same injections. She also said we need to come in for another ultrasound and labs on Saturday, which will be day 9 of stims. (Recall that people typically stim for 8-14 days, so I am in the expected range this time.) Based on last time, I was expecting to be told to trigger tonight or tomorrow for retrieval on Saturday or Sunday, but this cycle keeps revealing how circumstances can be totally different from cycle to cycle, even with the same medicine protocol. My estrogen reading was 1543.22 pg/ml, so we're not quite over the 200 per follicle mark that we'd like to see. However, we jumped from 690.58 on Monday to 1543.22 today, so hopefully, the two additional days will put us where we need to be with mature eggs.
During the first cycle, we joked about naming our follicles after the Beatles, but our ultrasound tech told us today we might want to start looking at basketball teams. I guess I'm taking nominations for worthy teams to name them after? Our smallest follicle is only 6 mm, which is a bit small, but we're hoping it can catch up. Our largest is currently 21 mm, and I think 24 mm is about as big as is desirable before triggering. We want to have as many as possible in the 18-24 mm range without anything getting too big. So, Saturday is likely our last ultrasound and bloodwork visit for this cycle unless I'm wrong again. Stranger things have happened.
I'm going to try to make a cutesy letterboard after our appointment on Saturday, but I'm currently a bit frantic trying to balance the end of the semester, work, conference proposals, trying to exercise, and going through IVF. It's a lot! So, here's some more of my fantastic PowerPoint art. These circles are not actual size, but they're to scale relative to each other.
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