CD1

Finally! On what would have otherwise been CD61, my period finally started. I've never had this long a cycle and was getting extra frustrated with my body's lack of cooperation.

I promptly emailed my clinic, to let them know, and I got a quick response with my prescriptions for this cycle, and with my calendar. Even though my RE told me it's 3 weeks to transfer, it'll apparently be 4 weeks. I go in tomorrow for an ultrasound and bloodwork, go in 2/8 for bloodwork, go in 2/19 for bloodwork and ultrasound, and the FET is scheduled for 3/1. Which is horribly late compared to when we thought it would be after our fresh donor cycle failed, but at least we have a date we should be able to rely on...

We'll be transferring one of our two perfect frozen embryos from the first donor cycle in this FET.

Meanwhile, we're waiting for our donor's CD1 so she can get started on cycle #2 for us. It'll take her about 6 weeks, so probably she'll be having her retrieval about 2-3 weeks after my transfer. Hopefully we'll get a handful of perfect embryos to add to our stash so we can create and build our family without having to do more fresh cycles. I'm so ready to be done with this.

In Google Reader, I have separate folders for IF, Expecting, and Parents. I now always have more new posts to read in each of Expecting and Parents, than in IF.  It's getting really old. It's been more than a year since I was last pregnant, and 2011 felt like a waste in the IF department (apart from our two frosties), not to mention our most expensive TTC year yet. It's fucking depressing when I think about it, so I try not to.

Kind of a weird post, I guess. I'm happy to finally be able to move forward with this FET, but I'm so frustrated at a deep, deep level about IF and my lessening ability to be hopeful. We had one perfect embryo not implant, who's to say that one of these two will. Ugh.

In other news, our puppy got spayed yesterday. Thankfully she's recovering easily and apart from moving up and down stairs more slowly, doesn't seem very affected by it all. That said, she was VERY happy to see us when we picked her up at the vet yesterday evening.

For a blast of good news to end this mostly depressing post, Jay had her son today - congrats, Jay!

Sluggish

I've been AWOL for awhile, waiting for my body to do its thing so we can get this FET going with the second perfect embryo from our donor egg cycle.

Of course, my body isn't cooperating. It's now CD50. My cycles are usually 32-33 days.

I had an ultrasound on December 15 with my RE, when my estradiol was about 80 and progesterone was effectively 0 (just realized I never posted an update after that appointment - sorry!). My lining was thin, around 6.5mm, and there was nothing visible growing in either ovary. So my RE thought maybe it was an anovulatory cycle, and expected AF around Jan. 1.

I finally got fed up waiting last week, and scheduled bloodwork for this weekend. I went in on Saturday. Estradiol is now 320-something, and progesterone is still effectively 0. Which means I can't go on birth control pills, I have to wait for ovulation, and then for CD1, when I'll finally be able to start the meds for my FET (estradiol valerate injections, and then eventually PIO).

My estradiol is high enough I should be close to ovulation, but I'm withholding judgement given how uncooperative my body is being. I've never had a 50-day cycle. Longest prior to this was 42 days, and that was years ago.

I was emotional over the weekend - we had some disappointing news in another part of our lives, nothing major, but not the result we wanted, and then I found out about my hormone levels. I could use some good news.

If I ovulated today, then with my ~12 day luteal phase, I'd have AF around the end of the month. Then 3 weeks of meds before transfer. So right now I'll be lucky if I get to do the FET in February at all.

Grr.

More on 6.1

I had my WTF phone call about our failed DEIVF. No surprises - perfect embryo, great lining, he's surprised it didn't work. Yeah, me too...

He suggested re-running my immunology bloodwork to see where it is before doing the first FET. So I'll go in on Wednesday morning, which will get us results by the end of the week.

I've been using OPKs, but no surge yet (today is CD17). If no surge by Wednesday, I go in for an ultrasound and hormone bloodwork on Thursday to figure out if there's any follicular activity, or if it's an anovulatory cycle and we wait until January and hope for an ovulatory one.

I hadn't realized, but the FET will be a week after a surge. They want 6 days of progesterone in my body before transferring the embryo, since it was frozen at Day 5.

Today I also sent in the contacts and checks for another retrieval with our donor. Hopefully all the embryos we get will just be frozen as backups (after CGH testing), since we'll have two opportunities to transfer before then...

I haven't been feeling festive, but I'm not particularly down, either. This month could be a hard one - last year, the due date for our first pregnancy was in early December, but we were pregnant with our second pregnancy at the time. And then miscarried a week before Christmas. It all feels so far away.

I decorated my Christmas tree yesterday, which definitely perked up my holiday spirits. And I have my holiday music playlist on my iPods now.

Of course the irony of 6.1 is that if I *do* surge this week, transfer will be the end of next week, which means bedrest right before or on Christmas. And we're hosting Christmas Day for about 15 people...

6.1

I paid for our natural frozen embryo transfer today.

More to come soon.

Rinse, repeat

And so we pick ourselves up again.

Thank you for all the love and kind thoughts, both here and on twitter.

Emailed with my RE. We can do a natural FET immediately. Meaning we wait for AF, and then I use OPKs to watch for my surge, and then I go in for bloodwork and an ultrasound to confirm things look ok for transfer.

Of course, my body will have to cooperate and ovulate, which it normally does (ovulates, not cooperates, obviously). Sometimes after my previous IVFs, I've had a wonky cycle that may have been anovulatory (we think this happened in in March), but I'm hoping that it was caused by stims.

My last progesterone was Saturday night, so hopefully AF will have started by the end of Thanksgiving weekend. I usually (ha!) don't ovulate until CD17-20, which would put us around December 14-17.

So amazingly, it's not impossible that we could do another transfer before Christmas.

Cruel

It's so cruel that progesterone side effects mimic pregnancy symptoms. Even knowing that, it's hard not to be hopeful after twinges, sleepiness, queasiness in the morning...

Beta was negative.

The Hamster Wheel

Tomorrow is my beta.

It's hard to imagine it being positive. And I say that with full ownership of the fact that I've felt symptoms that could be pregnancy symptoms all week: twinges, exhausted in the afternoons, queasy this morning...

It's hard to imagine that after 4.5 years of TTC, we could be close to getting off this hamster wheel.

You know what that's like. Rinse, repeat. You do your shots, go in for your monitoring appointments, do the bloodwork, go through retrieval (or IUI), go through transfer, deal with suppositories. And then have to start all over again, due to bad luck (cancelled cycle), bad luck (BFN), or bad luck (miscarriage). Back at square one.

The first time we got pregnant, we thought we were there. I was a little cautious, because I'd joined twitter and the blog world when I started IVF1, and I'd heard a lot of sad stories in my brief time in the online TTC community. But then we had a good ultrasound at 6.5 weeks and saw a heartbeat. And then at 9 weeks there was no heartbeat and our world (and our optimism) came crashing down.

Pregnancy #2, we were much more guarded. Pleased, certainly, to have made that milestone, but we were oh so aware that it was just a milestone and not the goal. And then at our 6.5 week ultrasound the heartbeat was just a little slow. And at our 7.5 week ultrasound it had slowed to 50, and at 8 weeks it was gone.

IVF4, knowing our two miscarriages were due chromosomal abnormalities, we transferred a (FISH-normal) embryo, and got a BFN. We managed to make it all the way through the various hurdles, and then the embryo didn't take. (Of course now we know it had a 40-50% chance of still being abnormal...)

IVF5, we switched doctors so we could try a new protocol. Dismal failure - no embryos made it to testing.

After so much bad news, it's hard to be hopeful that this time is going to be THE time. It's hard to imagine  that we might be able to step off the hamster wheel.

Logically, we have made changes that make a difference - mostly using a donor so we could get a genetically and physically perfect embryo to transfer. But is it enough? It's still rolling the dice.

I will be disappointed if it's a BFN tomorrow, but I won't be surprised.