Day 42 - Still Stimming! No Stressing!

Ben and I had another visit with the doc this morning to check my progress. He counted 6 follies on the right and 5 or 6 on my left ovary. So we're looking at about 11-12 follicles now! All were ranging in size from 8 mm to 15 mm...mature follicle size at ovulation is usually between 10 mm and 18 mm. He wants me to continue stimming...cut back on dosage a little bit... until Monday morning when I'll have another scan. My doctor is trying to push my follicles to get a little bigger than average since last time some of my eggs were immature and unable to fertilize. Because of the Lupron suppression and my low LH level he is not concerned about premature ovulation. (My blood work showed E2 at 902 and LH was 0.9.) He still thinks that my egg retrieval will be next Wednesday (11/18) or maybe even Thursday. Again he said that my uterine lining was "perfect." So we are all feeling very positive about the good progress.

Also I'm feeling much more normal today (no more light-head or nausea) so that's a relief....hope it doesn't come back! And it's Friday so my Hubby and I can hang out together all weekend and watch football and work on staying relaxed. It seems that the closer we get to the retrieval the more anxiety I'm trying to manage. I'm sure that it's a combination of several things. First is the excitement I have about being closer to maybe getting pregnant for the first time in my life. Second is the nerves I have about the procedure since I was awake last time and it was really painful. (Guess I have a high tolerance to the "sleepy" drugs they use.)And finally, the major player in my anxiety, is the fear I have of it turning out just like our last IVF round.

As we were driving to the doc this morning Ben and I were acknowledging, once again, how polarizing the results are to us. If it works we will be living a sweet dream, but if it doesn't we will be repeating a horrible nightmare. We do realize that there is a chance for some grey area. It is possible that we get enough embryos so we could freeze the ones we don't transfer this cycle, and then if it doesn't work there is always a second chance with a frozen embryo transfer. However, last time that's what we naively assumed would automatically happen, but we only got two embryos to start with, so obviously we were brought back down to earth rather quickly. And sadly those two embryos that were transferred back to my womb never made it.

This time around we are just hoping beyond hope for a pregnancy from a fresh embryo transfer and the thought of actually having some 'extra' embryos to freeze is more like an unrealistic fantasy. But, hey, anything is possible so we will just have to wait and see how this all unfolds.

In the meantime I have to keep reminding myself to relax and take deep breaths...even though it kinda hurts with my swollen ovaries. :) I know that anxiety does NO good so there is no point in worrying. It will turn out the way it's meant to be... so instead of focusing on my anxiety I am trying to work on my faith that this time could really be the sweet ending that we have prayed for, for so long.