The New Normal

I trigger tonight!  ER is Thursday!  ET will be Sunday or Tuesday.  And I have A TON of follicles!  Over 25 on each ovary, with E2 now at 3454!  Was that enough exclamation points for you? 

I’m already feeling the ovaries knocking, as well as some nausea and heartburn from the high estrogen.  I’m definitely going to be slamming water and electrolytes to try to prevent bloating.  My RE now does a Lupron trigger, instead of HCG, as that also helps to prevent OHSS.

I can’t believe I haven’t posted once the entire time I’ve been stimming for this IVF cycle…what a difference from our cycles two years ago!  

 It is just so different though, this time around.  We already have Monkey, so even if another cycle never works out for us, we still have our son, and for me, that makes all the difference.  We also already know that I can respond to IVF, and that this can potentially work—when I failed to respond to Clomid, and then I had three canceled IUI cycles, I was just so scared that nothing would ever work.  And of course, Monkey keeps us busy…it will be 4pm, and I’ve forgotten that I’m expecting a call from my nurse with my E2, follicle measurements, and dosage instructions for that night.  One night, I took my meds two hours late because I just forgot.  I’m not anxious when I’m waiting in the stirrups, to see my follicles…instead, I chat with the u/s tech about the new machines.

All I can say is that it’s different this time, entirely…the biggest stress factor was for my monitoring appointment Monday because J was out of town, and we don’t have daycare on Mondays, since I work part-time and am off Mondays.  And really, that is so not a stress factor.  I didn’t want to bring Monkey to the RE’s office, but I wasn’t left with much of a choice.  I called ahead to let them know my situation, and then they had us sit in a consultation room while we waited.  I had planned on holding him while they took my blood and did the u/s, but one of the nurses offered to sit with him.  

Last time, my RE told me I had a 60-70% chance of IVF working, given my age and no known egg quality issues.  Still, the national average is 50/50, so that’s what I consider this cycle to be—a 50/50 shot at a BFP.  As an IFer, I know all too well that the BFP is just of many milestones…seeing the yolk sac, seeing the heartbeat, hearing the heartbeat, getting a good NT scan, making it to 13 weeks, and so on…

But in my new normal, this first IVF cycle, the first real opportunity to TTC since Monkey was born (considering I don’t O on my own, and my first pp AF was induced by provera…), and crazy IFer that I am, if we were to see a BFP in two weeks, I’d see this as the same as seeing the BFP the first cycle off BCP.  Hey, I was just on BCP two weeks ago (okay, so that was to shut down my system for IVF, but still…)…if this works, I’m just like a fertile.  Haha.  Not quite.

Of course, the other luxury, aside from not stressing that there isn’t the chance this could work, and that we already have our son, is the luxury of insurance coverage.  Our insurance covers us for six IVF cycles, lifetime, so we’ve got five chances to go, counting this one…However, J and I have decided that we’ll do three fresh cycles, and then we’ll re-evaluate if we want to keep trying.  I’ve already cleared it with my nurse and RE that if we don’t see a BFP in two weeks, that we’d like to roll into another three weeks of BCP and do another cycle around Thanksgiving.  We’ve already paid our deductible for this year, so it just makes sense to go back-to-back with cycles.

I don’t know if that’s a good thing—this new normal for me—or just an indicator of how medicalized baby-making has become for us…but I’m going to say it’s a good thing because I’m not anxious or stressed.  I’m excited and hopeful, but I’m also realistic.  I will say, the appointments, dealing with insurance, stimming, and scheduling—that’s all still a hassle, especially the scheduling…but it is nice to know this CAN work for us…and it’s covered by insurance…and even if it doesn’t…we have Monkey.

I had forgotten some things in the past two years—I forgot the heartburn from high E2…and that the monitoring appointments go to every day, up from every other day, after a certain point.  I also forgot how to mix Menopur…I had told the nurse I didn’t need the injection class, but when my box of meds arrived, it was a little overwhelming.  A quick check online for the videos, though, reminded me, and it was just like riding a bike.  

I’ll update after the ER with the number of follicles retrieved.  And I definitely owe you a post about how much fun Monkey is…15 months is an awesome age.  He’s a ton of fun and is always making us laugh.  We love to just sit and watch him play, interacting with him.  His rate of learning is amazing.  I can’t believe how much he understands, or how many new words he says each week.  It’s so much fun.