Over and out

Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but no one else seems to be updating this blog with the news (darned personal blog), so here it is: I'm out this cycle. Wenchy AF showed up in full force this morning, at 10dp3dt.

Of course I'm upset, but I think I did most of my mourning both on Sunday night (when I started spotting. I know lots of ladies spot when pg, but it's never a good sign for me) and mid-way through this cycle when I realized that I will never stim well. Any hopeful signs throughout the cycle were a pleasant surprise, though it has been an exhausting 4 weeks going up and down. The fact that I'm sort of OK today is mostly because this has been such an emotional cycle that I'm sort of beat down by now + as I mentioned at the beginning of the cycle, I've felt oddly detached through much of this cycle, almost like this is happening to someone else. I thought I'd be so excited to start my 1st IVF and I wasn't. It wasn't that I was dreading it, but I was like an outside observer. To some extent I think it's a defense mechanism that us IF ladies learn, but maybe it's also been too many stim cycles in a row. This will have been 5 cycles straight, so I might be numb to the thrill of the u/s wand at this point.

A cycle recap:

The good:

• The one follie/egg looked to be a high quality one, making it to day 3 with high grades
• NG's swimmers were Casanovas as usual, whispering sweet nothings into egg's ear until she let down her guard
• I love my RE who is the only one I know of that would allow his patient to decide for themselves whether to cancel a single follie IVF or go ahead with it, clinic success rates be damned. And I'm so glad I went ahead, because while it was still the one mature egg, I did learn there were 2 more immature ones in there (maybe we can stim differently next time) and that the one egg was very good quality. It gives me hope for future poor response cycles.
  
  

The bad:

• One stinking follie
• Embie did not stick. Just the odds or is there a crew of hostile forces in my uterus?
• Continuing to get AF early, despite progesterone support. I'm not overly concerned with this one as long as my LP is over 10 days, but still annoying.

So, the next steps are that I'm still having my beta tomorrow -- at my local Quest clinic instead of driving 40 minutes to the RE's office. I figure I at least owe myself a little break on rush hour traffic. I won't get the results until Thursday now, since it's an external lab, but I'm in no rush to hear it since I know the drill. I also requested to have my DHEA tested and if it's off, I'll talk to my RE about taking DHEA supps. It's kind of frustrating to me that so many reports have shown positive results with DHEA and poor responders, yet almost every woman I know has had to be the initiator of the conversation with the RE, they're not embracing DHEA for some reason.

I'll be sitting July out because I'm going on vacation to the Caribbean in August, so priming in July and IVF in August wouldn't work. So, instead I'll do priming in August and IVF in Sept. I've got IVF#2 covered by insurance and after that one I'll have to see if they approve any more. My insurance covers 6 cycles max per live birth, but approves them in batches of two. I'm a little concerned that they'll stop approving if they find out what a poor responder I am, but I'm hoping that as long as the cycles aren't cancelled, that they don't necessarily know about the poor response. I'm also going to start the donor egg conversation with my RE next week. I'd like to try as many IVFs with my own eggs as insurance will cover, but I want to be realistic and at least get on the DE waiting list sooner rather than later.

Phew, and this was going to be a quick update...