What is with this number… Every single time I have done IVF I have had 7 (except RBA). At least I am consistent.

I am waiting for the fertilization report – trying to remind myself that we had great fertilization with ICSI every single time (except RBA).

I’m planning to take a month off and go back in June for another cycle – bundle the eggs together for testing and then we will have a 6-8 week wait for the results. I’m nervous. It won’t be until September at the earliest before I have a transfer.

I originally thought I might do a few IUIs in between the wait for the results but I can’t really afford to have another miscarriage – mentally or physically. So I’ll wait, and hope I have one normal in there.

My friend had a great cycle but unfortunately only 2 of her 9 embryos fertilized normally. She is devastated….all the money, time and hope. She will try again if this doesn’t work out but it is sad. It was most likely a sperm issue – what a horrible result on the best ever cycle for her.

IVF is by no means guaranteed solution – it is a maddening, horrible process that sometimes leaves you with nothing except an empty bank account. The odds are sometimes brutally against us (to be honest, I did not even ask what mine were because I am sure they are something like 20% or less). Dr. Schoolcraft can be doom and gloom so I think it has been very important for me to take what he says with a grain of salt. If he didn’t think he could get me pregnant I wouldn’t be cycling there. That is something to hold on to.

I was in the middle of my 3rd IVF which would become my son, Alex. He was conceived on May 15, 2006 at 9:10am.

Wow – that was a long time ago…

I apologize. I have had time on my hands but apparently no time to post… This cycle is the the most bizarre of my entire career as an IVFer. I started off slow, few follicles, estrogen level LOW (I mean LOW). Slow to rise and beyond frustrating. The higher your estrogen (as a rule of thumb) the more follicles in your ovaries. After 6 days of high dose stimulation medication (enough to wake up the ovaries of my dead grandmother) my estrogen was at 270. Which means I had very little going on. That was Saturday. By Monday I’d reached a whopping 590. Wednesday – 790..and today up to 1200. I have four decent size follicles on my right side and 1 on my left (ONE!!!). There are few more smaller ones on each side. My response has been dismal. What looked like a promising antral follicle count has turned into my worst cycle on record (so far).

Anyway – my nurse keeps telling me to calm down but the truth is that we have just paid 25K dollars to find out that this might never work for us. Actually, we paid 25K dollars to find out that we have to spend another 25K dollars to do another cycle so that I can have enough embryos for genetic testing. We need six embryos…and I am not likely to have more than 2 or 3. It might take just one but I am not likely to have many normal embryos (given my history). I may not have any at all left – but we are about to find out. The testing will take about six weeks to get results – in that time I will most likely return to cycle again and combine my embryos for testing at the same time. Apparently the success rate of transferring a PGS (pre implantation genetic screening) normal embryo is 22% for polar body biopsy (this is where they test the egg for all of it’s chromosomes and is done with older patients such as myself) or 65% with one embryo and 80% for 2 normal embryos with CGH. In order to do a CGH biopsy your embryo needs to survive in the dish for 5 days. I might not have any embryos that make it that far…but I have before. They pushed me to do polar body biopsy but I refused. I know I can make blasts and…if i can’t then that is even more information that I need to determine our next steps. So we’ll try to grow the embryos to blast and if they do not survive we will send out their remains to be tested.

So it has been a stressful time for me – this cycle is going to determine whether or not we keep going with IVF..or if we should be thinking of other options. I cannot keep doing IVF after IVF – spending mountains of cash and having this same result. I also cannot just randomly put embryos back into my uterus knowing that they might well cause me more miscarriages which will cause untold damage to my uterus (not to mention my psyche).

As for Denver – I’ve had a fun time. I met up with someone from the fertility boards that I post to and we decided to be roomates. We are staying at the Inverness which is a hotel/conference center. I have to say that I am very glad that I met Sherry. She is a fun girl with a lot of energy….a true New Yorker…you know, the kind who makes friends with everyone and the lampost too…the kind who doesn’t mind sending her food back 50 times until it is right and ask for a discount from every person she meets along the way. I love her. Sherry is a few years older than me and is having her best cycle to date after taking the growth hormone Saizen. I wish I had done the same…but figured with 19 antrals that I did not need it. She is triggering tonight and I bet she gets at least 15/20 eggs (her highest yield prior to taking saizen has been 8 with the average being around 5). Amazing.

I trigger tomorrow night for an early Sunday retrieval. We are looking for 5 and praying for 8.

How I keep doing this I will never know – but I think it has something to do with a little blonde 2 year old boy who cannot, must not bury me and his father alone.

There were reasons…quite a few but the big one is that I was getting a little tired of dwelling on it. While I was waiting to cycle (delayed one month by a bad cold my little boy gave me!) I decided to live my life a little bit. I’m just starting a cycle, actually. Today is day 4 of stims and tomorrow I am headed to Denver. By myself. I’m sort of excited about spending a week by myself but I’m also filled with nervousness about leaving my son. He is two now and has terrible separation anxiety. I’ll be gone for a week. I also have terrible separation anxiety, it seems.

Anyway – I started the estrogen priming protocol. I had 8 antral follicles at my one day work up which is DISMAL for me. You can expect to get as many eggs as baseline antral follicles. I want to CGH – test the chromosomes so I need and want more! I also have a record of producing abnormal embryos so… need more than 8. Thankfully on Sunday 19 antral follicles appeared as if by magic. I don’t even know what to think – could I actually produce that many eggs. I highly, highly doubt it. But if so….I’ve got a lot of questions for my other REs.

The fact is – my fertility has gone off a cliff in the past year. I’m on the road to depletion of my ovarian reserve – like most 41 year olds. But I have hope! My dear friend J (I won’t post her name) has recently become pregnant by CGH – and it is looking like twins. She is 41.5 – retrieved about 40 eggs total and only two of them were normals…both went back in two weeks ago and she got a positive beta (and a high beta!) yesterday. To say I am thrilled is putting it lightly.

So I have hope…

I’ll post from Colorado.

Somehow…(not sure how) I am now in line for an estrogen priming protocol (which is so complicated…involving 5 different drugs and so many injections – some 12 hours apart) for an IUI!! Not even an IVF (though he does plan to turn it into one if I stimulate really well) First let me say that the drugs alone will cost us like 4 grand (or more, who knows) and it is going to be potentially an experiment. Sure I get around 8-10 follicles with low dose stims (of differing sizes so we are only really talking about 4-5 viable ones)…but I just don’t know. I want to see how my body responds and I’d like to get pregnant without shelling out the 20K that IVF is going to cost me at CCRM but I want to be realistic.

I’m pushing 41. 90% of my eggs if not 100% are probably not good. My history suggests this. Why not go to DE? Why don’t I just do it?

I just haven’t given up the hope of having another child who is genetically related to me. It sounds so damned selfish and immature to me – what I want is a baby! I don’t care how I get one – I don’t REALLY care about having the same genes. As my OB said to me, anything that calls you mama is your child and I could not agree more. I am, however, getting ready to call it quits….. I know that because I feel weary when thinking about my upcoming cycle rather than excited and hopeful. 2 weeks of stims ( worry: how many are developing??), retrieval (worry: what fertilized), 3 day embryo report (anything look good) 2WW wait (worry: anything implant) and then another 6-8 weeks of holding my breath and worrying continually that it might die. To say I am not looking forward to it is an understatement.

Anyway – that is where I am at.

I was overjoyed – er even starstruck when one of my favorite bloggers wrote me an email recently. Amy at babiesornot.blogspot.com was my portal into the world of infertility – the very first blog I ever read when considering IVF. She isn’t an IVFer but rather a really interesting, creative person who has blossomed in the face of life’s difficulties. I strive to be like her, learn from her – I just LIKE her. And I wouldn’t have my son if she didn’t introduce me via her blog to all these amazing women who have shared their stories with complete strangers like me. Another reason for starting this blog – here is to Amy! Without her there would be no little boy named Alex…of that I am sure. She and a few hundred strangers over at ivfconnections.com – who keep me sane and continually show me what true resilience and humor are all about.

Now…I need to call my RE and make sense of this new protocol. I might have to tell him to revise it – I’d like to do what worked last time (and hope for a different outcome this time, of course).

So today was my first post-op meeting with my doctor. I had a beta HCG level taken first…and then the chat.

So the bad news is that for the first time in his dealings with the lab that tests embryos post D&C they were unable to get a result. I’ll never know if it was a boy or a girl nor will I know the reason it stopped growing. I was a bit sad about this – but in a way it is probably better for me that I don’t have that information. It would only make me sad. We’ll just have to assume it was abnormal.

I came clean with him that I was thinking about going to CCRM and that I had concerns about the quality of his lab. I think we left it that I would do another IUI cycle and change my med protocol. I’m not sure how I feel about this – it seemed like a great idea and I really like my doctor but I think I’ll go to CCRM.

I told the doctor that it felt like I had ovulated yesterday – he told me that was not really possible but that we would know what is up when we get the beta level back. He said that he anticipated my level to be somewhere in the hundreds and that if I don’t get my period in the next three weeks, he would induce it with progesterone pills. On my way out I asked him “what if my beta is like 5” and he said that wasn’t going to be the case. Guess what? My beta is NEGATIVE and that means that I did ovulate either yesterday or will do so today (I know the signs). We’ll try the old fashioned way – hey what the heck? I’m so happy. Now I’ll be able to cycle and soon – and that makes me very, very, very happy.

I need to really decide what to do now – do I try a few more IUIs (potentially wasting my precious time) or just go straight to CCRM? Internet – if you have an opinion please speak now or forever hold your….

100 people a day read this thing? Really? I feel the need to step up the entertainment factor. You actually come here to watch me (read me?) moan and whine…..thank you. Thank you, internet for caring….

You know that letter I got from my 65 year old self? Funny but I’ve also been thinking about where I want to be when I am 65 and more importantly WHO I want to be. I’ve done the dream thing (more on that some other day- I was a career songwriter and a singer for a time) and I’ve done the career thing (I was an officer – er quasi officer at a major investment bank) and now I am a mother. I truly love being a stay at home mom and I have no desires or aspirations right now to be anything else. But I wonder – what will my son think? Will he understand that I am not a lazy person…I am not an uninspired person. Society puts so much value on having a “career” and to be honest, I just don’t buy it. I feel like I’ve done all that I wanted to do so far. The only thing that had been missing is motherhood. Now that I am a mother I am focused on not only being a great mother but also being a mother again. But what happens the day the last one goes to college? Who am I then?

What I would like to be at the age of 65 is a fortune teller/writer/tile maker and live in a adobe hut in Sedona, Arizona. My husband thinks I’m nuts.

I was just now mopping the floor…contemplating yesterday’s posts and one email that I received from a friend telling me that my blog is “breaking her heart” when suddenly a voice called out from my future self. Aged 65. It went something like this:

“Dear Suzanne,

“You are 40 years old. Life isn’t fair…and if you think this is bad – you haven’t seen anything yet”.

It occurred to me that yes, it is OK to be sad…and boy was I sad yesterday…but then I remembered my mother has lost two brothers, her father and soon her mother. I am in no way minimizing my sadness – it just puts it into perspective. There will be much more loss and disappointment in the future…but so many rainbows and happiness too. I wish someone had written a letter from the future to me about 20 years ago while I was heartbroken over that very first boyfriend breakup. Did I ever spend a lot of tears and brain power obsessing about that……!!! I digress. I know this is real grown up pain and it hurts but now I need to heal and move forward.

Just a quick note to say I’m better today – nuchal scan, 2nd trimester, 3rd trimester email reminder notes have been deleted from my google calendar to prevent future meltdowns….and now I’ve got a date with a mop.