Sunshine Makes Me Happy!

My retrieval went really well yesterday. I had one good follicle in play and the egg retrieved from it was mature and fertilized! Grow little one, grow! The retrieval itself was the least painful one I've had so far. My clinic was very efficient and I was in and out in no time, leaving the rest of my day to soak up some wonderful sunshine. I start progesterone tonight. My doctor is changing it from last time. I'm doing endometrin suppositories. I go in Saturday to have my progesterone level checked. I also have an acupuncture session booked the morning of my transfer on Monday. Other than that I will just be pampering myself with shopping, a massage, and soaking up more sunshine! It's crazy how easy natural cycle IVF is, no loading my body up with stim meds, no crazy mood swings from the hormones, no bloating so I can lounge by the pool in a bikini and not be embarrassed, and few appointments to interfere with beach time. I keep telling my doctor he needs to open a clinic in the Midwest, but I think I would still come here since the weather and beach are so very relaxing! And if I'm feeling this happy and relaxed, I can't help but think it makes my uterus that much better for when my blasts get transferred!

One Lab Can Change Everything

I'll be honest, I didn't have the highest of hopes monitoring this morning.
I was even preparing myself for this cycle to be canceled.

I'm still in shock.

My progesterone is 0.95.

It's less than 1. For the first time since we've tried monitoring it.

My E2 was 314, LH 12.4, and FSH 4.9

Looks like I'm ready to trigger.

I had one beautiful follicle on ultrasound. There were two others measured but they were less than 10, so I'm not going to even let the doctor try sucking an egg out of those. I've had those smaller follicles aspirated before and they hurt and they just won't have a mature follicle at that size.

My lining looked fabulous and was 9mm today! It should plump up to 11 or 12 by retrieval.

Crap. I need to get my flight booked!

Expect the Unexpected

Four plus years of infertility and you would think I would have learned my lesson by now.

I started this cycle expecting that my body would behave and that we could expect the timeline to be the same as my last few cycles. Instead, my infertility is mocking me.

I went in for monitoring on Friday. My largest follicle was 16 and I had a couple others that weren't too far behind. My lining was 6mm. My E2 was rather low at 138. My progesterone was 1.12. So it's high. Again. I have a feeling that it will never be under 1 at this point in my cycle. It's incredibly frustrating.

My doctor wants me to monitor again Monday. He has me taking tamoxifen for a few nights. I am not holding out very high hopes for Monday. My follicles would need to grow and my E2 would need to be a lot higher. My lining would also need to plump up more. We could possibly just use this cycle as a retrieval and bank whatever blasts we get.

Scheduling things with this cycle has been a bit irritating. Now that I have to monitor Monday I think I will just show up at the clinic early in the morning and see if they can fit me in for ultrasound and lab. I didn't get my orders from my clinic until after the local clinic was closed. We had originally booked a fully refundable flight when we initially expected to trigger on Friday or Saturday, but have since canceled that. I have yet to book another flight because I have no clue what my body will show on Monday.

Emotionally I'm really stressed out. I almost wonder if I jumped back into this too soon after losing my grandma. For now I'm just trying to keep myself distracted until Monday.

IVF #7 Baseline

I had to get up early today for my baseline monitoring. I was in and out and stopped at the store and still made it back home in just over an hour. I don't yet have the final on my ultrasound, but that doesn't really matter too much. It looked like there was an 8mm follicle on each ovary and one around maybe 6mm on the left. There were several smaller the tech didn't measure. The tech today didn't enter on the screen how many antrals, so I'm not sure on that. And let's be honest, after so many IVF cycles, I just don't freaking care. My progesterone level was the highest it's been at baseline at 1.49. But since my cycle just started last evening and it was less than 12 hours later that I had my blood draw I'm hoping it's just a little elevated because it's still coming down from my luteal phase. My FSH on the other hand looked pretty fantastic. It was 9.6 with an E2 of 40.

My clinic has a newer, somewhat annoying, policy in regards to medication orders. Now at the beginning of the cycle they would like you to order all the meds you may end up needing during a cycle. I get where they're coming from. They do a lot of out of state business and the doctor doesn't even start looking at the monitoring results until late afternoon/early evening so you really need to have your meds ready. When you call to get your baseline order for u/s and lab and you tell them what kind of cycle you want to do, they then email a list of meds you may need. Two of the meds on the list given to me I refused. One was hcg. My body has always done a good job of triggering with lupron so I don't need or want to waste money on the hcg. They also listed PIO. Again I refused that med because it's only needed if your progesterone is low on the day of transfer, otherwise you just use the oral and suppositories. And even those I am waiting to just buy at the clinic if/when I make it out there for a transfer. The only med I ordered this time was the Lupron since my vial from before is expired. There's still some left, but I don't want to risk it.

I'm guessing my next orders will be to monitor next week on CD 9. I have a feeling based on what I saw on the ultrasound I will be ready to trigger that night. But that is only if my progesterone is in an acceptable range, otherwise we will cancel the cycle. Now it will just be a week of waiting. No meds for me to take as this is a natural cycle IVF. Yay!

Mini or Natural IVF vs. Traditional IVF

Since discovering mini/natural IVF and doing several cycles, it just seems crazy to me that so many people are still doing traditional IVF. I actually cringe when I hear people gearing up for traditional IVF and talking about all the meds they'll be taking and all the monitoring they'll be doing, etc. I have spoken with Dr. Y about this before and his hope is that eventually mini/natural IVF will become the norm and in the future we'll look back and wonder why we ever did traditional IVF. I've posted before about why I love mini IVF and now I'll attempt to compare the two using my own personal experiences from doing traditional and mini/natural.


Traditional:

• Cycle coordinated for a certain week of the month so the clinic can batch several cycles together. Use birth control and/or lupron to coordinate this.

Mini/Natural:

• Cycle starts when it starts naturally on its own. Birth control pills can be very suppressing for some people and impact the ability of follicles to grow.

Traditional:

• Weeks worth of ridiculous injectable meds. (I think my most expensive cycle insurance paid  $8,000+ for one cycle of meds!!)

Mini/Natural:

• Little to no medication. My most expensive mini was $450. That included three shots of gonal f, lupron for trigger, and clomid. My natural cycle with transfer was $120 for the progesterone. The clinic I go to uses Lupron for the trigger shot. One vial, if kept refrigerated, lasts for 6 months and is around $100.  I used it for 4 cycles.

Traditional:

• Cost for one cycle before meds is $12,000 or more!

Mini/Natural:

• A three cycle package of mini IVF is a little over $12,000 and a three cycle package of natural IVF is less than $10,000. Even if I include my airfare, hotel, and car rental, I am still paying way less than traditional IVF.

Traditional:

•  Side effects of all those icky drugs: undetermined. There have been no long term studies completed yet because it hasn't been around long enough. 

Mini/Natural:

• Yes, you're still using some meds, but it is very minimal and in some cases, you're hardly using anything. 

Traditional:

• Success rates vary widely from one clinic to the next. The clinic I used said they try for as many eggs as possible because they lose about 1/3 to 1/2 at each stage, leaving very few left to transfer. Over two traditional cycles I had 3 eggs and only ever had one three day embryo to transfer. (I also responded very poorly to the high doses of meds and was likely suppressed from the birth control)

Mini/Natural:

• The clinic I use has a very high rate of blasts. Over three cycles I produced 13 eggs. Of those, 11 were mature. Of those, all 11 fertilized. Of those, 7 made it to the blast stage. 

Traditional:

• Many clinics cherry pick their patients and if you don't respond well (or you have high FSH or low AMH) you get the donor egg speech.

 Mini/Natural:

• Rare for anyone to be turned away. FSH and AMH levels don't matter. 

Traditional:

• Monitoring appointments are excessive. I lost track of how many I had during my traditional cycles. Sometimes it's every other day for over a week.

Mini/Natural:

• Baseline monitoring and one or two monitoring appointments. I have been lucky and have always just done a baseline and one monitoring appointment. And I can do them locally and have the results faxed to my clinic in CA.

Traditional:

• Affect on Endo: two cycles of ridiculous amounts of meds flared up my endo so much I needed surgery to clean it out again.

Mini/Natural:

•  I have not had any issues with my endo. The only thing is that I may be a little more sensitive to the pain from egg retrieval.

Traditional:

• Anesthesia is used for egg retrievals and sometimes for transfers as well (I did because my endo flared up so bad from the meds)

Mini/Natural:

• No anesthesia or pain meds needed. (but if you're really insistent, the doctor will give you a little something to take the edge off) After three retrievals without anesthesia or any pain meds I can honestly say it's totally doable. Yes, it hurts when he stabs the needle through the vaginal wall and when the follicles are getting sucked out, but it's over in no time and so worth it to not have to go under. And you get to watch it all on the monitor so that's a nice distraction.

I want to address the fact there is a downside to mini/natural IVF. You may need to do several mini/natural cycles depending on your circumstances. That's why my clinic offers discount packaging. At 33 years old my doctor says I need 2-3 blasts (that have not been PGS tested) for each take home baby I want. I have always wanted a whole house full, so that's why I have banked so many. If you're older, you'll need more. You can also do PGS testing to see if your blasts are normal. We declined and decided to just roll the dice since age is still relatively on my side. I also have a lot of issues going on with my body and it may take me more tries than a more "average" infertile. But I knew this going into the process. I would not sign up for mini/natural IVF with the mindset you will only need one cycle. Hopefully that's all you do, but be prepared for more. The only other downside I discovered is that husbands are not allowed back for the embryo transfers. But, they do give you a picture of your blast and a picture of them chilling in your uterus.










    

Ready to Try Again ~ IVF #7

Our canceled cycle in November was a huge sucker punch to the gut. It turned up yet another problem that doesn't have a cure or any good treatment. Apparently, my progesterone likes to start rising before ovulation. There is a narrow window of time when the uterine lining is receptive for embryos to implant. When progesterone rises too early in the cycle this moves up that narrow window of time so when the embryo is finally ready to nestle in, the uterine lining is no longer receptive. This is what likely happened during our chemical pregnancy. Try as they might, our poor little embryos didn't have much of a chance. The research I found shows an early rise in progesterone has a severe impact on success rates for IVF. And there really isn't anything you can do to keep your progesterone level from rising. But since it fluctuates like any other hormone, it is possible we can try again during a cycle where there isn't an early rise.

My body also decided to not have a period at the end of the 10 days of provera after my canceled cycle. Normally my period shows up within 1-3 days of stopping provera. Instead it took 2 weeks and was one of the worst periods I've had in a very long time. I passed several large clots that were extremely painful when passing through my cervix. Stupid cervical stenosis. It was awful. I could actually feel the clots as they were passing through my cervix. <shudder> On the bright side, my most recent period was pretty awesome with minimal cramping. So hopefully my body is recovered.



I went back on some Chinese herbs. I've been working with my acupuncturist to help bring some peace back to my battered body. I asked my acupuncturist last week if he thought my body was ready for another cycle of IVF. He said that from an eastern medicine perspective my body is actually well balanced, despite the crazy amount of stress I've been under the past several months. He thought it would be fine for me to try again.

We are tentatively going forward with my next cycle which could show up any day now. Scheduling these next several months is turning into a pain. We have tickets for a concert next week and I may end up missing it if my period shows up within the next three days and my progesterone level cooperates. If I skip this cycle then my next two cycles would conflict with a vacation we have planned. I really don't want to wait until April to get this show on the road. I keep going back and forth on everything. And if I really want to make myself laugh, I calculate due dates and see how much they would interfere with the out of town wedding I'm in this coming December.

There may be seemingly insurmountable odds against us; however, I am still cautiously hopeful we will finally get a take home baby.

Losing My Grandma

 Our holidays ended up being incredibly sad. My sweet and beautiful grandmother passed away five days after having a stroke Christmas morning. Prior to my husband, my grandmother was by far the most important person in my life. We had always been very close and I was so blessed when we moved this summer and lived close enough to help care for her the last six months. I miss her terribly. I haven't been able to grieve the loss very much. I keep telling my husband if I cry, that means she's really gone.  

And I'm just not ready to accept that yet.

I never told my grandmother about our struggles to conceive. She never asked us when we were planning on having children and I have a feeling she somehow knew. Her only daughter was never able to conceive either, so she may very well have had an idea. One of the evenings I was sitting alone with her after her stroke, (she had not opened her eyes or responded or hardly moved in a couple of days) I told her a little about our struggles and that I had three angel babies waiting in heaven and asked her to rock them for me. As I was holding her hand and telling her this she had a huge tear puddle in one of her eyes. The next night my husband and I were sitting with her and I was again holding her hand. I asked her to work with the angels when she got to heaven to send us a baby. For the first time in three days since having her stroke she squeezed my hand and opened her eyes and looked right at me. Two days later I was the last family member to see her before she passed away. I had been visiting her and had to leave for acupuncture. There was no sign the end was imminent. We were actually very surprised she held on as long as she did as we thought she was going to die the same day as her stroke. I kissed her cheek and told her how much I loved her and that I would be back in an hour. During my acupuncture nap I was very restless and hadn't been napping well. I woke up and looked at the time on my phone (I always have it with me as I use it to listen to music during my sessions) and promptly fell into a deep sleep. I later found out the same moment I woke up was the same moment my grandmother died.
 
I still can't believe she's gone. Most mornings when I first wake up I think about going to visit her...and then reality hits me.