My friend Kristen just got a second pink line yesterday after her second clomid cycle! Please send her some thoughts and good vibes for a very sticky baby for her. I’m so excited for you, girl!

This morning was my first ultrasound after the baseline. It’s been 5 days of stims on 150IU of Follistim, and I was anxious to see what was going on in there – especially since I don’t feel anything.

My left ovary had 11 follicles total. Half (5) of them were small. 6 of them were around 10mm.
My right ovary had 13 follicles total. Same as the other, half (5) of them were small, 8 of them were 10-11mm.

They were really happy with that!! They said my body definitely likes this protocol, and is responding very well to the medications… and there’s no sign of any follicle being a hog and outpacing the others.

Just a reminder that at my baseline scan I had only 11 antral follicles total. Guess more decided to join the party!

After they get my estrodial blood test results back this afternoon they’ll call me to tell me when to come back in for the next ultrasound, but she said it’ll probably be this weekend, possibly sunday. They are saying that I’ll probably be ready to trigger around sunday or monday!! Which would mean I’d have my egg retrieval on tuesday or wednesday! Holy cow!! :twirl:

Just so exciting. But it really makes me wonder and get angry at my body too. Everything we’ve tried, every test we’ve done, has come back “good” or “excellent”… every test is normal… every meds makes my body stimulate REALLY well. So why the hell am I not pregnant on my own?? Yesterday marked 18 months of trying. 18 months!! Several of those with multiple eggs. I will be THRILLED to get pregnant from IVF…. but I think I’ll always wonder why the heck my body can’t do it on its own.

But other than that little bit of frustration at myself it is a good day! I also had a positive meeting with the client yesterday and he wants me to do a whole bunch of work for him, which means a lot more money coming in! I’m so relieved and excited and nervous all at once. This is my biggest client to date… it’s been very slow getting started. It’s not great timing, with being in the middle of IVF and everything, but I think it’ll go very well. And I won’t have to go out and get a second (third?) job somewhere.

Edit: I forgot to add that my lining was a nice “triple 6”. :)

I had to try on my dress slacks for the client meeting today. I couldn’t even do one of my pants up. It was horrible. So just for shits and giggles today after the meeting I took my measurements.
Waist: 30.5″
Hips: 40.5″

I just looked up my past measurements from last year. Surprizingly, I haven’t put on any inches at all. I’m a little shocked by that…. I thought for sure… huh. Well. I guess it’s a good thing I write down actual numbers.

I wish those numbers would go down, but I can settle for them not going up. (And what pants I can and can’t wear definitely fluctuates throughout the month and depending on what I’ve eaten.)

So it turns out that bloodwork and ultrasounds must be done before 9am on the day it needs to get done. I have to drop Den off at work at 7:30am, then drive there – say that’s 30 minutes of driving (rush hour). The order for work also needs to be picked up by 9am. Now I’m usually there and on the road by 8, latest 8:15. It’s kind of on the way. Think I can pull that off? I don’t know if I want to try. I might just tell work I’ll do the order on friday instead. I don’t think there would be any problem with friday. In fact I need to be in work early friday anyways, so it kind of makes more sense.

Did I ever mention that at that AFA conference I went to I was given a free copy of The Essential Fertility Log? Well I did. I’ve been using it from the start of this IVF cycle. It helps me check off all the meds I take every day, and write little notes to myself. Much like what I do here, but on paper. And paper is pretty cool, I like paper and pens. (Just not to write long notes on – I get hand cramps. But lists? Oh yes.) If I didn’t have this fancy little book I probably would have just grabbed a blank notebook and started my checklists that way. I’m anal like that. But it’s nice to have a little log to keep myself straight. I keep it in my purse so I can check things any time I want to.

Ice really is god.

I am a walking pharmacy. Not only do I have a box full of syringes and vials of medication sitting on my dining room table (and some in my fridge), but I also have a bunch of pill bottles lined up beside it. I’m taking four pills a day: my prenatal, the doxycyclin, baby aspirin, and of course my celexa. The doxy really screws up my schedule, though – I used to have my celexa and prenatal on my nightstand and take it right before bed. But the doxy has to be taken twice a day, with food… so the whole schedule had to be changed. So now I just take all of them in the evening at the same time as my injection.

I also have to remind Den to take his doxy as well…. I swear that man has the memory of a gnat. I tell him it’s time for my injection, he says, “I’ll be right there!” and five minutes later I’m still sitting there waiting. “Honey?” That’s when he says, “Oh shit! I’m such a spacehead.” I really couldn’t disagree with him. (Earlier this week I asked him for his brother and sister-in-law’s new address. He said, “What for?” I explained it was their first anniversary and I have a card to send them. He stares at me and says, “It was? God. You are SUCH a better person than I am. I never would have remembered that.” I told him that’s why men get married… to remember things.)

I have a big meeting with a potential client tomorrow. I am so nervous about it. I know I shouldn’t get all worked up right now, but it’s really an opportunity I can’t pass by, it could mean a very big job for me. Just need to chill out until then and try not to worry overmuch about it.

Went in for my blood test this morning. I’m becoming good at this… I know where everything is, just pop in to the office, sign the sign-in sheet and mark off “IVF” and “Lab”, get my lab script from them, go downstairs to the lab, hand over the sheet and my insurance card, then sit in the waiting room until someone calls me back (usually very quick). This time I offered my right arm for the poking; my left still has a large bruise on it. I drank a whole bottle of water in the truck on my way, in an effort to pump up my veins… they can be hard to find. Guess it didn’t work too well. She choose a vein on my right arm, stuck the needle in, then had to root around a little bit to find the damn thing – it had moved on her. Thankfully I am used to needles by now so I can just watch. I used to have to look away and focus on my breathing. Now it’s no big deal. Strange.

I just got the call from the nurse… my E2 level today is 179, totally acceptable for them, so they’re keeping in me on the same dose of 150IU of follistim. Just keep doing what I’m doing, return in two days. Of course that puts it on a thursday, which could be a little tricky… that’s the one day I am supposed to pick up the order for work (and it has to be done between 8 and 9am). Hmmm. Will have to look at the instructions for ultrasounds to see how I can accomplish both in the proper timeframe. I might have to put off the order until friday, we’ll see.

Ice packs get a big thumbs-up from me today. I decided to try icing my tummy before the injection, in the hopes it would numb it a bit. And to its credit it definitely helped! It still hurt, but just when I was bracing myself for the worst of it Den was done. It was a welcome relief.

In other news, my period is gone. Just like that, it’s gone. I was starting to think this was a horribly heavy period – I know me using cloth pads now has made it harder to judge how “normal” it was though. Different absorption rates and all that… it’s hard to tell if I’m having a “heavy” day or if the new pads are just making me paranoid and changing pads more often than I need to.

Getting through an entire period with only three pads (plus one overnight pad) is rather interesting, though. I ended up washing each one by hand as soon as I changed it, hanging it up to dry, then tossing it in the dryer on low for a few minutes to finish the drying so I could use it again. That was fun. I own more than three pads, but only three HH brand… and honestly every time I put on one of the other ones I got cranky and wanted my nice ones back.

The HH ones I don’t even really notice, they’re so soft. This is the first period where I haven’t felt like I never want to leave my bed again. I can’t even really explain it… normally I just feel so “gross” that I just don’t want to go anywhere or do anything. And I’m not talking about cramps and nausea… I’m just talking about how I usually feel dirty and icky and the pad makes me feel uncomfortable so I don’t want to do anything. (I would use tampons when I went out.) But honestly, this month hasn’t been the same at ALL. I’ve been walking daily. I’ve felt good enough to get stuff done and clean and keep my face washed and basically do everything but lay in my bed and mope. It’s really… weird. In a good way.

I’ll also mention that I never got cramps. I got the tiniest bit of nausea right when my period started, I took a midol, and nothing ever came back. Normally I feel crappy, I take a midol, I feel better in a little while, then a few hours later I’m feeling like crap again and I have to take another dose. Not this month. And no cramps at all. I know I read of other girls saying that they got less cramps and lighter periods when they switched to cloth but I honestly discounted it as illogical. My period was definitely not shorter or lighter… but I felt better. Maybe it’s because of my recent lap (even though the period before wasn’t better), maybe it’s psychosomatic. Who knows.

I can definitely see why it wouldn’t be for everyone, this cloth pads thing… the washing of blood would have made me feel ill years ago (I’m past that stage… long past that stage). Plus yes, they are a little bulky, so I don’t think they’re a good alternative to tampons if you’re into that. They’re a little more work, because of the washing (though with a normal stash you wouldn’t be washing them by hand every day, just throwing them in with your laundry!) and when I go out I have a wet bag – a little zippered waterproof bag – to store them in until I get home, so it takes forethought.

But for me, for my lifestyle, I think it works just great. I’m definitely sold.

I just talked to a nurse… we’re to start the doxycyclin (antibiotics) today and take them twice a day for 7 days. And I was reminded to take it with food or it will upset my stomach… lovely! And I’m to be taking the baby aspirin as well. Oh, and no advil for headaches, just tylenol… so I’m hoping I don’t get any headaches!

But no side effects so far, beyond a bruise on my stomach. :) Just like with the clomid I’m staring at the little bitty medication (in this case liquid in a vial, instead of a pill) and wondering how on earth that tiny amount can do anything. Especially when I’m having no side-effects sometimes I wonder if it’s just not doing anything! I’ll feel better tomorrow when the blood test shows my estradiol going up. :) I still need to look up what it’s supposed to be doing.

*I wrote this last night and forgot to post it.*

So Den tried injecting slower today, in the hopes that it wouldn’t hurt as much. Umm, it didn’t work. It started off fine, then got worse, and then I was really making a face and wishing he’d pull the damn thing out of me. And it turned all red and blotchy afterwards. No blood this time, though.

I’m blaming the menopur. The lupron was obviously not a big deal. The follistim isn’t much more fluid either. But the menopur comes in a vial of powder and a vial of diluent. My instructions are to use 1 cc of diluent and inject it into the vial of powder… and then inject all of that (plus the lupron and the follistim) into me. Do you know how much 1 cc is? Well it’s a lot. And you know, a part of me thinks, well, it says you can mix several vials of powder with 1 cc of fluid. So if you only need one vial of powder, you should be able to use less, yes? I mean, logically. But of course I will keep shooting myself up with enough fluid to make my stomach cry because that’s what the instructions say. It does not, however, tell you it will hurt. Nope. Left that part out.

I am also confused about the baby aspirin and antibioitics. I have them. I know I’m supposed to take them at some point. But no one has mentioned them to me. I’m thinking I’m going to have to call the nurses tomorrow to find out.