Overwhelmed

Well we had our RE appt today. Poor Paul had gone back to school at 1:45am this morning to work on a project that's due today which has been giving him a lot of trouble the last couple of weeks that he's been working on it. He got home at 9:30pm last night and had dinner and we chatted and then he slept about 2 hours and was back in the lab at 2:30am. He said one of the janitors asked him if he ever sleeps. Well normally he does! So he drove from school to our appointment and I drove from home. Thankfully the RE is located about 1/2 way between home and his school. And now I'm back at home, and he's back at school.

I asked the RE again about the assisted hatching and he said they do perform it on 5dt and 6dt but he didn't recommend it in our case given my age being less than 39 and FSH being low. He said "If God forbid this 2nd transfer doesn't work, then yes we'll do AH the next time." I asked him again about my eggs being "thick" because I know AH is very helpful if you have a thick/tough ZP and I wasn't sure if a thick egg led to a thick ZP. Well it turns out I heard him wrong at our last appointment. He said my eggs were very SOFT. He then used the adjective "mushy." Great. Paul has 3% normal sperm and I have mushy eggs. What a lovely combination. He said he had NO idea what it meant that my eggs were "soft" - he didn't know if that is necessarily bad, but he said the experience of injecting the sperm into the egg wasn't "normal." And he said it could just have been a fluke and other eggs retrieved in the future might not be soft. But on the other hand he did emphasize last time that he didn't really care about the mushy eggs in light of the fact we had 7 embryos and none were poor quality and 3 were the highest quality - something that rarely happens even with younger couples. So anyhow we aren't doing AH. If we ever do IVF again then I definitely want AH, but we'll just go without it this time.

Well me asking for my appt to be today instead of Monday when it was scheduled (I would have had to miss class) means now I get 4 extra Lupron shots. Fun, fun, fun. That's my reward for not missing school - more shots. They want me to start the Lupron tomorrow. If things go the same as last time, it means next week I'll be taking lots of naps. I was very tired and felt like my brain was in a fog during my "menopause." My last bcp will be Monday which means I expect cd1 to be next Saturday which means my "baseline" appointment (that's normally on day 2 or day 3 of your cycle) will be on day 10. So not only is THIS cycle going to be long, but the next cycle is going to be over 40 days as well. I was able though to move my baseline appointments from October 15 to October 16 so I won't miss class for them. Actually they scheduled all my appointments for the whole cycle and we were able to avoid me missing any class which is nice. I had already lined up a substitute for Nov 2 as I thought I'd be on bedrest (as my FET was originally scheduled for Nov 1), but they pushed it to Nov 2 as the new RE - Dr. Murphy will be doing the FETs instead of Dr. Awad. And they scheduled it for the afternoon so Paul and I can both go to our morning classes and then drive to the RE for the FET. I'll stay on bedrest on that Saturday and Sunday.

Realizing I will be having a new RE for part of this cycle (I saw Dr. Awad today), I started to add how many doctors I have seen during this ttc journey. In 2003 I first went to an OB/GYN (Dr. Katz-Weizer) for help and she tried a few different meds on me to lower my free testosterone levels and such. I was so sick to my stomach on what she had me on and still wasn't ovulating so I went to see a second OB/GYN - Dr. Zimmerman. He said I should see an RE so I started seeing the 2 RE's in Allentown for about 7 months (2 rounds of Clomid and one of INJ). Then we moved to Catawissa in 2004 so I switched to this clinic where I've worked with 3 REs so far (Drs. Wittmaack, Awad, and Gell). Dr. W left a year ago and Dr. Murphy just started this month as Dr. W's replacement. I haven't met Dr. M yet. So Dr. Murphy will be my 6th RE and my 8th doctor I have seen in the past 4 1/2 years as a part of our attempts to have a baby.

Okay so the main reason I am feeling overwhelmed right now is the number of shots I need to take for the FET. It's actually MORE injections than with the fresh cycle. With the fresh cycle I had 59 total injections - 25 of Lupron, 21 of FSH, 1 of HCG, and 12 of PIO (which means 13 were IM and 46 were subq) I would have had a few more if I hadn't had my Beta 3 days early. With the FET, I am supposed to have 30 of Lupron, 9 of estradiol valerate, and 32 of PIO (which means 30 subq and 41 IM). It's the 41 IM injections that had me in tears (literally) after the nurse stepped out of the room. I was in so much pain with the fresh IVF from the PIO shots - I had trouble sleeping etc. Well with the FET I have to have TWO of those a day (every 12 hours). The thought is almost unbearable. I can't even imagine how sore my butt is going to be. Some days I will have 3 IM shots a day as the EV is also an IM injection. 3 shots in the butt a day with a big needle???? Well anyhow I'll probably go in 1-2 days early for my Beta again so if I'm not pg I might have about 3-5 less injections than the 71 total listed above. I just can't believe it takes 59 injections for a fresh cycle to produce 26 eggs and now to transfer ONE blastocyst I need to have about 71 injections. Of course if I am pregnant I will be very happy to continue them, but it's just overwhelming to think of all I am about to put myself through for at best a 25% chance of success. But maybe this is our miracle baby... So I guess my sister is going to be giving me more injections in Chicago than I thought she would need to give me.

The best thing about the ET being pushed back one day, is it means the afternoon I plan to test (11/11) will be 9dp6dt. Most RE's test at 9 or 10 days past a 5 or 6 day transfer. I am sure mine doesn't, but my plan is to test on 11/11 and try to get a Beta on 11/12 although that's a little trickier since I teach Monday mornings. I am guessing they'll schedule my Beta for either 11/13 or 11/14. We shall see. Of course this is all contingent upon everything going well between now and then. My E2 levels need to rise and my lining needs to be nice and thick. Normally that's not a problem, but normally I have follicles growing which I won't this time. Presuming my E2 is okay and my lining is thick enough then the next prayer will be that the embryo survives the thawing process and then that it implants into my uterus.

Anyhow right now I just ask for prayer for my emotions. I just am very overwhelmed as I think of how much my butt is going to hurt in a few weeks.