the recipe in me

Thanks so much for your encouragement and empathy.  I love you all.

My dr was in the office today, so even though she wasn't supposed to be in clinic this weekend, she made a point to come see her patients who came in.

That was really good.  We wanted to know if I'm just not a good candidate for IVF and to hear good practical advice. 

She said that my current cycle confuses her, along with my last one.  Apparently I usually have about 7 antral follicles, which would suggest that I'd have 5-9 mature during stims.  It's really weird that only 3 did the first time, and only one this time.  She thinks that if we don't do BCPs or regular does lupron next time around then I won't be over suppressed, which seems to be the problem.  As you all predicted.

Alternatively, my eggs are just low-quality and only 1-3 can successfully mature during any given cycle.  

We were at a different office today, and the sonogram is better at this one.  There are a couple of smaller follicles lagging behind, so we are stimming again today and going in tomorrow morning for another look.  If by some miracle they've caught up, we'll go ahead with IVF on the three.  If not, we'll do IUI on Tuesday.

The tough thing about IUI is that we are the couple that can't bd every day due to various reasons... so there is always that timing issue.  I think I've got dh to agree to try 48 hours, so we'll do 48 hours three times in a row and hope we get the timing right somehow.  There is something about knowing my little egg can only survive maybe 12 hours that freaks me out for IUI timing.  Oof.

She could tell we were about at the end of what we can deal with, but said that from her perspective we hadn't gotten to see what my eggs are like and all the other stages of IVF.  So we really don't know the likelihood of IVF working for us.  She suggests that, if this cycle doesn't work, we try one more before giving up. 

I think I'm ok with that plan.  And I won't freak out about the schedule of the next round until tomorrow afternoon, as it looks like I'll be in Paris for that meeting I scheduled a long time ago which of course will happen right when I should be stimmimg if we do back-to-back cycles.  But alternatively, I could take the next cycle off and also go see my parents, during which time I will really need to drink martinis and coffee.  They have no idea about any of this, and I have no intention of telling them.