I keep starting posts...

and then abandoning them. There's nothing I can type that doesn't feel like a jinx.

I'm just sitting here, very quietly, making the time pass until the ultrasound on Monday.

24DPO beta

3838.

Doubling time: 49.7 hours.

There's no progesterone because I wasn't due for another beta. I've been cramping a whole lot (no spotting though), and my OHSS suddenly got all better, and I was utterly convinced that I was miscarrying again. So I fished out one of the many beta lab slips from my last miscarriage (m/c betas don't care about progesterone). I just waltzed right in and gave it to lab and got my blood sucked. I figure what are they gonna do, put the blood back? Not tell me the results?

Anyway, the take home messages are

1. As of 8:30 Thursday morning, I am still pregnant and everything is still in normal range;
2. I have truly never been crazier than I am right now.

Really. Everyone else must be feeling really, really sane right now because I am using up all the crazy.

I'm going to go home and sob with relief and bury my head in Animal Crossing. I figure this set of results will give me 24-36 hours of relief before the crazy starts up again.

21DPO/16dp5dt beta

1406.
Progesterone: 321
.
Doubling time: 45.28 hours.

For those for whom these numbers do not immediately translate: the all-important doubling time is good at less than 48 hours. Not okay, good. The overall number is normal, just a titch off the mode. The progesterone is crazy, crazy high -- first trimester numbers are supposed to be around 15-50; by the third trimester it can reach 200. I haven't been able to find much information about what "ridiculously high progesterone" means, but the doctor doesn't seem concerned... probably it just means that I had really a lot of follicles, which have left behind them really a lot of corpus luteum-ses, each one of which probably thinks it's the only one and so is pumping out P4 as fast as it can. Bless their little yellow hearts.

Me: relieved, grateful, still scared, officially pregnanter than I've ever been.

11dp5dt/16dpo beta

224.

Progesterone: 298.

Doubling time: 49.9 hours. Not rock-star, but well within normal range (as opposed to my last 14-16dpo set, which were barely within normal range).

In other news, I'm enormous, bloated and largely immobile thanks to OHSS. Accordingly, I had to cancel plans to fly up to Boston to see my folks for Thanksgiving, which I knew would disappoint them terribly. Accordingly, I told them why.

holyshitholyshititoldthem

it felt wonderful but so, so naughty.

just. I don't know. I'm sitting here very quietly, sipping my V8 and homemade electrolyte drink, trying to make peace with the hope that keeps flaring within my heart. It seems so very dangerous, but it simply will not go away.

9dp5dt/14dpo beta

115.

Progesterone: 320.

Over the weekend I

1. peed on 1,214 sticks
2. convinced myself that the line was getting lighter, not darker
3. had weeping fits since it was clearly all over
   
4. gathered up all my peesticks and begged Her Indoors to hide them very, very well.

I think some of the leftover crazy from the miscarriage is bubbling over. I just can't help thinking of how high I was then and how fast and hard I fell. But that's the way of it, isn't it? There's no way to want something this precarious this much and not be in terrible danger.

I have been staring at the clock all day. These are the things I mentally rehearsed hearing:
Your results are back -- the beta was 8 and you can stop your medication.
The beta was 18
The beta was 26
The beta was 54

We're supposed to call for results between 3 and 4. At 2:59 I picked up the phone and the moments I was on hold I could have measured by the heartbeat pounding in my ears.

115 is a solidly normal beta. Not high, not low. Last time at 14dpo my beta was 74, on the low side, although not wildly so. 115 is a happy number. 115 is a healthy number. 115 is just fine.

In other news, no surprise, I have developed a mild case of OHSS. At least, I thought it was mild; when I went in to have my blood taken this morning, Inappropriate Lab Admin Asst took one look at me and said "You blowin' up again?" Me: "Looks like." Anyway, besides the OHSS, I feel pretty good. Not a lot in the way of symptoms except cramps, which don't concern me -- I figure it's just the embryo bedding down. No spotting at all.

Thanks so much for all of the good wishes and crossed fingers on my previous post. Really can't say how much it means to me that you are all out there rooting for us. I could never have anticipated the extent to which this has become a group project.

Next adventure: Wednesday's repeat beta. Since you all did such a splendid job with the finger-crossing for this beta, your next assignment is think doubley thoughts.

5dp5dt

I'm grateful. I'm hopeful. I'm cautious, but... so far so good, right? Yeah. Ever since the brief time I was pregnant I've been missing this, longing to feel this again -- the humming, the sense of busyness within my body, strange and wonderful, explosive with possibility.

Right here right now I am so glad to be here again. Keep your fingers crossed for me, y'all.

2dp5dt: the roller coaster continues

After the plunge from Saturday's embryo-quality news, I have been lifted up into the atmosphere again by the following news:

Eight of the remaining embryos turned into "very nice quality" (4AA or 4AB) by day 6 and were frozen! Eight! Eight! I expected to have nothing make it to freeze. And of course this is making me much more hopeful for the ones I have inside me. Maybe this batch of embryos are just slow but good-quality growers. That's okay with me.

Transfer day: another dose of mixed news

Good: the spotting, which was only slight, stopped entirely!

Not so good: I had 16 good-looking embryos on day 3. As of today, day 5, I had a couple of mediocre-looking embryos. First round we transferred one 4AA. This time the best we could do was 2BB. No one knows why, of course.

We had such good results the first time that I was barely worried about the embryos between days 3 and 5. Since worrying is how I stave off disaster, obviously this happened because I failed to worry properly. This mistake will not be repeated.

It was pretty upsetting to sashay in there, full of confidence, and get the news. But just because the chances are somewhat reduced doesn't mean that they're zero; babies are born all the time from less-than-perfect embryos.

Well, it is what it is. It's all over now but the waitin' and the hopin'.

4 days past ER: mostly sunny with a few clouds

Mostly sunny:
As of yesterday, the embryos were doing great -- 16 of the 19 were "doing well"; 8 of those were 8 cells grade 1. We're set for a transfer tomorrow. This is really really great.

Wednesday was my birthday, and it was nice.

A few clouds:
I've had slight cramping and spotting. I thought to myself "hey, nothing to worry about, it's so slight" but called the RE just to be safe. Apparently telling your RE that you're spotting the day before transfer wins: stat bloodwork, a pelvic exam, an ultrasound, an Estrace prescription at the ready, and the note that if you start bleeding harder to call right away and we'll cancel the transfer.

Erp.

I'm trying to stay cool. It could all be just fine.

Other slight clouds: the ultrasound showed some fluid sloshing around my abdominal cavity; although I feel okay, I haven't dodged the OHSS thing entirely. I'm to chug electrolyte drinks. Also, my good right arm vein is mostly used up -- guess it gets scarred after a while. The vein I have on my left arm is not very accessible, so if my right arm poops out they will have to start on my hands, which sounds unsightly and unpleasant.

And that's the news.

1 day past ER: all good news!

Okay, this is just crazy.

It's Tuesday. As of last Friday I had five mature-looking follicles and we were still consdering cancelling the cycle and doing an IUI. As of Saturday, when I triggered, that number had doubled.

And as of Mondays' retrieval...

23 eggs. 21 mature. 19 fertilized.

19. 19. Where the hell did those come from? No one saw that coming. My doctor sure didn't, having carefully prepared me -- he was estimating 8-10, then revised his numbers upward to 10-15. I said I'd be ecstatic with 15 and happy with 10.

Of course there's no guarantee of anything, but the bigger the starting number the higher the chance of having multiple strong, healthy embryos.

The witches' brew of metformin - high stims - even higher stims - no metformin seems to have produced a bumper crop without making me sick as a dog in the process. As of today I'm sore and moving slowly, but I'm nowhere near the hit-by-a-truck shape I was in first cycle. I am lumbering to the bathroom all on my own, and it doesn't hurt to cough or, you know, breathe. I took three days off from work (vacation days, so I wouldn't have to have The Conversation) and I think that by Thursday I'll be in fightin' form.

Worrying will recommence tomorrow. Today I am just delighted.

Day 11: Trigger Day

Almost all good news today! My ovaries are humming. A solid handful of follicles popped up overnight. We're now hoping for 10-12 total, much better than I'd feared.

Other good things: my birthday is on Wednesday, and today I went on a shopping spree and snagged the Wii Fit I'd been wanting, as well as a pile of Nintendo DS games. These should keep me out of trouble during any OHSS-related confinement. Which brings me to the only not-perfect thing, which is that my doctor wrote Get your electrolyte and protein drinks ready! on the bottom of my instruction sheet. Underlined. I take it to mean that he expects me to get OHSS again.

Well, we're reasonably prepared, and even if I do get it I expect the whole thing will be less traumatic second time around -- I'll be uncomfortable, but at least I won't be scared.


Oh! And when we were wandering around the mall, I saw this sculpture in the Pottery Barn window and was immediately drawn to it. I wasn't sure why -- according to the label it's a reindeer, and I don't celebrate Christmas and in fact have a slight Jewish-girl jealousy/aversion to Christmasphenalia. And the percentage of times when I walk by a store window, see something, and then go in and buy the thing in the window at full retail approaches zero.

But, as I was looking through the window, my darling reasonably suggested that this sculpture is in fact quite evocative of the Celtic stag-god Herne/Cernunnos. He's a powerful male fertility aspect. I bought the large one, with the leaves blooming from his antlers, and he's making me very happy. My eyes like looking at him, even though he's taking up half of the bedroom vanity.

I intend to hang necklaces on him eventually, but have been warned not to do so until I'm already pregnant, so as not to feminize the powerful male fertility aspect by making him look like a pretty pretty princess.


Update: I have triggered! I am now a ticking time bomb of superovulation! Whee!

Day 10: the good and the bad

The bad:
At this point in the last cycle, I had 6 correctly-sized follicles. This cycle, even with more medication, I have 5. There is no way to know why my ovaries are so sluggish this cycle. For heaven's sake, on a lower dosage I got 21 mature eggs my first cycle. It could be the metformin, but I've never heard anyone else say that metformin ruined their response.

The good:
My estrogen is much, much higher than it was last cycle. This bespeaks of the possibility of lurking eggs. A couple more may well fatten up and surprise us. We're giving my ovaries another day to cook and cutting down the dosage.

Herein I enclose a table for my own record-keeping, enjoyment & convenience, because I find hand-coding HTML tables strangely soothing:

	E2
	Cycle 2	Cycle 3
Day 4	134	154
Day 6	445	491
Day 8	910	1401
Day 10	1938 (trigger)	3226
Day 11 (trigger)		4065 (trigger)

Of course, this also means that the risk for OHSS is going back up, but

1. It's less likely with so many fewer follicles, regardless of the E2;
2. I do not care.

Another scan tomorrow, likely trigger tomorrow night, for a Monday retrieval.

So that's the news. On the whole I'm feeling much much happier than I was a few days ago, when it seemed that even pumping up the dose wasn't doing anything to make this cycle different from last. At least things are moving. Or at least I'm high on estrogen.

Day 5 of Stims: not so good

My E2 was pretty low on Saturday, as low as it was last time with my "poor response" cycle, despite the higher dose of stims. It must be the metformin.

We raised the dose and I quit taking the metformin. If I have <10 follicles on tomorrow's scan we'll cancel this cycle and consider converting to an IUI. If you know anything about the issues here, you know that this would be a hideously hilarious choice for me.

Most people would only cancel a cycle with <5 follicles, but this is my last chance, my last insurance-covered cycle. I want it to be everything it can be. I don't even care about OHSS any more. I just want a big old crop of eggs.

I will admit that my first thought about canceling the cycle and trying again was oh crap, not more birth control pills.

IVF #3: Day 3 of Stims

Hey, I'm back!

Not a lot of excitement, other than the fact that the birth control pills made me vomit this time around. Yecchh. Sympathy to my heterosexual sistren.

They also, like last time, made me really, really depressed. I've been off of them for a week now and the miasma is finally starting to clear.

Anyway. Third day of stims, yeah. Having one underreponse and one overresponse under my belt, of course I'm eager to see where this one will land. We're using an "overreponse" amount of stims, but I'm on metformin, which will hopefully modulate my response enough to keep me away from OHSS.

I am also considering transferring two embryos. Maybe if I sacrifice my principles, the sacrifice will be deemed handsome enough, and I'll finally get to have a freaking baby. Don't you have to let go, open your hand, give up, just relax before you can get pregnant?

I don't believe any of that, of course. Of course.

A while ago, when I was trawling the internet for depressing videos, I found one called "The Slow Path to Motherhood". I can't say the video spoke to me, but the title has stuck in my mind. The slow path to motherhood. This is the path I'm on, and the implications of that tumble around in my head.

Is there some way spin it positively, to find meaning in the fact that I'm on this path? I've toyed with the idea that maybe I'll appreciate motherhood more, having arrived this way. But you know, I think most parents love their children pretty much to the max, regardless of whether it was easy or hard to get 'em.

I don't think it's made me a better person. I think it's made me a worse person. I liked myself a lot better two years ago.

In conclusion: the only lesson I think I have learned from this path is that this is the path I'm on. Gracefully or gracelessly, this is the path I have to stumble down, and hope that what's at the end is what I want it to be (hint: live squalling infant, stinky diapers, hysterical toddler, condescending teenager).

And if there isn't? That will be the path I'm on then. And I guess I will find some way to walk it.

CD8: No go

Haven't much had the heart to blog -- last cycle negative, of course. I've started the birth control pills for my last fresh cycle.

Big love to all the kind and wise people who told me to step away from the Google. Now it seems a bit foolish to worry about multiple pregnancies, given that right this second being pregnant at all seems fantastical.

I've unsubscribed from several high-profile infertility bloggers, all of whom are now pregnant (nobody whose journal I've ever commented on, or who has ever commented here). It's just too much. Too much. I was at a conference this week, in a discipline that's heavily female and, apparently, fecund. I overcompensated mightily, as always. If I'm ever pregnant, I wonder will I notice when a woman is smiling at me too warmly? I know I'll never be a belly-rubber, but I wonder if I'll see. Probably not. I can't see it on anyone else's face even now. I always feel like the only person whose eyes slide away.