Two embryos!!

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Amazing - both eggs fertilised. We may actually make it to transfer!!!

Transfer is at 10am Thursday morning now. I'm praying that both those little zygotes make it through cleavage and that we have two lovely little blastomeres to transfer tomorrow.

I cried when the nurse told me that they had both fertilised. I've spent the most awful night and morning wondering what had happened and simultaneously convincing myself that we would get nothing to transfer and hoping that we'd have two fertilised.

Now I see why everyone says IVF runs you ragged. I am riding on an emotional see-saw.

A pigeon pair

I woke up from the anaesthetic today and started crying and crying. I've held it together so well, but I suspect the drugs relax my emotional walls.

The doctor was so lovely and she thought that my age was in my favour and that I should try to have some hope ... we got 2 eggs. The third follicle was empty so I guess I'm happy that there were eggs in the bigger follies. We find out tomorrow if we have any embies.

I hate this rollercoaster.

The doctor did say that next time we'd avoid down-regulation and do a flare cycle, she recommends leaving a cycle between stims but if I insist they'll let me go ahead. Like I said, she also said I should try to be hopeful and think positive. I feel like crap emotionally. And my left ovary hurts. Hooray for oxycodone (cause panadol is completely ineffective on me). Thanks so much for the comments and the stalking - I appreciate the thoughts.

Can't touch this

For some unknown reason every time I think of triggering I think of the song U can't touch this and MC Hammer's famed lyric "it's hammer time" except in my head I'm singing "it's trigger time".

And I was when I did.

The nurse called me today to give me my trigger time. She also gave me some hope, so I'm back on the crazy hope roller-coaster, riding up the hill. I bet you know exactly how much I want the up to go on forever and never start going down.

Officially shot up the Ovidrel at 10pm. Pickup will be at 11am AEST on Tuesday 21st of July. Thanks to Mel's injecting tips I didn't even notice the Ovidrel going in (and I'd heard it was a painful shot).

Show and Tell

It's Show and Tell time over at Stirrup Queens - go see what the others have got!

I'm showing you a card I bought for myself years ago. It says the most sensible words I have ever read and you've most likely read them before too.

I am trying my very, very, very best to do as Buddha says. Yesterday is over and the only way is forward.

And I'm also showing my wedding dress in case Brandy from Conception Deception visits - her Show and Tell was about her wedding and our dresses are quite similar (which surprised me)!

Poor ovarian response

Scan today revealed 3 follicles. 1 x 16mm, 1 x 15mm, 1 x 11mm.

I'll trigger on Sunday or Monday. EPU on Tuesday/Wednesday. They offered me the choice to cancel the cycle as I will most likely only have 2 good follies. She said that meant the chances of good eggs (or eggs at all) were low and thus a successful pregnancy was a low chance. I decided not to cancel but I'm pretty hopeless. Lining was up to 7mm, so at least that will be thick enough if I make it to transfer.

Apparently I am a poor responder. And I knew I would be, you don't get an Anti-Mullerian hormone level of 6 and then everything is ok (normal fertile range is 10-20 - means good ovarian reserve).

So we have The Big Guy's low normal morphology (8%) and my poor ovarian response with old eggs and that's pretty much why we haven't gotten pregnant.

And I spent from 7:45 til midday in doctor's waiting rooms today. Stupidly, oh god so incredibly stupidly, I read The Road while I waited. Geezus what a bleak and hopeless book. Beautifully written but boy-oh-boy what a dumb choice for a day of bad news. Watch the trailer for The Road if you want to see the bleak inside of my head today.

The vulva doc said to try thrush cream for a month and do some v.aginal physiotherapy with oil. Basically stretching the outer rim with increasingly larger things working my way up to p.enis sized. The whole idea would be hilariously funny if it wasn't so incredibly fucked up.

I cried 4 times today and I want to keep crying. And I'm pretty sure that's not a drug side effect because the drugs have done jack-shit.

I'm going to print out this page of advice for poor responders and take along to my next appointment with the docs and see if they'll give it a go.

Anxiety sucks balls

I took myself in for the look-see and the scan today and the news was good and bad.

First, I had to tell Doctor Patience what he had to do, not sure why he didn't read the notes but anyway I told him. In fact I was probably a little loose lipped about the whole thing because I had doped myself up on Valium before getting there so I could cope with the speculum.

Then I sent him to look for a small-sized speculum because there is no way in hell that anyone is sticking one of those monster speculums in me and then racheting it open a few cms.

No way Jose. My hootchie is a teeny tiny tight one. He dutifully found a child-sized speccy and then I handed him the bottle of vegetable oil and loudly proclaimed that there was no way I was allowing him to use the hideous lube in me either. Ouchy-wa-wa.

Poor ol' Doctor Patience must have thought I was a complete bossy nutter. Oh, that's right, I WAS!

The going in of the speccy wasn't too bad (thankyou Crisco) but the opening! My gosh did I yell. Three times and then I breathed deeply and thought of labour. Oh, the horror of it all. He told me there was no bleeding from my cervix and not to worry about the bloody-streaked mucus at all. Good.

Then I said hello to the d.ildo cam and again bossily instructed Dr Patience to use the oil and not the lube and to aim downwards - thankfully that didn't hurt at all going in. So he looks for follies. And he looks some more. He twists and turns and pokes that d.ildo around and eventually locates my left ovary which has a grand total of two 10mm follies (maybe a 3rd, he wasn't particularly intersted in caring about that one). Then more poking etcetera follows and finally he finds my poor little empty right ovary. Yep - empty. No follies.

So for 5 days of G.onal-F I have 2 follicles. Maybe 3. I was so disappointed.

I asked a gazillion questions, most of which he replied to by saying "it's early days yet". Infuriating much? Finally I asked if we could up my dose of G.onal-F and he agreed saying he didn't think I was at risk of OHSS.

OHSS??? OHSS???? I am at risk of under-bloody-stimulation thanks very much.

Upshot of the appointment is 300units of G.onal-F from tonight onwards, another scan on Thursday morning (before I hotfoot it down the road to the vulva clinic) and then "probably triggering on the weekend for a Monday or Tuesday EPU".

And I'd drugged myself up so thoroughly on Valium that I was very dopey in the car on the way home and then went to bed for the rest of the day to sleep it off. Now I'm just pissed off with my body.

Blood and thrush dramas

I think I have a candida infection in my vestibular area. And I can't take any of the -azole type medication to bomb it like I would usually due to the IVF. Bad. Very bad.

I have been spotting but the G.onal-F should not allow this and when I spoke to another of the FNs yesterday she rearranged my scan for Monday morning. At that point I will have had 5 stim shots so we'll get an idea if the G.onal-F is doing its job. At the same time they'll do a spread-n-see to locate the source of the bleeding. The FN says they're hoping the blood is either coming from high in the vaginal wall or that it's associated with the thrush. Both options sound bad, but endometrial bleeding would be far far worse. I'll take 'associated with the thrush' and a speedy cure thank you very much.

I spoke to yet another nurse at the Vulva clinic (MSHC) and she backdoored me into seeing one of the docs on Thursday (rather than waiting til September/October) so I'm strangely looking forward to that appointment to get some answers about the vestibulitis. Which I think is thrush-related. So it's all tied up together.

Shots have been going well, not causing any problems, no sore spots just 1 bruise from the first shot where I hit a capillary. The G.onal-F was burning as it went in on shot 2 and shot 3 but shot 4 was fine. So who knows what that was all about.

God I hope we nail this the first time.