Feeling nervous

[fairfax]

I had another monitoring appointment this morning and my follicles are very slow growing. I have 5, measuring about 13, 12, 12, 8, and 9.

I will check back again on Thursday or Friday, but they won’t let me go much longer past that. It’s day 11 or 12 of stims already.

I know there is still hope but I’m just really nervous that we will need to cancel the retreival and I will have spent over $5k in meds for nothing. Boo hiss.

Sorry for the bummer post.

[FishChicks]

I'm sorry for the added stress. If it's any consolation, my last round of stims went 16 days, but RE described my follicles as "beautiful" at the end. I found lots of long stim success stories, too. Hope things look great on Friday.

[seeyalater52]

I had a lot of follicles in the 12mm range when I triggered and I think several of them were mature at retrieval so all hope is not lost! It is so frustrating though not to have them grow more quickly. I hope they get their act together and your retrieval goes really well!

[fairfax]

Jul 3, 2018 11:54:49 GMT -5 FishChicks said:

I'm sorry for the added stress. If it's any consolation, my last round of stims went 16 days, but RE described my follicles as "beautiful" at the end. I found lots of long stim success stories, too. Hope things look great on Friday.

Thanks! That is good to hear.

[fairfax]

Jul 3, 2018 12:40:52 GMT -5 seeyalater52 said:

I had a lot of follicles in the 12mm range when I triggered and I think several of them were mature at retrieval so all hope is not lost! It is so frustrating though not to have them grow more quickly. I hope they get their act together and your retrieval goes really well!

Wow, so they didn’t make you wait until they measured 20? That is good to know!

[compassrose]

My RE only needed them to be 16 to trigger. They grew quite a bit between trigger and retrieval

[pooh8402]

My RE also only needed them to be 16 to trigger as well.

[seeyalater52]

Jul 3, 2018 12:52:57 GMT -5 fairfax said:

Jul 3, 2018 12:40:52 GMT -5 seeyalater52 said:

I had a lot of follicles in the 12mm range when I triggered and I think several of them were mature at retrieval so all hope is not lost! It is so frustrating though not to have them grow more quickly. I hope they get their act together and your retrieval goes really well!

Wow, so they didn’t make you wait until they measured 20? That is good to know!

Mine were all over the place. I had a big one at 27mm at trigger, several at 20, 18, 16, and 12. I was worried about the laggers but it worked out ok. I had a ton of growth between my last two scans also, even though they were slow growing to start. Get it together fairfax’s follicles!!!

[cherryvalance]

fairfax, long stim cycles are so exhausting. I think I stimmed exactly 14 days with my first IVF cycle and it was terrible. Even this time, starting me at a higher dose of Gonal-F, I still think I stimmed about 10 or 11 days.

With all of that, though, both times my follicles went from just regular sized to crazy growth overnight. Both times they were trying to order me a Lupron trigger because they were surprised at how quickly things progressed, as if someone just clicked "on."

Keep your head up!

[fairfax]

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the support! My Dr called and my estrogen doubled since Saturday, so I guess that’s a good sign that things are still progressing.

I go back Thursday morning so hopefully we will see more growth!

[King26]

I'm sorry. That is frustrating. However, if there is a chance that they might cancel could you do an iui instead? That happened to cactuscookie she also had 5 small follicles and converted to.an iui and ended up getting pregnant .

[shoeless]

I’m sorry the journey is so long but I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for you!

[cherryvalance]

How did monitoring go?

[fairfax]

Jul 5, 2018 18:48:14 GMT -5 cherryvalance said:

How did monitoring go?

Ugh, still slow going (growing?). As of this morning I have a 19, a 16, a 14, 11, 9, and two 7. I have to go back tomorrow morning.

I’ve been stimming for 17 days. I spoke with my dr on Friday and she is considering cancelling the retrieval. Which I support - we prepaid for 3 retrievals and I don’t want to waste one. She also mentioned we could do an IUI instead and I’m very conflicted about that. On one hand, it seems foolish to waste $7k in meds for nothing. On the other hand, I’m terrified of another miscarriage. I know IVF doesn’t guarantee that you won’t miscarry, but at least we would know the embryo was genetically ok. Plus, if it were to work (which would be great of course) I’m not sure what that means for the IVF cycles we pre-paid for. Do we forfeit that money? AND the reason we decided to do 3 retrievals was to try and bank enough embryos for 2 kids. Having a successful pregnancy now, while amazing, would effectively mean we’d be one and done. I’ll be 38 next month and the few eggs I have are crappy.

But then it also seems crazy to not take every shot we have at getting pregnant. I don’t want to be “greedy” and miss a shot at 1 child in favor of preserving the hope of a potential 2nd kid in a couple years.

It’s very confusing and of course trying to think about it while I’m a bloated hormonal mess and completely exhausted mentally and emotionally is not productive.

So, hopefully we have enough info to make a decision tomorrow. Because I’m also out of meds again!

Thanks for asking, sorry to unload!

[compassrose]

fairfax that’s so hard! Sounds like you’d at least get three mature? Hopefully you’d get a good embryo from that. I agree it seems foolish to waste 7k in meds, but an IUI probably isn’t a waste if you have no male factor issues. On the other hand, we are doing IVF for the same reason—I wanted to do PGS testing to reduce my chance at another miscarriage as much as possible. It’s such a crap shoot. I’m sorry you’re not responding to the stims better

[fairfax]

Jul 7, 2018 21:24:59 GMT -5 compassrose said:

fairfax that’s so hard! Sounds like you’d at least get three mature? Hopefully you’d get a good embryo from that. I agree it seems foolish to waste 7k in meds, but an IUI probably isn’t a waste if you have no male factor issues. On the other hand, we are doing IVF for the same reason—I wanted to do PGS testing to reduce my chance at another miscarriage as much as possible. It’s such a crap shoot. I’m sorry you’re not responding to the stims better

Thanks! I’m also trying not to freak out about what my response means for future cycles. I’m already on the max dosage my dr recommends, so I’m like “where do we go from here?”, you know?

But, I also keep telling myself that this is likely the worst cycle. My response to the meds was an unknown so no way to prepare. I’m very overweight (working on it - doing another Whole30 as soon as this cycle ends) and I’m coming off of an insanely stressful 6 months at work. So, circumstances have not been ideal for success.

[cherryvalance]

Remind me, is this your first cycle?

A couple of things I'd consider:

-My first cycle was my worst in terms of response to meds and embryos (but of course we only know that now that we've done another).

-I also agree that an IUI is not a waste if you dont have MFI, and at least you'd be doing something, you know?

-Ultimately, what is your goal? Our was just one live birth, so we did everything to that end. If you definitely want two kids, I'd skip the IUI and do another retrieval. Also, ask how she plans on tweaking your meds now that she knows your response.

None of this is easy. I'm sorry it's been so stressful.

[woowoo]

We did a retrieval a month ago knowing we only had three mature follicles. Now that was the intention from the beginning (to only get a few) but it was still a few less than they were hoping for. BUT we have one perfect genetically normal embryo from that batch, so it wasn't a waste.

Not sure what your AMH levels are, but I'm also 38. We aren't doing another cycle right away as insurance won't pay for one if we did get a good embryo, but I would probably have rolled right into another cycle to give us more options.

I would do the retrieval. It only takes one, and you've already paid for it. There is something to be said for quality over quantity.

[fairfax]

Jul 9, 2018 5:43:54 GMT -5 woowoo said:

We did a retrieval a month ago knowing we only had three mature follicles. Now that was the intention from the beginning (to only get a few) but it was still a few less than they were hoping for. BUT we have one perfect genetically normal embryo from that batch, so it wasn't a waste.

Not sure what your AMH levels are, but I'm also 38. We aren't doing another cycle right away as insurance won't pay for one if we did get a good embryo, but I would probably have rolled right into another cycle to give us more options.

I would do the retrieval. It only takes one, and you've already paid for it. There is something to be said for quality over quantity.

Thanks! The dr called yesterday to schedule retrieval for tomorrow, so I guess we’re moving ahead. Fingers crossed!

[compassrose]

Jul 9, 2018 7:11:05 GMT -5 fairfax said:

Jul 9, 2018 5:43:54 GMT -5 woowoo said:

We did a retrieval a month ago knowing we only had three mature follicles. Now that was the intention from the beginning (to only get a few) but it was still a few less than they were hoping for. BUT we have one perfect genetically normal embryo from that batch, so it wasn't a waste.

Not sure what your AMH levels are, but I'm also 38. We aren't doing another cycle right away as insurance won't pay for one if we did get a good embryo, but I would probably have rolled right into another cycle to give us more options.

I would do the retrieval. It only takes one, and you've already paid for it. There is something to be said for quality over quantity.

Thanks! The dr called yesterday to schedule retrieval for tomorrow, so I guess we’re moving ahead. Fingers crossed!

Keeping everything crossed for you!