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Saturday 5 December 2009

IUI#2 CD12

CD3-CD7 50mg Clomid
CD8-CD11 Estrogen
CD8 Disappointingly, the dominant follicle is on my right ovary, the one with the partly blocked tube. The follicle is 12.7 mm, and my lining is very thin at 3.4 mm, only 0.35 more than at CD3.
CD10 Dominant follicle at 16mm, lining at 4.8 mm (compared to 7.6mm when I was on Menopur)
CD11 Dominant follicle now ripe at 19mm, but lining only 5.78mm (triple stripe pattern). We trigger with HCG at 11pm. The needle injection hurts.

I have been extremely irritable lately, and my poor husband has had to bare the brunt of it all. He also has this thing about me taking personal responsbility for my actions, so I can't get away with just yelling at him and then blaming it on the drugs. Perhaps they could also percscribe some valium so that I could glide serenely through the days, instead of feeling my blood boil at every minor hindrance.

If this cycle doesn't work, then we will take a month break over Christmas, and then one to two more IUI cycles. If I am still not pregnant, we will move onto IVF. I am ambivilent towards IVF. On the one hand, there will be more medications and drugs and operations. On the other hand, I no longer have to worry about adhesions and blocked tubes, and our chances of success go from 10% to 40% per cycle.

These past IUI cycles have been odd. After so many months of privately monitoring my cycles with temperatures and LH cycles, I am surprised to find a team of midwives now working with me, and wishing me "good luck". I do appreciate the support, and the extra monitoring and knowledge, but the endless blood draws and commuting to the hospital are exhausting. And these area just the IUIs - we haven't even gotten to the hard stuff yet. I hope that all this does not last for longer than it has to.

We go in for the IUI tomorrow at noon. Either way, no injections for at least six weeks. Fingers crossed.

2 comments:

  1. ...fingers crossed for you. And although looking towards IVF is never a bright spot, you are absolutely correct about the stats. Hoping things work out sooner than that though.

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  2. The much better stats are why we moved to IVF when we did. I could have saved a lot of money just keeping going with the IUIs (was only paying about $200 out of pocket for them, as drugs and all but the sperm wash was covered), but with DHs crummy sperm and feeling like time was running out, it was time to move on.
    Really, the IVF wasn't that much worse than many of my injects cycles. I was having to have daily ultrasounds and bloodwork at least every 2 days for those anyhow. There was more anxiety about higher order multiples with the increasing dose of injects I was working up to.
    With IVF, I did antagonist cycles, so there was no lupron, just stims and orgalutran to prevent a premature LH surge. I felt pretty fine all the way through, apart from getting a little tender inside with the transvag scans right before they would trigger. I just felt like the saved time, the way better chances of success (we were quoted 68% or so for us doing ICSI and assisted hatching for my age group), and just knowing that sperm definitely got to the egg and the embryo made it into my uterus were worth the added hassle of making sure I'd have time off work for the procedures. For the IUIs, I'd either do monitoring before work, or would pop over quickly at lunch or after work to have the IUI done. There was very little good motile sperm on our second IUI, so I had little hope that things were going to get much better than that.
    So hopefully this will work for you, or you'll be randomized back to injects next month. And if not, I really don't know that IVF will be that much worse than what you're already going through. Some clinics do bloodwork every other day, and don't start scanning till farther along in the cycle. Mine tracked everything with an eagle eye, especially with my PCO and higher stim doses - so it was daily U/S and bloodwork from about stim day 6 onwards.
    I think you'd have a great chance of IVF working for you though. If they do ICSI to take care of poor morphology, and the IVF takes care of the adhesions and partly blocked tube, the fact tht you've had something implant before to give you a chemical would have to be a good sign. The high tech stuff should take care of your "issues".
    Hope your lining is plumper in a couple more days. People have gotten pg with one like that before!

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