Pondering Pregnancy Symptoms

One thing about early pregnancy and IVF has me totally baffled. Let me explain. During an IVF cycle, we shoot up 10,000 units of HCG to “ripen” our eggs. 36 hours later they are removed. HCG has a halflife of 24 hours, which means that it decreases by 50% every 24 hours. HCG is also [...]

Posted on | April 4, 2010

Rude Awakening

I went to bed with a terrible stomach ache. It’s been a stomach ache that has been building for a week or so. I’m not sure what it was but last night it was pretty bad. And then AF woke me up in the middle of the night. Usually I get a pretty good warning [...]

Posted on | April 3, 2010

Serendipity

I never knew my biological father growing up as my mother saw fit to never tell him that I was born. When she found herself pregnant with me, she casually mentioned to him that, “There’s the possibility that I am pregnant.” My father, being the controlled skeptic that he is, said, “OK, let’s wait and [...]

Posted on | March 27, 2010

Disintegration

At 10AM sharp today, nurse J emailed me to tell me that my embryos had started to disintegrate. Now seriously, are any of us surprised? I am still stunned that she really thought that my embryos had any chance of turning around. Two days and no growth and suddenly they’re going to have this miraculous [...]

Posted on | March 26, 2010

More Confusion

So I wrote to Dr. Italian last night questioning why I should call their office back today at 10AM to get an embryo report. Here’s what I wrote: Hi Dr. Italian, As you know my embryos arrested. Nurse J told me to call her at 10AM tomorrow to “see if anything changed”. Six day old [...]

Posted on | March 25, 2010

And Then There Were None

On day 3 I had two grade 2 embryos: 1 at 6 cells, 1 at 7 cells. Anything over 6 is considered “good enough” to progress onto a 5 day transfer. Today, is day 5. Transfer was due for today at 3:30PM. It’s 6:00PM. You can see where this story is going, can’t you? I [...]

Posted on | March 24, 2010

Fert Report

My clinic just called. Of the 4 eggs they got, 2 were mature and both fertilized. So the two lower ones didn’t catch up. A day would have helped them. I’m pissed. I can’t help but think I am continually being triggered way too early. If this cycle fails, I’m going to have a heart [...]

Posted on | March 20, 2010

Transfer Day: The Ever Changing Follicle Count

About a week ago, Dr. Italian said that he saw 6 or 7 follicles. Two days ago at my U/S: 4. This morning on the table before my IV sedation cocktail: 5 When I woke up: 6 Of the 6 that he found while I was out, 5 were large enough to have follicles. Of [...]

Posted on | March 19, 2010

Night Before Retrieval, Take 7

I don’t know what possessed me to accept a meeting invite for 9am tomorrow. My meeting is slated to go from 9 to 9:30 and I have to be at the clinic at 10:30. I think I’ll take the call while I am on foot to the train and then leave the meeting a hair [...]

Posted on | March 19, 2010

CD11: Triggering Tonight!

I went in for my 2nd monitoring U/S today and my follicles are at 20, 19, 17, and 13. He was a bit taken aback at how fast I progressed. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary either. I took ALL my ganirelex, didn’t add in more Gonal-F. So, amazingly, despite all of that, [...]

Posted on | March 18, 2010 keep looking »