Retrieval Eve

I'm feeling quite anxious on this eve of the next stage of my ivf plan.   I've gone through another round of a multitude of poking and prodding and am now anticipating a  4th round of trauma to my ovaries - which will actually be my last.  After this no more stimming, no more follicle count, no more triggering, no more aspirating - well, of my own anyhow.  Whew.

I'm still game for shooting up with PIO and popping pills, but after tomorrow I'm done with my ovaries taking the hits.  Next up will be us searching for eggs like some surreal Easter egg hunt, but as I said before DE is our back up plan, on an as needed basis.

So, I feel like I'm realistically optimistic about this cycle.  Actually I feel pretty numb about this cycle, I think it's difficult to be closing this door yet hard to write about how I'm feeling since I feel like it's one of those revolving doors.  My emotions seem to be going around in circles alternating between eagerness for this to be over and move on to hope that this 'last good egg' could actually work.

And we're off!

Or maybe I've already been in the running, it depends on when you think the official start of the cycle is.  I like to think the it's with the first pill I take that screws with my hormones, so for me that was on Monday when I took my first estrace.  I don't know what it was about this time, but the estrace gave me some headaches and some major crabbiness - it was like PMSx10 being on those.  I hope I'm coming down from that estrogen rush.  

So, I had my first b/w a

nd u/s today as AF came yesterday, a few days ahead of schedule.  Things look good and I begin taking more hormonal screwing drugs on Sunday night - gotta love it!  Actually the fol.listim seems to just do it's job on my follicles, it doesn't mess with my mind :-)  

That's it for ivf related stuff.  In these times of So. Cal's drought my husband and I decided to get rid of the grass in our front yard and plant drought tolerant/resistant plants.  We've passed the first stage - removal of the grass 

and now have a good ol' yard-of-dirt.  I've purchased the plants and now we are ready to start planning where everythi

ng will go, but of course it's too damn hot here to be outside - especially in the direct 90+ degrees sun.  We are limited to a few early morning and evening hours when it's cool enough that you are not sweating bullets just standing there.   Here are the b-4 and after grass pics.  

Before:

After:

Not much longer now...

...until my 4th cycle begins.  Way nervous, but ready.  I've been exercising and eating better, not expecting it to make a lot of difference, but just to make me feel better.  As I mentioned before we are focusing on getting to a FET and that seems to be taking the pressure off this fresh cycle.  Poppy asked why not do a transfer with the one frozen we have, we're not based on RE's recommendation, but we will if we don't get any to freeze from this fresh cycle.   Well, I start my medication, estrace, in a little over a week.  After that things are going to fly by.  If this cycle is anything like the last three - I'll be doing ER and ET around the 1st or 2nd week of August.  Wow.

So, DH and I just came back from a long w.e. road trip and my cousin, who we were staying with, asked the "when are you going to start a family" question. I saw it coming as she was dropping hints from the minute we got there. I told her we were having problems and didn't want to talk about it. Well it turns out her first dd is from ivf - 18 mos of treatments. Since it took all w.e. for her to ask the question (asked the night before we were leaving) we didn't get a chance to talk about it so I don't know the details.

I'm a little weary of opening up a dialogue with her - I don't know if I want to let her all the way in. We're family but I'm not sure how close we are. I am curious though as her dd is 19. I need to think on it for a while to see and it would also be different if we were logistically close, she's about a 8 hour drive away.

On a side note, I've been keeping tabs on one of the donors at our clinic.  Although she was unproven, the donor coordinator said she was in the middle of her first cycle and since she fit what we are looking for I kept track of her cycle.  Well, it failed.   36 eggs no pregnancy (lots to freeze though, and won't know about those until the recipient decides on an FET).  DH and I know that we will only go with a proven donor and it would have worked out time-wise if she had a successful cycle.   I'm a little disappointed but since a donor cycle is still some time in the future I'm not letting it worry me.  Besides a lot could happen between now and then.