It’s a Bust

Yes, this cycle is indeed a bust. It was looking that way on Friday too with only 1 follicle at 10 mm, 1 follicle at 9, 1 follicle at 8 and the rest all smaller than that. But since my estrogen was still rising they said I could keep trying to stim over the weekend to see if things could get moving again. Nope, I went in this morning and the follicles were smaller. Blood work confirmed it, my estrogen level actually went down.

That sucks. I’m disappointed but not devastated. I’m just wondering where we go from here. We’re meeting with the RE on Thursday to discuss it.

I’m starting to lose hope though. It seems like we are looking for a miracle. Stimulate my ovaries just enough to have 4-5 good follicles but not so much that I have more than that. It’s too fine a line to walk it seems, especially since this whole thing is far from an exact science.

The way I see it, we have three choices when it comes to ART’s.

1.  We can either go forward with GIFT from the start. There will be little concern of having too many follicles so we will go forward with the goal of getting the best quality eggs possible. ($8000)

2.  We try another IUI cycle but with a different stimulation protocol. Something in between what we did last time, and what we did this time, obviously. ($2100) If we get too many follicles we could convert to GIFT (an additional $3000).

3.  We try another IUI either natural (no stims) or with something like Femara (since Clomid could have been to blame for my thin lining last time). ($2100 with little chance of having too many follicles)

I’m leaning towards option 3 but I’m a bit peeved at my RE’s office that they do not give you a price break if doing a Clomid/Femara only cycle. I don’t understand why they would still charge a “monitoring fee” when there’s really not much to be monitored. I get it when you’re using stimulation meds since you may need to change your dose from day to day. But on Clomid/Femara??? I can do my own OPK’s and just come in on the peak day to check follicle size prior to the actual IUI.

I will definitely be asking about this at our follow-up appointment on Thursday. I hope they are willing to work with us! Otherwise we may look elsewhere to be honest. 

I just figure if hostile cervical mucus is really our problem (which is what I’m thinking at this point since nothing else is apparently wrong) then why not do a natural IUI. If they’re cheap enough, we could do a whole bunch of them and hopefully end up pregnant. Instead of majorly messing with my hormones, paying an arm and a leg, all the while having the threat of canellation always looming over us.

If after 5 or 6 natural IUI’s we still had no success, then we would know it was something bigger than just hostile cervical mucus…ya know? At that point, I’m thinking we would just move on to adoption.

Hmmm…

By the way, my counseling session went really well last Thursday.  This Thursday is M’s turn.  Things are already turning around for us…definitely for the better.  I feel like we might actually be entering an upswing…finally!   Let me just say how much easier it makes getting through the disappointment of a canceled cycle!