Deep Freeze

Its been brutally cold here lately. Much of the last few days have been spent in single digit temps and the evenings are even worse. I think the weather is trying to tell me something...

I went to my monitoring appointment yesterday morning and before we took any blood levels, my RE said she wanted to cry! She was so happy with my ovaries progress.They looked awesome on the ultrasound screen. Both look something like this:

That's a picture of one ovary with multiple eggs growing, one in each of the follicles (Thank you Advanced Fertility Centers of Chicago for the picture)You can't see the eggs, but you can see about 10 or so follicles. I've got about 16 total between both ovaries. Its a good number for my age.

The problem is the quality of each egg in there. Basically my hormones aren't balanced quite right (as shown by a high progesterone reading before ovulation and too low of an estrogen number for the amount of follicles in there). Progesterone should be under 1.5 and mine is at 3.2 and I won't even begin to describe the Estrogen.. but lets just say its not stellar. We're not sure if this happens in a natural cycle or if it happens just when I'm on this many IVF drugs. Regardless of why it happens, the fact that it happens puts me in a group of women who typically have lower pregnancy rates... UGH...

And again, this isn't new information, as it happened with IVF #1 and #2, but its just one of those imperfections in one's body that really pisses ya off, ya know? I have such a hard time when I don't do something right. Its definitely one of my personality flaws. I need reassurance and I need to do things right and if I don't do them right, I tend to want to re-do it until we get it as perfect as possible. And then I need more reassurance that I've finally done it right and perfect. But I know with IVF that we just don't have the money or the time to keep pissing away dollars on end to find the perfect egg. AND sometimes I just need to accept my imperfections and focus on the good and what I already do well.

So it looks like the best way through this mess of a hormone parade is to go ahead with retrieval and then do a 'freeze-all' where they take any of the fertilized embryos on day 1 and freeze them. Then we do a frozen embryo transfer next month when they can control my hormone levels better, as I alluded to in my last post.

And after a few days of thinking about this, I'm ok with it. No, we won't get to transfer fresh embryos and yes, our chances decline a bit because of that, but if my uterus isn't in a receptive place, then what's the use of wasting perfectly good embryos on a hostile place, right? And this IS DEFINITELY our last IVF cycle. I'm done with this process. I'm over it. NO MORE. I've done my best, and even without perfection, I have to accept that this is the best we could do...

Therefore, I think choices should be made to increase our odds, and thus my potential embryos will be put in the "deep freeze" for a month whilee we get my hormone levels right with out trying to grow a crap ton of eggs. I sure hope that we have enough in there to work with this time.

After doing one last night of stims yesterday, I went to the RE today for one final ultrasound and bloodwork and we're ready to go. Trigger tonight at 10:30pm which puts me at a retrieval on Wednesday morning. Hoping for at least a few good quality eggs in there. COME ON UNIVERSE! THIS IS MY LAST ONE!! Please give me something to work with.