IVF#2: After 11 Days of Stims… Almost There!

I must confess that I’ve been napping lately. After lunch, I fall into some sort of food coma, and nap on the couch with the dog, or retreat to the comfort of our bedroom. I just feel so tired. I’m not sure how much energy goes into growing and developing 32 follicles, but hot damn it’s draining me. And I’m doing pretty much no exercise right now because of the wobbly wobbly going on in my abdomen. I needed assistance from my wife last night to get my underwear on after a shower. I’m sure she loved the view, but when you can’t lift your knee up and balance on one leg because it squishes your ovaries, well, it just sucks.

My breasts and nipples are super sore, and have been for three days now. Looking at my bloodwork, it seems that my LH and progesterone have increased a bit, probably because of all the mature follicles. I have read that increased progesterone levels near trigger can yield a poor prognosis for implantation in a fresh cycle, but if a woman has high follicle counts, these levels are to be expected. I am trying not to think about this too much, lest my anxiety start to soar again.

I have also lost my appetite. I’m hungry, yes, but nothing appeals to me. Our local Costco sells organic free-range whole chickens, so I bought some last week and have been eating them for almost 5 days straight, and am so sick of chicken right now. Everything tastes bland and flavourless to me. Yesterday, I polished off a bag of HardBite chips because I needed to eat, wanted the salt, but didn’t enjoy them that much. Being a person very much ruled by my stomach (and on a whole whack of injectable hormones), you can imagine the kind of existential crisis I am experiencing right now.

Today’s monitoring went well. My favourite phlebotomy nurse took my blood, I joked around lots with the reception ladies, and my favourite ultrasound technician dildo-wanded me. She even printed off a photo of my right ovary because it was pretty:

I’ve actually begun to find the dildo-wanding rooms to be relaxing. The lights are low, it’s always warm, there’s a place to take off your clothes and lie down. There’s someone else there, but they don’t talk to you. You just lay there in silence. It’s almost meditative. I just focus on breathing in, and breathing out.

Anyways, apparently lazing around all day yesterday was good for my follicle growth. Here are today’s stats:

As you can see, I have a total of 32 follicles (last year was 36). Of those, 17 are 15mm or larger (last year at trigger there were 18). My estrogen levels from yesterday are higher than those on a comparable day last IVF. I think trigger may be tonight, but I’m waiting to hear from the nurse. If we trigger tonight, egg retrieval will be on Thursday, which will mean a very early appointment (like 4 or 5am), because my RE has a standing OR day on Thursdays at the Hospital (he’s actually an OB-GYN so he does operations every Thursday).

So by the phone I will wait, all day. I will post again if we trigger tonight!