When You Wish Upon a Star...

So last night my mom and I were driving back to her home after having dinner at my sister's house.  (I haven't made this very clear in previous posts, but my entire extended family lives in Utah so this IVF experience has also been a fantastic excuse to come and spend time with my family. I am staying with my parents and spending time with my siblings and their children.  Definitely helps with all the waiting and waiting that this process involves!)  Anyway, we were driving home and we saw a shooting star!  I have only seen a handful of these in my life, and I found myself thinking, "Oh!  I should make a wish....I wish that I will become pregnant!"  And then I caught myself and thought, "hmm...do I really mean that?"  But then again, earlier yesterday evening in the store with my mom and sister I saw a darling baby boy and I actually wanted to pick him up and snuggle him.  So honestly, as a surprise to me I think my willingness to have another baby right now is actually becoming wanting.  (Good thing, too, huh?  Since I am in the middle of an IVF cycle!!)

And on that note, I found out today that my first blood draw before starting stim meds my estradiol level was less than 25.  And then I took my meds for a few days and had a blood draw on Monday.  They told me they liked to see a number of 150 - 200.  Well, mine came back at 65.  So not anywhere near what they "like," but going up just the same.  So today, my estradiol came back at 174.  So still not as "good" as what they aim for, but steady improvement.  The crazy thing is those numbers are with me doing SIX VIALS of Bravelle a day!!!  That is a HUGE (and expensive!) dose.  I am just a "low responder." And the doctor wants to keep me on that high dose, so tomorrow I get to call and order another 10 vials of Bravelle, so a price tag around $500...crazy.  That's one thing about this process -- after awhile the money just becomes a figure that has to be dealt with.  Normally I would NEVER just call someone and order something for $500 without really thinking about it and really talking it over with my hubby.  But yesterday I had to call and prepay $2,500 for the PGD portion of our process that is coming up and now the additional meds.  That means that by tomorrow I will have racked up another $3,000 on our credit card.  But what else do we do?  Everyone in this business has to be paid upfront.

But back to today's ultrasound results.  (Sorry - this post is kind of all over the place, because that is how my mind is feeling tonight.  Everything is happening so fast and I am trying to process it all, but tonight I am tired and my mind is wandering...)  I didn't catch what my uterine lining measured at, but hopefully it is doing what it is supposed to.  (It has to get to a certain thickness to make implantation of an embryo possible...)  But as far as follicles go, he found two on my left ovary measuring 10.84 and 9.56.  Then on my right side he found a 13.38, 11.93, 7.64, 12.3, 10.56, 6.51 and 6.23.  The little 6 and 7 ones are very small, and may not end up with a mature egg inside.  (Though they have a few more days to grow....come on little ones, you can do it!)  So right now I am showing a potential of six mature eggs, hopefully maybe seven or eight if I am lucky.  What do I think about that?  Well, I don't know.  I don't know because the last two times I think I started off even worse, and then was a "late bloomer," meaning I had lots of small follicles decide to develop in the last two days and ended up with mature eggs from them.  But my med protocol was also different.  So I am really, really hoping that my system does that again and I can get a few more eggs.  Six is just SUCH a low number to start with.  But the truth is, it only takes one.  So I am not worried.  I am hopeful that more will develop, but at peace with what is happening so far.  Especially because I really think I have more big ones at this stage of the game than I did last time.  So I am not going to "worry" until my next ultrasound.

One last thing for today's post.  Around 5:00 I got a surprise knock at the door.  It was a person delivering three vases of flowers!  A big one for me and two little ones for my girls.  They were of course from my sweet hubby.  The cards just said, "I miss you!" "Love, Daddy" and "I can't wait to see you!"  And I have to say, I have been given flowers a handful of times in my life, but these are so beautiful!  My arrangement features 15 small yellow roses, two yellow tulips, two fuschia pink gerbera daisies and a large bunch of delphiniums.  And that meant a lot to me, because delphiniums were the main flower I used for my wedding...I love them!  They are a cobalt blue wildflower, and I just love them.  The flower guy told me that my hubby wanted something "bright and springy for my girls."  It really made my day.  And my little girls were so thrilled to receive flowers of their very own.  So for tonight I will end with a picture of the gorgeous flowers....thanks hon!