Hold onto your hats, IVF #6 is just around the corner…

Long time no post.  Still wrestling with having enough time and space to wrap my head around the password project.  Maybe tomorrow….  If you haven’t already done so, please leave me a contact email in the comments if you wish me to send you the password.

Updates on the surrogacy front, we have booked our individual counselling sessions and our group session, for Wed the 10th and 17th of November.  Yay!  Also, we are all booked in to see the lovely Dr T on the 18th of November.  Once those hurdles are passed, it will be on to the psychometric testing.

In other related news, we (primarily I) have decided not to go down the road of signing up a third donor for eggs.  It’s time (it would be a year before we could use any embryos from it, given the counselling and three month wait, then wait to sync cycles, then cycle, then 6 month quarantine of embryos), it’s emotional and it’s the possibility of disappointment all wrapped up in a bundle so big I just can’t be doing with it.  I looked ahead to imagine myself doing this same old shit a year from now and the thought just horrified me.  I am sad to let go of the best chance I have for a live birth, but I am at peace with the decision.  I just haven’t got it in me to keep going over this old ground with no guarantee of success.

So the NEW plan is, given we only have one embryo for the surrogate to use, ANOTHER egg collection cycle with my eggs.  What there are of them.  I can’t quite believe I am willing to do this again, especially after the debacle of only three eggs last time, but it doesn’t seem sensible to go to all the effort of surrogacy hoop jumping to only be able to give it one try.  I know I bang on about it, but I think it is important to point out that only 2 normal embryos have been created so far from 24 eggs.  And they were 24 MUCH younger eggs. And we don’t even know if this frozen guy is normal because we haven’t tested it/him/her.

Given the fact we are now back to using my eggs, I have been on the all-out health regime for a couple of months and the upside is that I feel great and have lost all the weight (3kg/6lbs) I gained from April to August.  Phew.  Clothes fit again, I feel healthy and strong, and I love feeling light for summer.

I am also trying out a couple of new things seeing as how this is kind of the last ditch attempt and I figure I may as well throw everything at it, oddball or not.  Firstly, DHEA which seems in several recent studies to improve egg quality/fertilisation rates [using IVF] in women with diminished ovarian reserve, and also reduce the occurrence (in that same population) of early miscarriage.  I don’t know if I am d.o.r., but I am 40, and my last egg collection wasn’t great, so I figure it can’t hurt.  According to the study I read, you need to be on it for 4 months prior to harvest for best results, and I will only be on it for a month (having only just read this stuff last week), but perhaps better than nothing?

Secondly, I came across a study recommending the use of melatonin for the five days leading up to egg harvest, also to improve the quality of the eggs, so I have got myself a bottle of that.

Of course, I am still on the Chinese herbs and have stepped up my acupuncture to weekly or fortnightly, depending on other commitments.  I have also begun a course of counselling – this week will be my third session.  I am doing an hour of yoga and half hour of meditation most days, a day or two at the gym and a session or two of pump class.  I have cut out (most) dairy, wheat, sugar, alcohol and caffeine. I feel like I am doing everything I can, without being too rigid about it (e.g.:I went to a wedding and had some champagne, I ate quite a few pieces of toast and jam on the weekend and had a decaf coffee.  Some days I don’t meditate, and I’m not beating myself up over it).

And now I have to just sit back and let it unfold as it does.  I start lucrin and gonal F on day 2 of my next cycle, which could be somewhere around November 14th.  I ended up with an 8 day luteal phase last cycle (worst ever!) which left me feeling a little disillusioned about all the effort I am putting in.  This cycle it looks like I am ovulating day 13 instead of day 15, so who knows what’s next.  Frankly, I think it is out of my hands at this point.

Que Sera, Sera.

Oh, and I have booked tickets to see Tim Minchin in March.  So there’s something light-hearted to look forward to, even if all this goes belly-up.