Guess who's in the middle of a cycle?

YES - Star and I!

Literally this been it since my last post - the possibility ... the plans made and scraped ... now we have finally reached the point of a new cycle. Our last.

First scan this morning - 11 follicles on the right, 7 on the left. This news reported to me by Star - so no size range etc.

Blood results later today.

Scan and bloods for me tomorrow.

Lord!

Decision

Has been made...

We will be doing another cycle with Star at the new clinic.

Our blood tests are updated, files transferred ... working on Star's ... phone consult with Star to happen next week. Bunch of other stuff, consent forms, possibly more counselling [yawn].

Not many other details at the moment - other than we hope we do the cycle before the end of the year.

This feels like the right thing to do, I guess some people might not agree, but it just would not be possible to cycle again at the same clinic, we have to change something.

As usual it's not exactly straight forward, but we'll get there.

I'm excited.

Detail

Well blog it seems you have been of some great use to me recently.

The documenting of my misery is exactly what I needed recently, where else did I provide so much detail of my IF and many failed cycles??? The absolute mundane detail to be frank.

Our journey is not over. We are still determined to 'try' and have another child.

Star said she was onboard with whatever we decided to do... how is it that some people are born with such an incredible amount of selflessness???

In order to find out if this is a viable option, we decided to opt out of our 'rat in a cage' existence and seek another opinion. From the competition.

Hence the value in all the mundane detail.

We had some incredible luck, the high-brow lady doctor who conducted all our inside-and-out testing prior to embarking on our donor journey had cancellations that enabled us to see her virtually immediately.

Her view is that Star is (and always has been) an ideal donor. Her age - under 30, her proven fertility (her own children), the good egg nos. via IVF (8 and 12), our success (BabyG).

She believes that both cycle protocols were good (proven by the egg nos.), she also concurred that the Antagonist Protocol (last used), is fast becoming the protocol of choice (as advised by my own RE). She said the old thinking was that it was a last-ditch with 'mature' patients, but anecdotally they are getting equally good results as with the long-suppression, and it is also the protocol that patients prefer.

Interestingly she said that Star being on stims for both 8 days and 12 days was not an issue in terms of egg quality. She said they are triggering patients at 7 days(!) and getting good results.

Where she believes we have suffered is with poor laboratory conditions (all embryos lost on day 3!!!). In her words 'an RE is only as good as the lab and scientists in the clinic'.

She said that in a situation whereby a cycle will yield a fresh blastocyst to transfer and two to freeze, you were at a 70%+ chance of success. Yes this clinic is 'blastocyst and proud'. Because they have been doing blast transfers for more than 10 years she says 'we've gotten pretty good at it by now'.

She agreed that if we were to cycle with her clinic she would change the stimulant if it made us feel better, but ihho, there was no difference between pure.gon and gona.lf.

All interesting.

Decisions will be made.

Ahhh yes about posting

Hello blog, you hideous timeline of my misery.

Yes I have been deliberately ignoring you. I think I am now blaming you for all my failures.

Here's a quick update of what I refused to tell you about about in more detail:

FET
2 embies thawed
3-cell increased to 4-cells and 4-cell increased to 6-cells at time of transfer
2WW ... many symptoms real and/or imagined
F***ing negative

Yes blog, it's all your fault that I am now left without any current chance of providing BabyG with a sibling.

Here I am thinking we are putting ourselves in an ideal position and all goes to sh*t.

Guess what? Star has offered to get onboard again with whatever we want to do.

Well blog, I am yet to decide if I will keep you in the loop. I have much to do, many investigations, lots of decisions to make.

I would, however, welcome any feedback to this current situation.

At a point

Humming along in that pocket of time known as 'pre-transfer'.

Taking the pill, now trying to get rid of the yeast infection courtesy of my last failed cycle. Ick.

My Fertility Goddess tells me I'm 'full of fungus' so has also prescribed a trilogy of herbs so foul-tasting I have to trasnfer them into gel capsules before taking. That way my chemical drugs take care of the wiping out the gross symptoms and the herbal concoction works on the imbalance created within ... created by the chemicals I was taking for my cycle.

Lord let's hope this two-pronged attack takes fast effect!

In the meantime I've paid a visit to my RE's office and had a chat with regards to 'options and plan b's'. As far as jumping back into the egg-sharing program off-shore, the new developments are that the waiting time has reduced by more than 6 months. Sooo if we decided to proceed, we would only need to wait around 3 months!

In the opinion of the RE's off-sider this should be the last option we pursue. She believes that to have one child via a known donor and one via anonymous would not be ideal for the one who would never be able to find out who the donor was.

I have to agree with her.

But, she did say if we did get to the point where we wanted to proceed, we could seek some counselling help on how to deal with those issues and proceed.

First things first. She doesn't believe that because we haven't had an embryo stick around that from this cycle, it doesn't mean that one of the last two won't. She is of the opinion (she's a scientist), that most cycles will yield 1 or 2 embryos that will go on to implant. The expectations that if you have 12 embryos that all of them will become take home babies is ludicrous.

The other thing she says is ... if Star were to offer to go again we should think very seriously about it. We clearly have not had that discussion, and as we discussed, why would we - we're not at the end of the road yet. She says that we have to remember we have BabyG - so clearly there are good fertility chances.

Being the scientist that she is, she is in agreement with me on thawing both remaining embryos. She asked me what I would do if they thawed both and at transfer I was told both were fantastic .... 'I'm just hoping we get a call that an embryo has survived the thaw at this point!' I stammered.

She reckons that only viable embryos are frozen, so there is as much chance of both of these doing well as any. In that case, well, we would prolly transfer one and re-freeze the other.

We can only hope.

Next Step

So we begin again, our next cycle - a supposed back-to-back FET.

Our schedule has me back on the bcp until the 8th April, then start sniffing.

Call the clinic on my Day 1. bleed, then start progy*nova 3xdaily. Ultrasound 10/11 days later.

So we'll be looking at a late-April transfer.

My current state of thinking is to thaw the remaining 2 embryos and depending on how that goes put them both back. With the way things have gone, I cannot see both sticking, but, we may have a miracle one stick. I can't imagine going thru another transfer, it not working, and then have everything hinging on one 3-cell embryo.

I'm worried about what to do next. I'm a Plan B. girl. I have none.

Do I start looking for another donor now? Do I review all overseas options? Or do I let go the iron-clad control I feel the need to have and just see what happens with this next transfer THEN worry?

I remember receiving a few disapproving comments when we started planning to grow our family a year ago. It threw me a little, because anyone that has been on this journey knows that there are no guarantees. Unfortunately I'm proof of that yet again. I'm not sure but is there a term that goes passed secondary, third or fourth levels of infertility?

And again

Cycle result = negative