Hanging in there

Today was my second monitoring appointment after 5 days of stims.  Follicle-wise things are a little better.  I've still got the two on the left (at 13mm and 11mm now), and a lone contender has finally shown up on the right (at 10mm).  The nurse said there's still lots of smaller ones that may join in.  I was actually pretty happy with these results, as the follicle growth looks to be nice and even and there's no dominant follicle taking off way ahead of the others this time around.  Now I just have to hope some other follicles show up to party!

My mood was also boosted when I got my estrogen levels back.  Right now they're sitting at 965 (262 US), which is more than triple what they were two days ago.  I was told they like to see the E2 numbers double, so at least I'm exceeding expectations in one area!  I'm hoping this means that there's lots of follicles waiting in the wings (my clinic doesn't bother to chart them unless they're over 10mm) and that we'll see even more at the next monitoring on Monday.  I also got the go-ahead to start Orgalutron (Ganerelix) today to stop ovulation, since my biggest follicle is over 12mm.

I want to thank all of you guys for your support and thoughtful comments as I slog through this second IVF.  Along with my new approach to infertility, I really think that having this blog is helping a lot.  I get to write out my feelings and thoughts and frustrations instead of keeping them inside and stewing over them, and then I get support and encouragement from a bunch of awesome ladies who know exactly what I'm going through.  While I don't think I'll ever be a full-on optimist, overall I definitely have been feeling a lot less down and negative even though things aren't going exactly as planned. 

M and I haven't talked about the topic of what we want to do if we only get those three follicles to grow.  No one at the clinic has mentioned it yet either, but I suspect they'll offer to convert me to an IUI again if we don't get more follicles.  However, I don't think there's any point in doing that and I'd really like to see what would happen once they retrieve and ICSI my eggs.  I haven't gone into detail about it yet (mostly because I don't really understand it) but M's also got some mild male factor stuff going on so I kind of feel like another IUI would just be wasting our time and all those drugs.  If we only get three eggs, we only get three eggs.  I picked my blog title for a reason!