Stim updates and a welcome distraction

I know you're all dying to know what's been happening with my lady parts.  Don't try to deny it.

Well, so far we're still cycling.  Things are happening, but slowly and not in large numbers.  I went in for my first check on Friday morning after three nights of stims.  I had four small follicles growing, two on one side at 8mm each and a 5mm and a 6mm on the other side.  The nurse who gave me my ultrasound results and meds prescription was kind enough to state, in a somewhat accusing tone, that "they're all really small."  I must have stared at her blankly, because she helpfully clarified, "They need to get a lot bigger."

No fucking shit, Sherlock.  Again, her tone seemed to suggest that somehow I  was responsible for making this happen.  I respectfully declined to tell her that, if I could make things happen by sheer force of will, not only would I have a crop of about 25 eggs growing right now, but she would be bursting into flame.

The biggest piss-off was that I was actually not unhappy with the results.  The estrogen priming protocol is notorious on internet message boards for being a "slow burn" protocol, where you often start out slowly and stim for a bit longer before retrieval.  In doing so, you get more even growth and avoid the runaway lead follicles that are so often a problem with DOR (and have plagued me during both of my previous cycles).  Also in the plus column, my estrogen levels came back nice and high (taking into account that they dropped somewhat from baseline after I stopped taking Estrace) and were over 400 as opposed to previous cycles where they hovered at barely half that.

I was sent away with meds for two more nights and instructed to come back Sunday.  In the interim, on Saturday night M and I headed to the airport to pick up my friend Dee who was coming to town for a wedding and whom I haven't seen in almost two years.  She was a bridesmaid at my wedding but has been living out of country for a few years now, and I've seriously missed being around her.  She is, hands down, one of the most physically beautiful people I've ever met in real life.  If she wasn't so awesomely nice, it would be very easy to hate her as she's also incredibly fit and has even placed in the top five in some CrossFit competitions where's she's living now.  Lucky for her she's also sweet and funny and generally fantastic to be around, so I knew that whatever happened on Sunday morning, we'd have a fun day and I'd get to forget my troubles for a little while.

So on Sunday morning after five days of stims, I have three follicles growing at 10mm each.  I suspect that there are others in the running, but once things get over 10mm some ultrasound techs at my clinic stop measuring the smaller ones.  My estrogen also doubled and is sitting around 850, so I'm really hoping that means others will join the party.  Since my RE decided to proceed with anything over 4 eggs, I'll go out on a crazy limb here and say that chances of cancellation are now pretty slim.  BUT we're also definitely not going to get the 9 eggs we did last time.  At this point I'm hoping for at least 6 with a higher fertilization rate, but of course that's probably totally greedy.  I can't say I'm incredibly stoked about these results, but they're also not terrible so we're just going to have to go with it.

This is my "meh" face.

Other than that, yesterday with Dee was pretty awesome.  We made a gigantic breakfast of homemade waffles topped with fresh strawberries, then headed out to do some shopping and meet another friend for coffee.  There was lots of laughs and sorely-needed girl time, and a good emotional vomit about our infertility situation.  Then we BBQed dinner and sat out on our back deck with a bottle of wine, chatting into the wee hours of the morning.  And yes, for anyone who's counting, I consumed a couple of glasses of wine while stimming.  I know lots of people cut out things like booze and caffeine entirely, but you know what?  Eff that noise.  Humanity would have ended a long time ago if wine and coffee were the cause of infertility.  I'm pretty sure we've scientifically figured out my problem (spoiler: it's old ass eggs) and IVF is brutal enough without taking away all of life's little pleasures.  I don't drink much or often and I only have one coffee a day, so if anyone wants to tell me that's why I don't have a baby then they can go be judge-y somewhere else, thank you very much.

Next stim check is tomorrow morning.  We'll see what my wine-soaked ovaries can come up with.