Another IVF Comes to a Close

With the kids birthday and the holidays it was (almost) easy to forget that I was cycling. I'm triggering for IVF #3 tonight. I'm kind of disappointed because with my first IVF I stimmed for 9 days, with my second (the most perfect cycle ever) I stimmed for 8 and this time I only made it 7 days.

I knew within an hour of taking my shots last night that they would be my last set of stims. I felt full and crampy. It was hard to go to the bathroom and I was an EWCM machine (too much info? Sorry!). The PA was surprised to see so many mature follicles already and my bloodwork showed that my e2 was climbing. Trigger time.

Maybe this is a godsend? I had 12 measurable follicles at today's scan. My AFC was 19 for this cycle, which terrified me. We've decided that when we are done having children we will donate our remaining embryos to research through Stanford's Renew Biobank. While I am (almost 100%) comfortable with that decision, filling out the paperwork last week really killed me. The paperwork refers to Joe and I as a sperm donor and an egg donor. Gosh, we're so much more than that.

It is my hope that this cycle turns out similar to our last cycle - 14 eggs retrieved, 13 mature, 12 fertilized and 2 crapped out by day three. By day five we had 10 embryos -- 4 were crapping out, 3 were transferred and 2 were frozen.

As of October 2011 all 5 of our "viable" embryos had been transferred back to me and only two implanted and became children (obviously, Reese and Ryan).

So if all works out in real time as it has in my head. We'll have a similar cycle and end up with baby #3 and maybe baby #4 and be done with nothing left to give to research. Maybe it's a good thing that all 19 of my available follicles didn't rise to the occasion? But it doesn't feel so good knowing that I'm at least a day ahead of where I should be for this cycle.

Retrieval is Sunday and my 5DT will be Friday. We're sticking to an sET. The remaining embryos will be frozen on day 5 or day 6 depending on their state. I know I should be relieved that this is almost over, but my cage is really rattled.