1 week down (almost)...

Tommorrow I will be 1/2 way done with this 2 week wait. This one is going by very slowly despite work being crazy busy.

I went in yesterday for my post-ovulation progesterone test and the numbers look great! My p4 was 30.1 which is very close to what is was on our quasi-successful cycle. Last cycle it was only 11 so I am hoping for a better outcome this time!!

I will be testing at home next Sunday (my birthday) and my beta will be Monday the 8th. Feels like forever :(

No symptoms to report. Yesterday I felt a little crampy but could be gas (hehe). I started progesterone supplements last night. Last month I had no "symptoms"/side effects of p4 (sore boobs, cramps, etc.) so I am welcoming lots this week!!

Off topic--reading fun

I have seen this "meme" on a bunch of your blogs and really wanted to go through the list to see what I have read/want to read. I am posting it here so that I have a list to come back to in a few weeks when I am buying some new books (my MIL always gives me a gift certificate to a bookstore for my birthday!).

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (one of my favorites. I made dolls in high school of all the characters for a school project!!)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - yeah, right. (I have never read the Bible cover to cover but I did read the Book of God which is a shortened version written to read more like a story. It was good).
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ("I dreamt I went to Manderley again", this is the first line of this book and for some reason I have never forgotten it. It was a Jeopardy question one night and I was so excited I knew the answer!)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (love it, my only complaint with this book is that it ended!!)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (hated it...)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (hated it)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (I know some literary folks find the hype over this book obnoxious but I think its a great story and it amazes me how he was able to take such well known stories/works of art and weave such a fascinating mystery)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (so classic)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ("Dont let the bastards grind you down"! Its a great IF motto if you replace bastards with fertiles!!)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (a disgusting Jr High required reading)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (I saw the movie and read the second book but never the first)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (11th grade english torture reading)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (THIS IS MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Here begins the 2 week wait

So on Friday things looked good indeed with 1 follicle on the left at 21 and another at 15 (likely not mature). My estradial was 504 but LH was still low at 5.8.

I was instructed to trigger Friday night and go for gold 36 hours later (which was this morning and we are staying at my in-laws this weekend...haha).

So now the 2 weeks of complete neurosis begins. No symptoms yet...lol!

If my beta is two weeks from tomorrow then I will test the day before at home because that is my birthday! But I have a feeling my beta will be Friday the 5th.

Day 10-16 update

This cycle had a very slow start but things appear to be looking up!

CD10 U/S and Bloodwork: Here is a brief recap of the conversation (both spoken and unspoken) at the monitoring appointment...

u/s tech (in a incredulous tone): "How long are your cycles?"
Me (in a nervous uncomfortable tone): "Unmedicated they are very long, medicated they are around 32-35 days, why?"
Me in my head: "Nice to meet you too lady, you just violated me with your camera and now are freaking me out with your questions!"
u/s tech: "Honey you have a loooong way to go. I'd be surprised if I saw you back here anytime soon"
Me: "Are you seeing anything?"
Me in my head: "Sweet hey-soos, is the cycle over already"
u/s tech: "I need to finish my measurements in peace before I can tell you anything"
Me (feebly): "take your time"

Turns out while I was not as far along as most are on Day 10, the world was not ending. Results were:

Estradial: 195
LH: 6.7
Left ovary: 1 follicle at 12mm and 7 <10mm
Right ovary: 1 follicle at 11mm, 1 follicle at 10mm and 12 <10mm
Lining: 7.2

So I was instructed to go back for another "date" on Monday (CD12).

Monday I had a wonderful u/s tech who got very excited about everything she was seeing and loved to talk about what she was seeing (which was great for me!!). She said things were progressing slowly and I was a ways away from O time.

Results:
Estradial: 204
LH: 7.8
Left ovary: 1 follicle at 12.5mm and 9 <10mm
Right ovary: 1 follicle at 10.5mm, 1 follicle at 10mm and 11 <10mm
Lining: 7.3

So not much progress from Day 10...I was instructed to go back yesterday (Thursday or CD15).
At yesterdays appt, I had a third u/s tech who was right in the middle in terms of style of the two mentioned above. She was not chatty and didn't offer any real-time explanations but she would answer my questions, which was nice. And lo and behold there was some action!!

Results:
Estradial: ??? (haven't spoken to the nurse to actually get the numbers)
LH: ???
Left ovary: 1 follicle at 18.5mm
Right ovary: 2 follicle at 10mm
Lining: 10.3

I was instructed to go back this morning. I was lucky enough to get the wonderful chatty u/s tech from CD12 again!! I am still waiting on the bloodwork results but I do know this:

Left ovary: 1 follicle at 20mm, 1 follicle at 15mm (where the heck did this one come from!!)
Right ovary: 2 follicles at 10mm
Lining: 11.5

So this is exciting! I am not sure whether I will trigger tonight or go in again tomorrow but hopefully the nurse will call soon.

I'll be back with an update soon!

update

Today is day 7 so things should be quiet with respect to this cycle but I feel like they have been anything but!!

First off I had my first experience with the vag cam last Saturday. It was interesting. I felt like a pro and a rookie all at the same time. On the pro hand, I kept thinking that I would just know what to do and what I would see because I have read so many other people's experiences. Of course, in reality I was a rookie--I couldn't make out a single thing the tech was showing me.
The results came back ok though I need to do some research to find out if these are normal.
My lining was 3.7 and I had 20 very small follicles on the right and 10 on the left.
My estradial level (day 3) was 91. My quick research indicates this is on the high side. The nurse said everything was fine and to start the Clomid.

The BIGGEST fiasco thus far is that I forgot to take the frigging Clomid on Day 5!!!! I usually take it just before bed but the excitement of the Olympics threw me off and I totally forgot. I remembered at 4:30 am and of course jumped up and took it right away. I really hope that doesn't screw things up.

I go back on Saturday (day 10) for my next u/s and bloodwork. Hopefully, there will be some progress.

Thank you! and Update

Thank you VERY much for all your comments and condolences on the bust cycle. The support and advice makes this difficult journey so much more bearable. I have thought a lot over the past few days about whether getting my hopes up during a cycle is a good, bad, necessary, foolish, etc. thing to do. I haven't come to any conclusions of course. It definitely makes the negative outcomes harder but I think for me it makes the cycle as a whole easier. Of course it becomes harder and harder to think positively as times goes on.

I am feeling much better today as I spoke with my doctor and made a plan I am pleased with for this cycle. I am going to increase my Clomid to 100mg and do a monitored cycle. I will go in tomorrow morning for a CD3 ultrasound and bloodwork. Then I will go back on Day 10 and depending on the results every day or every few days after that until ovulation.

The other nice thing is that my OB uses an Infertility Center to do all the monitoring so I will get a chance to preview one of the big reproductive science centers in the area.

So tomorrow is my first date with the famous u/s wand! I will keep you all posted...

From 4 weeks PG to 0...just like that

Yesterday's digital test and this mornings beta both emphatically confirmed Cycle17 is a BIG FAT BUST.

I really had no "symptoms" this time save for the very mild cramping and extreme bloat. Except for yesterday when I managed to convince myself that the nausea I had all day was surely a good sign. In fact, I let myself get so hopeful that I tested yesterday afternoon on a digital test I had lying around. You would think the resounding NOT PREGNANT would have been enough for me to start moving on to the next cycle. But no...I convinced myself it was too early for an accurate result and that it wasn't first morning urine. Surely this morning would bring me different news...

Yeah right, all that big fat hope got me was a big fat negative beta. Hey I should look on the "bright" side...at least that means no more yucky suppositories for a few weeks...

So now the question is what to do next cycle. I think I am going to ask for a higher dose of Clomid. I know that the 50mg has worked in the sense that it causes me to ovulate (something that eludes me naturally). However, I am ovulating almost a week later than the textbook day 14. I am feeling as though it may be an egg quality issue given it is so late in the cycle.

I also have taken Clomid on CD5-9. I wonder about going with the CD3-7 cycle. Will that make me ovulate sooner? What are the downsides?

Thirdly, I will ask for monitoring. Its a really busy time for me at work and so I am a bit scared about trying to add in additional appointments. But I want to at least ask.

Finally, I am wondering whether I should find/make an appt with an RE. I figure there might be a long wait to get in and that will give me another 1-2 cycles with my OBs office. Anyone know any good REs in the Boston area?