Thursday, June 27, 2013

IVF Day to Day Results

So, I'll just keep this post updated with my day to day results: 

  • Saturday, June 22nd was CD 1

  • Monday, June 24th was CD 3 and the day the meds started.  (375 follistim and 150 menopur). On this day I had 12-14 antral follicles and my estrogen was at 57. 

  • Thursday, CD 6 and I had 1 visible follicle on the left and 5 follicles on the right, the largest being 10.  Estrogen was at 108 and Progesterone was at 0.827.  (I'm pleasantly surprised by the progesterone.  Let's see if it stays down.  And, the Estrogen is rising nicely.  I wish there were more visible follicles, but not too bad.)  So, overall, better than the last 2 times. 

  • Saturday, CD 8 and I still had the same 6 follicles growing. I wish there were more but at least I didn't  lose any. They are 13, 12.3, 12.3, 9.1, 8.6 and 8.  My estrogen was 237.  So, it's good my estrogen is rising appropriately. I keep on my meds and tomorrow night I add Ganirelix to prevent premature ovulation. Progesterone at 0.682. 

  • Monday, CD 10 and the follicles on the right grew perfectly at about 4mm each.  They are now 17.5, 16, 16, 14, 12.  The one follicle on the left does not want to play and it did not grow at all and remains at 8.6.  Estrogen was at 520, so it continues to double nicely and Progesterone remains low at 0.7.  The doc upped my dose to 450 iu Follistim and 150 of Menopur.  I'm a little concerned that she's upping the dose now.  Shouldn't she have upped the dose on the first day when it was apparent that only a few were growing?  Sigh.  Oh well.  Maybe we'll start out with a higher dose when the next cycle starts. 

  • Wednesday, CD 12 and the follicles continue to grow right on track, so that's good.  Again they all grew about the requisite 2mm a day.  They are now 22, 20, 19, 17.5, 16 and a small one on the right also decided to join the party and is at a 13.  The left side barely grew and is now at a 9.5.  I thought I'd trigger, but my estrogen was only at 757. :(  I'll do one more day of meds. 

  • Thursday, CD 13 and the follicles are at 23, 23, 21, 20, 18, 15 and the one on the left is at 11.5. My estrogen is at 1027.  I triggered at 8:20 pm for a retrieval on Saturday morning, cd 15.  Keep your fingers crossed.  
  • Saturday, CD 15 : retrieval day. 9 eggs retrieved. So, that's good news. I doubt whatever 2 little ones they found will be mature enough to fertilize, but we'll find out more tomorrow. 

Monday, June 24, 2013

IVF #3 (?)

So after a long break, we're back at it.  About 3 weeks after the miscarriage started I ovulated and I had a blood test which showed an HCG back at zero.  And this last Saturday I got my period.  (I was sweating it for awhile there.  A 14 day luteal phase!  Who would of thought!?!?!?) 

And in bigger news in the meantime, I met with one of the Reproductive Immunologists.  I was completely expecting her to say, nothing's wrong, everything's fine, I have no idea why you're miscarrying.  But, she actually found a problem!  My Natural Killer Cell activity was at 14.7% and it's supposed to be less than 10%.  So, in addition to the elevated progesterone problem, this appears to also be a problem.  The good news is, it's treatable.  We would do intralipids from before the transfer to birth every month or as needed.  So, maybe, maybe, we're finally getting down to the heart of the problem. 

Anyways, so today is CD 3 and I went in for bloodwork and ultrasound.  Everything looked great.  This new doctor's office is less intensive, which is fine with me.  They didn't actually count the number of antral follicles, but she said I had 6-7 on each side.  Woo-Hoo!!!!!  That's 12-14 all together.  That's great news.  It seems like everything is back where it should be.  It'd be great to get 12-14 follicles!  But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

My meds are as follows: 
375 iu Follistim
150 iu Menopur

And, I do this every night and come back Thursday morning.  On Thursday we'll have a better idea on how things are going.  But, for now things look good.  Keep your fingers crossed. 

ETA - And just for the record, this is my bloodwork: 

Estrogen - 57
FSH - 7.69
LH - 3.42
HCG - Negative