The Follicle Countess: Guarding of the Tiny Milestones

This morning was my first blood work and ultrasound. The blood work (as always) sucked…took ‘em 2 pricks to get blood out of me and even then it was sloooowly, so I sat there for 10 minutes with a needle hanging out of my vein and my fluids barely oozing out. Hate, hate, hate having blood taken.

The ultrasound went fine – there’s one lady at the hospital that has been assigned all the IVF ultrasounds. It’s kind of nice to have somebody who already knew my situation, and she’ll be doing it for the rest of the week. She counted 8-10 follicles in each ovary, 5-6 big, maturing follicles on each ovary that look like they might contain eggs. So that’s a count of 10-12 possible eggs right now.

The nurse said I’ve got good action happening. But I remain guarded. Although there’s the start of a lot of follicles, only 10-12 eggs isn’t great. Last time they got 11 out of me and that’s on the low end.

The blood & ultrasound results were supposed to be faxed to FL this morning, and I am anxiously awaiting the doc to call and let me know what he thinks. He’ll adjust my meds based on today’s results. I kind of hope they raise my dosage. I’d rather face hyperstimulation this time than a low egg count and low success rate again. The blood work will show how quickly my estradiol levels are – that will give a good idea of how my ovaries are working, if they’ll be mature eggs, if I’ve got more on the way.

Jeffrey and I were talking last night about all these little milestones you start hitting at the end of IVF. The first 3 weeks – you’re just injecting. The week before the harvesting you start to have all these little things that HAVE to happen in order to “graduate” to the next level. If you miss even one tiny little step, the whole cycle was for nothing:

1. 3 Ultrasound & blood work appointments – monitoring for number of eggs and hormone levels. If either of those stop, the cycle is cancelled.

2. Egg Harvesting – Extracting of the eggs – more than likely, the doc will probably miss an egg or two. Also the chance that it’s being done too early or too late, in which case, the eggs might not be good. Cycle cancelled.

3. Fertilization – Once the eggs are out, the next step is to see if they will fertilize or not. If not – cycle cancelled.

4. Embryo Growth (for 3 days) – The embryos can actually start off growing and then stop on a whim. You’ve got 3 days of constant monitoring. Should they stop growing – cycle cancelled.

5. Implantation -- Then you have to make the decision on which day they should be implanted. They have to be big enough to survive the implantation, but at the same time, the longer they sit in a Petri dish, the lower their chances of long-term survival. So you want to keep them in the lab for as long as possible, but at the same time it’s a race to get them implanted. Anything goes wrong during either process: negative pregnancy test.

The week starts all the tiny milestones. A bit nerve wracking! Then we go through all this and then…the looooooong 2 week wait until the pregnancy test.

We’re getting closer to the end…