Super-Secret Post
Concerning cycles 40 and 41 (January and February 2015)
The follow-up consultation with our physician after an embryo transfer or IVF cycle is pre-scheduled a long way out so that it is properly timed as an 8th-week-of-pregnancy follow up (I might have the week number a little off). When the blood test is negative, it means a long wait. Long enough that, if the transfer is in a cycle labeled 0, it’s after the start of cycle 2 for me. So, it’s impossible to start an intervention at the beginning of a cycle until cycle 3.
In Cycle 1, a combination of anecdotal evidence that I’d be very fertile post-medicated-cycle and some superstition due to the fact that we got pregnant last January (on a break before IVF no less) led me to put in the time and effort for regimented timed sex to get lucky again.
I took a pregnancy test the day my period was due and it was negative. My period was 2 days after that before I had cracked and taken another test.
The good news is that the next embryo transfer can happen in the third cycle after the FET because we will be in to see the doctor with plenty of time for the one-week-ahead prep injection near the end of Cycle 2.
The most frustrating thing about the last 3 years is how I don’t know my body anymore. I have been pregnant twice and know how those was different than other months. But now the end of most months feels that way. My last two unmedicated cycles have been longer than the old average by two and three days. This leads me to wonder, what else has changed? Maybe I’m not ovulating the same point anymore either. The only way to know would be to go back to testing again, in the few unmedicated cycles between interventions.
It wouldn’t matter except that I have been weighing my options for interventions and I’m eying IUIs again. If I could convince them to do an IUI with no ovarian stimulation and with progesterone support, it would be a lot easier all around (including a lot cheaper). But it would mean knowing my cycle a little better, or spending a lot of ovulation kits trying to learn.
But also, the longer I go unmedicated, the more I recharge and am able to consider IVF again. When I felt drained I couldn’t imagine it, but after a natural trying cycle, I’m feeling nostalgic for the sense of control I get from the shots and schedules and scans, even if it’s someone else who’s in control.
In the mean time, the second embryo transfer feels like a hurdle to get over as opposed to treatment with hope attached. It’s a crap embryo anyway and a transfer is at least twice the cost of an IUI.
The shot at Day -7 didn’t have such a negative effect as last time. I credit the fact that my next cycle started on time and so I started the hormones sooner and didn’t go as long without supplementation.
Meanwhile, I started seeing a new therapist. I was interested in less chatting-to-feel-better and more strategies-for-handling-emotions and even Cognitive Behavioural Therapy if we had to go that far.
We had a funny-from-the-outside moment in the third session after I was finally done catching her up on our story. This is slightly paraphrased.
Her: Step 1 is to acknowledge just how awful absolutely everything is right now.
Me: O.O
Her: Come back; there’s a step 2!