Strike Three

*Sigh*

I've had a hard time getting up the energy to blog about this again, but I guess I want to document my journey. Maybe one day in the future (hopefully with a baby in my arms), I'll be able to look back and say, "Whew, I'm sure glad that's over. It was worth it, but man that was a bumpy ride."

Here's the skinny....

Since I responded almost too well to 75 IU of Follistim last round, Dr. K. had me start with 50 IU this round. 3 days and an ultrasound later, I had produced a lot of little follicles, but none of them were nearly the size they should have been. Dr. K. bumped the dose up to 75 IU for 2 days with an ultrasound to follow. *grumble* Now the ultrasound showed a lot of medium sized follicles, but none had "taken the lead" or were big enough to ovulate yet. So Dr. K. had me do 2 more days with 75 IU with another ultrasound to follow.

The next ultrasound showed I had a lot of large-ish follicles, but none were quite ready to ovulate again! Dr. K. decreased my Follistim dose to 37.5 IU for two days with an ultrasound to follow in hopes that a few of the follicles would finally be ready to ovulate.

By this time I could really feel it. By it I mean it was painful. It felt like someone had sucker punched me in the ovaries. Essentially they were like expanding balloons, stretching tighter and tighter. It hurt to run, it hurt to stretch, I was bloated, had diarrhea, nausea and the beginnings of a nasty headache that would last a week. Remember OHSS? I pretty much had mild/moderate symptoms of OHSS and it sucked big time.

Back at Dr. K's office I had not one, two, three, even four follicles taking the lead, I had a lot of huge-ish follicles that could potentially ovulate. I think he counted 4 follicles that would definitely ovulate and 6 more that might ovulate. Dr. K. filled us in on the potential risks (multiples) with proceeding with the IUI and gave us the option of abstaining this round. It felt like such a waste to sit this one out. A waste of money, time, and discomfort if we didn't do it. I didn't want my suffering to have been for nothing...I wanted to go for it. Theoretically we had 3-4 eggs last time that didn't "take"...maybe we would be increasing our odds.


To spare me some of the rage, Dr. K. cut my progesterone dose in half for the first five days. Ryan and I were sneaky and took a short trip to Durango to visit my sister and her family. I totally expected to feel a little bit of rage while I was there and even worried I might get short tempered with my niece and nephews, but I didn't.

Sadly, my progesterone levels after 5 days weren't high enough so Dr. K. bumped me back up to 200mg Progesterone twice a day. I expected to Hulk out on the higher dose, but I didn't. I actually felt pretty good, normal even. My ovaries weren't hurting any more, I wasn't bloated or nauseous, and my headache was gone. Finally!

As you can tell from the picture above, I took the pregnancy test on 2/22 and it was negative. WTF is an understatement. Are my eggs bad? Is my lining healthy? What is going on? Do I have a hostile uterus? I want some answers. We had felt really good about this round since I had so many follicles and didn't Hulk out. It was really hard seeing the result come back negative for a third time.

Tomorrow I am trying acupuncture for infertility. There are currently several research studies going on that have shown some favorable results. Maybe when East meets West I'll get lucky.