I started my Bravelle shots on Thanksgiving night. While it has been anything but pleasant, it wasn't too terribly bad. I feel so blessed to have a supportive, patient and gentle husband who was willing to give the me the injections!
Today I went in for my appointment to check my follicle growth. My doctor monitors follicle growth two ways: ultrasound scan and blood work. Today we got some good news from my check up, and some bad.
I'll start with the good news. First, my AMH levels came back from my blood work last week and my level was excellent. AMH is a marker for ovarian function and reflects egg supply and quality. My level was a 2.96 and my doctor said that they see the most pregnancies in women whose levels are between level 2 and 4. My Estradiol levels today showed that there was lots of activity in my ovaries and my ultrasound showed that I had a 19 mm (full-grown) follicle on my left ovary! I was directed to take my trigger shot tonight to induce ovulation and get busy in the bedroom. When I heard this I said, "Wow! That was fast!" The plan was to stimulate for 7-10 days and I've only been on my injections for 4!
The reply I got from my doctor leads me to the bad news. Apparently my dosage, while very conservative, was too high and my follicles grew too fast. The doctor said that when follicles grow too quickly, they often don't release high quality eggs. We'll just have to hope for the best and see what happens. Basically, it was just a nice way of saying, "Don't get your hopes up." That's the tricky thing about these medications--everyone responds to the injections differently and the doctors don't always get it right the first cycle. It's just a guessing game the first go around. We'll be doing the dreaded "Two Week Wait" from Wednesday until December 14, which is the earliest I can take a pregnancy test. I feel frustrated and defeated already, and I haven't even ovulated yet.
There is always a silver lining, though, and there are a few good things that can come out of this (assumedly) failed cycle. For one, I didn't end up using much of my medicine this month. Hopefully we can use what we have left for our IVF cycle to cut down on the cost. Secondly, I will know if I'm pregnant or not before Christmas. Also, we were a little worried that if I had a particularly long cycle this month, it could make it difficult for us to start our IVF in January. We would have had a very small window between this cycle and the date we will need to start birth control for our IVF cycle, but since I'm ovulating so early this month there should be plenty of time.
We're not giving up hope just yet, but we're definitely not as optimistic as we were this time last week.
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