I had my scan and blood test this morning and things are looking good.  It seems that the doubling up of my dosage on the gonal-f has increased the number of follicles and I’m up to about 8 at the moment.  My doctor mentioned that there are at least 4 in my left ovary, and counted 1 – 2 – 3 and a couple more small ones developing there, so it’s all looking good for my goal of 8 or 9.

 

She tells me that I will need another scan on Monday morning, and the egg retrieval will happen on Wednesday.

 

The bad news is that I need to continue with the Luveris which is the expensive drug, and that’s for twice as long as I used it last time, so I really need to sit down with a calendar and work all this out one day. 

 

On the other hand, I love that it all seems to be going according to plan again.

 

The nurse asked me today how many embryo’s I want to transplant this time, and I told her that I’m thinking of transplanting three!  The problem with that is that I definitely couldn’t cope with three babies (but on the other hand, I’ve never not coped with something, so I’m sure I would work it out, but I just don’t want to).  We talked about if it would increase my chances of getting pregnant and the fact that I’m 40, and she told me she understands where I am coming from and that I should talk with the doctor about it.  She said that other women my age transplant three for the same reasons.

 

The problem I have is that I have no statistics on the chances of all three embryos sticking.  In any case, I can’t really make a decision until I find out how many eggs fertilise and then I can work out how many to implant, based on how many I will be freezing.

 

So I guess that’s another decision that will have to wait until Wednesday night/Thursday morning, and I will get a chance to talk to my doctor about it on Monday before the operation.

 

So now I have to choose my baby’s donor again, a new one this time because the previous donor is no longer on my list.

 

The bottom line for me is getting this to work… I’m not sure I can go through this again, and I’ve worked out I was pretty naive through my first cycle.  The first time you do anything difficult (give up smoking, lose 5 kilos, bungee jump etc.) seems pretty easy because you don’t really know what you’re up against until you do it.  The second time you do it, you know what to expect, and it just gets harder and harder.  I now have a deeper understanding of couples who have been doing this for years and get to the point where they give up.