IVF – Stim Day 6 – Such a lonely process.
Eleven days since my last entry. Eleven days of ups and downs. Of course.
I’m on Day 7 of stim meds today. Seven straight days of injecting myself 3 times a day and then 4 times a day starting yesterday. Seven straight days of hormones coursing through my body, making my already weak mind weaker. It’s not cool. At all. Nobody should ever have to try this hard to have ONE child. Well, I want two, but even one… This is ridiculous.
So far, so good. Considering all the facts of course. Physically my body is doing okay. My left ovary that was severely damaged by scar tissue years ago and we determined last cycle didn’t even work – Like it had 0.0 follicles and eggs. It just hung out and pretended it wasn’t there. The nurse at retrieval asked if I’d had my left ovary removed after reviewing my results – Nah, it’s there. It’s just… broken? Well, this time that ovary decided to wake up and is actually producing follicles which will hopefully have mature eggs. Seriously. It’s so strange. Nobody is really sure why – I’ve taken the supplements and all that fun stuff and the daily shots for months of HGH which is controversial helpful. So, as of Monday I had 4 follicles on the left side of 10 mm, 3 follicles on the right side over 10 mm and 3 smaller than 10 mm on the left. They decided it was best to gamble the biggest two and try to get the other 5 bigger and possibly even the 3 that were under 10 mm. I go back tomorrow for another monitoring appointment and if it my body continues as it has been I’m expecting them to schedule my retrieval for Friday or Saturday at the latest. I really need my estrogen to increase by about 600 – 1,200 before tomorrow morning to hopefully have my goal of 10 mature eggs. We will see.
It’s basically just a game. A game of praying, begging, hoping, pleading. Who knows what I’ll get. My original goal was – 8 eggs, 7 fertilized, 2 transferred at Day 3, all 5 remaining become blasts, 2 blasts are normal, 1 blast is mosaic, the other 2 can be abnormal or inconclusive. Realistic? Nah, not really. BUT, manifest, dream, believe. Right? Also, the fresh transfer to work and to have a beautiful, perfect baby in March who will grow in to a chunky little baby that will love the summer swimming and be so cute in a bathing suit. I’m manifesting. I’m praying. Crying. You name it. I’ve got it.
In the end I just keep saying – Whatever is meant to be will be. My lining hasn’t been the best for a fresh transfer. I’m not sure they’ll even let me. In that case I really need 5 blasts to be normal to feel safe. Which I know is overreaching.
I just don’t know if I can do this process again. I don’t know what’s next. That’s the part I hate. I don’t know. I’m trying so hard to live in the moment. However, it’s so easy for my brain to get ahead of me. I want to plan for the fails. I want to have game plan for when it doesn’t work. Yes, I know I should be hoping for the best. I sure am. I won’t need to plan for the success though – I’ve had that planned for decades. I know exactly what I’ll do if/when I succeed. It’s the failing, I don’t know what I’ll do and thus I want to figure it out. Yet, I can’t know until that moment. It’s hard.
Foster Baby ended up staying in his current foster home. The worker called me later that day to let me know that when she told them she’d move him they changed their minds. This was exactly what I expected to happen honestly. I feel like they were just trying to push boundaries and it’s easier when there is nowhere else to put the baby. Once, they had a back-up option then they realized they just need to follow the rules of fostering. I’m happy for the baby – He doesn’t need to keep attaching to people who leave him. He really needs to stay where he is until permanency happens – whether that be with his parents or grandmother.
The worker then asked if I’d get the form updated I need to update so they can call me more. They called without my form updated knowing I was the perfect fit, but she explained she knows they’ll have more kids and could really use me. If I have the form filled out they don’t have to think beyond the box and only call me for true emergencies, but it makes it so they can call for all kids.
I was going to do the form. I had Tuesday scheduled to do the form. I cancelled. I can’t. Not today. Not last week. Not this week. I need to figure out my life. I need to breathe. I need to quit distracting myself with kids. So, I’m not doing the form. I’m going to finish this retrieval. I’m then going to figure out what is next… If I’m successful, I have no doubts I’ll be ready to foster sooner again. If I’m not successful, I need to decide if I’m doing another retrieval, if I have enough embryos to just do transfers or if I’m done and ready to just open my heart up to children/humans that truly need me and are already on this planet. I know I can’t go through this process while juggling traumatized humans. It’s good for me, but it isn’t good enough for them. So, I guess I’ve realized I need to be done with this process to be ready for full-time, long-term fostering.
Our relationship?
I don’t know. 100% don’t know. It’s good, until it isn’t good. Then it’s great, until it isn’t great.
In the end, it was determined his mass meltdown was over us taking the baby. He isn’t ready for the responsibility of someone else’s child right now which then makes him fear he isn’t ready for his own child. After we discussed this things got better.
He’s talked that he is excited, he’s just scared. Scared of the failure of the process, scared of the failure of himself. He’s back to comments of it’ll be okay, he’s good with forever…
Yet, my overly emotional self doesn’t feel so confident. I’m terrified. I don’t want to do it alone today. Today, filled with hormones, all I want is someone to hold me and tell me it’s all going to be okay. I want someone to encourage me, support me. I want someone to be strong for me – I’m tired of being the strong one. Super tired. Sometimes, I get like overwhelming feelings of neediness – of like craving human touch, reassurance and love. It’s insane. It’s like 3 year old me, deep inside, emerges and begs to be loved. Begs for the love she never got as a child. That’s where I’m at right now. I need this badly.
He isn’t good at this part. He isn’t good at the emotions. The reassurance. He’s sure as hell good at telling me statistics and scientific evidence. But they simple, human part, yeah he sucks. And he sure says stupid things – super stupid. But the issue isn’t his stupid things, it’s my amped up hormones adding in feeling hurt over irrelevant things. Yeah, like the ice cream lid wouldn’t open and he was at work and couldn’t help = bawling and going to sleep without ice cream. Or he told me he didn’t have room for me at trivia as they already have a team with the guys from work. I was super sad about this… Dude, I work every trivia night. I couldn’t go anyways. Seriously. It’s irrelevant. It doesn’t even matter. It’s like wanting to be invited to something that’s in 2 hours in China when you live in the U.S. Yeah, you’d never make it, but you wanted the invite. Ridiculous.
So, I’m over the feelings part of this.
I’m strong, independent and pretty awesome. I’ve always accomplished life on my own. I know I’ll do just fine raising a human or two alone. I know I can do it all myself. So, needless to say I feel extra pathetic for being needy. Sometimes though, sometimes, I think even the independent need to just need someone.
*sigh*
I guess that’s it. I don’t know. I’ll go do my 3 hour drive to sleep, do labs/us at 6:30 a.m. and then drive back. Be to work by Noon, work until 10 p.m. and repeat for Thursday. Or pack and head to Colorado to retrieve. Just a few more days… Then I can have a whole new worry and prayer.
So, for today I’ll end this with my manifestation, my believing, my praying….
Wednesday, June 7th, Baselines and Day 1 of Stims… I hoped to have 9 follicles on the right and 4 follicles on the left. That was my manifestation. Lucky number 13?
Instead I had 4 follicles on the right and 4 follicles on the left. For a total of 8. Not my dream, but a good start. Especially the fact 4 of those follicles were way bigger than they should have been.
Monday, June 12th, Monitoring Appointment and Day 6 of Stims… I had a crazy manifestation of 5 on the left, 5 on the right – all bigger than 10. With the caption “Dream Big”. Instead, I had 3 on the right and 4 on the left that were over 10. With 3 under 10 on the left also. So, 7 with potential, 3 with at least a little potential if they decide to catch up. Again, not my exact manifestation – But, hey, I got my 10.
Wednesday, June 14th, Monitoring Appointment and Day 8 of Stims (or I’ll stop stims and trigger) – Manifesting Goal = 3 on the Right, 7 on the Left. All over 12 mm. BUT, under 25 mm. Really, Ideally, I’d like 7 to be 15 – 20 mm. There, that’s the manifestation – 7 between 15 – 20. That’s dreaming. In the end, I guess I need the 5 smaller ones and the 3 under 10 to grow faster and then 2 large ones to grow slower. I’d take 7 in that range though.
Also, manifesting that my Estrogen will be 1,500……… Dream Big.
We will just wait and see what tomorrow brings. Now, if someone would just actually talk to me about this. Talk to me about my obsession of averages. Talk to me about my praying, begging, pleading. That’s all I need. Someone to be in this with me… I’m just so damn tired of feeling alone.
He or she is going to be worth it. I’m trying to just visualize – This has recently turned to visualizing labor alone, visualizing loving my new child alone. Visualizing telling the hospital I didn’t want visitors and just bonding with my amazing, perfect little human. Those visualizations don’t hurt me like I thought they would. The only part that hurts me is the first 27 weeks of pins or needles while I fear making it to viability alone. I can handle the rest, I just hate being scared and anxious alone. And no, I guess I don’t even think he’ll leave. I’m positive he’ll be here. Fairly positive. But the damn it, I need him emotionally present.