Relax, go on a holiday, stop thinking about it.....

.....well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad. Guess what folks, being as fertile as a Stop sign didn't lead to a natural pregnancy whilst enjoying the balmy warmth of Port Douglas 2 weeks ago. Funny that. I even deludedly stayed on the prednisolone (and have the moonface in the photos to prove it) against the instructions of Dr Suave, on the off chance that I'm actually quite fertile but just need to keep the inflammation down for a successful implantation. Not to be. As always, stupid hope will always spring eternal in the bosom of the Infertile.

Since my last blog entry there has been some small progress in this journey.

1. I have obtained a referral to the OB who's a thrombophiliac expert and await his call for an appointment. I've stayed on the megafol/B6/B12 and aspirin for now.

2. Dr Suave wants me to stim again rather than FET, due to age....ie: he wants the old duck to build up a supply of blasts before the eggs give out. Whatever, just lead me to that general anaesthetic. Same protocol, antagonist with 100 puregon.

3. I insisted on a Clexane prescription, despite his disbelief that my MTHFR is a factor. He kept spouting the "homocysteine is normal" line, but somehow I've stumbled upon a very pro-Clexane GP who is happy to supply me, so I told him I'd be using it with or without his approval. FS is no doubt highly sick of Mez and her friend, Dr Google, however I'm now firmly of the belief that an informed infertile is a (contradiction in terms) a relatively happy infertile.

4. DH's SCSA/Tunel test came back perfect, so again, it seems that embryo quality is not the issue here.

5. This will be full stim number 3, and transfer 7+8. I'm now looking down the barrel of the business end of this fertility caper. I may or may not do that statistically significant 4th stim, it really depends on a number of factors, including where we'll be living in a few months, which could change momentarily.

Let's go!

Stupidity and the City. (warning-spoilers)

Infertility has had some unexpected side-effects. On top of everything else, my prior movie-buff persona has taken a battering. Consider the following eagerly awaited movies of the last 6 months which I found myself newly unable to consider as mere light entertainment:

1. Waitress. No, I don't want to see a movie about a pregnant teen.
2. Juno. See above. This one killed me, rave reviews AND Michael Cera and Jason Bateman from Arrested Development.
3. Then She found Me. This hurt too. Colin Firth AND Bette Midler. Oy Vey.
4. Baby Mama. Tina Fey AND Amy Poeler from the aforementioned Arrested Development, my second favorite sitcom of all time. (No-one knocks off Seinfeld, baby)
5. Sex and the City.......OK, this one ain't getting away.

I spent a goodly portion of my early 30s with these gals and found them to be highly appropriate role-models for the following reasons:

1. Only 1 out of the 4, 35+ year olds actually managed to have a child (excluding the later adoption plot). I find this more in keeping with the statistics presented by Fertility Clinics and, thus, appropriately realistic.
2. The one that managed to have a child got fat and was excluded from general fun stuff and girly shenanigans by the others. Yay!
3. Carrie did what millions of single/childless gals felt like doing in that Tatum O'Neal episode when her Manolos went missing. Sending a bridal registry for yourself to recoup years of gifts from smug married friends, genius!
4. Charlotte did not have success with IVF. (or whatever AC it is she did with Trey...looked like some sort of OI at least)
5. Samantha living and loving it Child free. Not to make any assumptions, but Kim Cattrall does seem awfully fabulous IRL and kudos to her for not going down the cliche celebrity-adoption route that seems so easy in the good old US of Adoption. (And that includes the Aussie celeb queue jumpers; yes, I'm glaring at you, Ms D-L. Furness and Mr H. Jackman)

Ok, now with hindsight and the retrospective viewing of a million Foxtel re-runs, I must say that SATC does not necessarily stand up to Positive-Infertility scrutiny in these not so innocent, darker TTC years. The subtext now does not now seem nearly as benign.

1. Miranda falling pregnant with a lazy ovary, from one night of pity sex with a man with testicular cancer. COME ON!
2. Carrie finally considering children in the Aleksandr Petrovsky relationship at the age of 38. And Charlotte telling her she still has years of fertility ahead of her. RIGHT!
3. Giving poor, old, childless, sex-bomb Samantha breast-cancer and telling her it's related to being childless, in the episode also known as, "Take that, you old childless Slut!"
4. Charlotte. Ok, now we get to the point of this here blog entry.

For a change, Mez is not happy. As much as I adored catching up with the lad-ees again, I have a rather large, barren bone to pick with the writers of our movie sequel.

IF YOU STOP TRYING AND ADOPT A BABY YOU WILL NOT MIRACULOUSLY FALL PREGNANT AT THE AGE OF 40+.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. Been holding that in since Monday.

WHY OH WHY did they choose to perpetuate 2 of the worst, infertility cliches ever in the one story arc? I myself have been known to turn to people who say "You know, so many people fall pregnant once they adopt" and earnestly enquire how many of these miracle-workers they know. Funnily enough, not so many.

Why did they do it? Why ruin a perfectly fun time with such offensive pap? I guess Charlotte finally deserved her wish-fulfillment happy-ending. The perfect Shiksa Goddess gets her perfect life after all.

Sigh.

Prognosis Negative!!

First, the good news.......









Ok, now the rant.

1. Another BFN. Despite a month of steroids and baby aspirin, my non-baby-friendly body just won't play ball. Another double blast photo thrown ceremonially into the bin.

2. Thank you Fertility Clinic for the following examples of poor service:

a) Telling me not to call to find out whether we would get any frosties, but to wait till you send me a cycle summary, which could take 2 weeks. Despite their negativity, I did get one frostie this cycle, so have 2 in the bank which will no doubt be flushed into the wide, infertile ether next month.

b) I asked for my recurrent miscarriage result print-outs at my BT so I could consult Dr. Google myself. Thank you for not telling me that I'm a compound heterozygote for the MTHFR mutation, meaning that I have a very high chance of recurrent miscarriage. What do I have to do to get some medical service, here? Why am I constantly having to do research and second guess everything? Are you just playing the numbers game until I give up?

c) Telling me in January that there probably wasn't any tissue left to test on that blighted ovum. In amongst my test results the other day was a result for this self-same miscarriage from FOUR MONTHS AGO. It was a chromosomally normal little boy. I hate my body. :-( So I walked around all day thinking of this boy.



My next steps are as follows:

To get an appointment with a well-known recurrent miscarriage specialist here at the Women's and to take in my auto-immune results. Clearly the Fertility Specialists are not Loss specialists.

To start mega doses of folate and B6, B12, C group vitamins in case this MTHFR is a factor.

To do a natural cycle in June when we go away for a week to Qld, and then a possible FET in July.

That is all.

Hubris and the ART of Random Chaos.

So we draw to the close of the interventionist aspect of Stim Cycle No 2 and enter the 2WW with trepidation and not a lot of hope.

With the continuation of various elements of Infertility-denial, I will admit to some small amount of smugness at the outcome (up to, but not including, the whole successful pregnancy thing) of completed Stim Cycle 1. I had no small expectation of at least replicating the haul and quality of blasts this time, with 2 transferred and potentially 2-3 for the freezer.

Pride did indeed come before this ACer's fall on Saturday in the chair, while the earnest young embryologist explained that we were transferring a grade 2 and a grade 3 blast, with none to freeze. Where, when, how, why, HUH??? How did I go from 5 grade 1s, to these 2 cast-offs, barely 6 months later?? If this fails, I have to stim again immediately? I get to do that statistically significant 3rd stim (the one by which if I'm to succeed with IVF, needs to be IT?) So soon? And then, assuming nothing then, go down the path of the long-term, difficult cases, slugging it out for cycle 4, 5, 6 etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam?

And what happened to this whole antagonist thing that was meant to IMPROVE egg quality? GIVE ME BACK MY DOWN REG!!!! I'm as healthy/unhealthy as I was 6 months ago.....is 38.5 that much farther down the slippery slope of infertility, than 38?

As always with AC, there are no real answers, only platitudes: "cycles are unpredictable", "lots of factors are involved", "we just don't know", yada yada. I'm to be grateful that we even had 2 to transfer, as that's the whole purpose of stimming. Even Dr Suave choked down a metaphorical *roll-eyes gif* and told me that 50% of women don't get any to freeze. (so shut up already, you over-analytical drama-queen....he was thinking it; I know that look by now.)

I feel a step closer to the end. Which isn't such a bad thing.

Eggs-actly what I wanted to hear!!

Ok, that was so lame, I'm going to apologise and force myself to watch another episode of The Bold and the Beautiful so I can be reminded again just how fertile 47-year-olds really are. (That would be you, Brooke Logan Forrester Moroney etc etc)

So, EPU was good. E2 was 6000 3 days prior, so I was expecting maybe 12, with a few immatures. I got 10 and 8 fertilised with straight IVF, thus reinforcing the bizarre paradox of an ancient infertile hag being an excellent responder with "good eggs". I haven't heard from the clinic, but I will be in on Saturday to transfer 2 little blast-offs and I'm pretty confident there'll be at least 2. Not for this clinic the daily updates that I was used to in WA, but hey, I'm paying $3000 less per stim, so I'll wear the disinterest.....with interest!!

I'm kind of vaguely impressed by the old antagonist protocol as well. Not only did I still get a flipping good haul on a low dose of FSH, but my fert rate was 80% as opposed to 69% on the down reg. In addition, the lack of lucrin has meant that I'm feeling fine, baby. No mood swings, no fatigue, no bloating, no worries! 12 days of drugs to EPU is OK by me.

I've started my prednisolone and my skin and eyes are sparkling maniacally like the proverbial Stepford Wives, plus I've put myself on baby aspirin on the "it can't hurt" theory. Apparently being ANA+, I'm at risk of platelets rising when my body reacts to dastardly foreign invaders, so miniscule clots can affect implantation at this early stage.

I'm still extremely pessimistic. I am truly at the stage where I'm sure we are merely going through the motions so we can say that we did our best, but I'm very dubious that there'll be a take-home baby at the end of all this. I just can't even think it anymore. I'm mentally preparing for a childfree life at the end of the year, as I'm not one who will keep going and going like Everready. Perhaps I'm weak, perhaps I'm strong. All I know is, I want resolution!!

Antagonise this!

So, I guess I should update this whole IVF thing, since it's kind of the raison-d'etre of this here blog.

I'm feeling slightly antagonised by the whole experience. Ha ha, geddit, antagonist cycle? *insert roll-eyes emoticon here*. Gotta love a bit of Infertility humour in the afternoon.

Ok, so the thing is, this new clinic swears by the old antagonist cycle. They're completely mad for it. I was pretty concerned about the whole OHSS thing, being your atypical 38-year-old high responder, but they assured me that this cycle was good at suppression and led to less, but better, eggs. Without lucrin. O-Kay! "Suppress me Baby one more time!"

In my usual sceptical Mez fashion, I did indeed attempt to convince them to go down reg again as that had been so successful last time, (like, up to the having a baby part *insert roll-eyes emoticon again*) but to no avail. Looks like old clinico was correctamundo and old Mez was wrong, capeesh? (how many languages can I slaughter in one sentence?) My E2 today at the CD10 scan was 1200 and I have around 10 1cm follies so far. So it looks as though less may well be more. I'm not panicking about over-stimming now, and in the cliched vernacular of millions of teens world-wide, IT's ALL GOOD! Maaaaaaaaaaate.

Next scan/BT is set for Wednesday and we need my lining to get a wriggle on and start plumping itself out, y'all, kinda like Madonna's new face.

On another slightly optimistic note, it also turns out that the results of my hyst/endo biopsy were awesome and there's no sign of killer cells or any other murderous cellular fiends lurking nefariously behind uterine lines. Dr Suave was trying to convince me that due to his brilliant planning, (cunning like a fox, I tell you!) I had the hysteroscopy on CD 21 so that I was at the right part of my cycle for the results. I didn't bother reminding him that I actually had it 2 weeks later than initially planned due to the clinic not booking me in on time. *can I keep using the roll-eyes motif here, or would that be twee?*

So, after a chilly early response, I feel that I've warmed up to Dr Suave. His moniker is meant ironically, as in, I think he thinks he's pretty suave. You know, one of those mid-40s, silver haired dudes still in pretty good nick who tries to be in with the young'uns. I just realised that I'm deludedly allying myself with these self-same young'uns. I guess you're only as young as the man you feel. (boom boom)

So, Dr Suave is starting to listen to me a bit more, now that I'm paying his clinic the big bucks to stim, rather than using them to shoot my previously acquired, ring-in blasts into the vortex known as Infertile Mez.

Every time I leave his office, I feel like saying that I really hope I never see him again. Strangely enough, I don't feel that it's time for those words, yet.

Out, out brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

RIP Barbara.