Cycle results/update

Sorry to anyone who has been waiting on an update for this cycle who isn't my immediate family that already heard the news that our cycle did not work. I had to check-out for a couple of days and tried not to spend much time online, then things were busy buying our new car, and then we went out of town.

So sorry to keep you hanging, but I found out on the 10th that our cycle was a bust when I started my period before I even went in for my blood pregnancy test (beta). My clinic has a policy that you still have to come in for your beta to make things official, since some women can have bleeding in early pregnancy. I had been testing at home for a couple of days and had negative tests, so I knew that the beta would be negative, and it was. Even though it was expected, it was still hard to go to the clinic that morning to be poked yet again for nothing. I took a couple of days to be sad and then I decided to move forward and not dwell on the failure.

Even though the cycle wasn't successful in that it resulted in pregnancy, we still had a lot of successes. We got 8 eggs. 7 were mature. 5 fertilized and made it to day 5. We also found out that we had 2 that were still growing on day 6 that were frozen (the other 2 had stopped growing). So all in all, things went so much better than our first IVF cycle and we made a lot of progress. I actually have hope again that this could work for us. Unfortunately, it is going to take trying again (hopefully just one more time) and moving forward. The other option is to give up, which just isn't really an option right now. This journey has been long and we have had so many bumps along the way, but I know it will be worth it when we have our baby.

I had a follow up appointment with my doctor last Wednesday and we decided to go ahead with another fresh cycle. We are going to keep our 2 blasts frozen for now and will hopefully add a couple of more to be frozen for more cycles in the future. My doctor still thinks our best chance for success is with a fresh cycle, so we will start over again. I will do the same protocol as last time with hopes of at least the same, if not even better, results. I will start my Estrogen Priming around Sept 2, assuming my body cooperates and I ovulate on "schedule" this month, since the timing of the next cycle isn't really solidified until ovulation is confirmed for this cycle. Hopefully I will start stimming around Sept 8-9th and ER will be around Sept 20th or so. We are planning a single embryo transfer (SET) again if we make it to day 5 again. We still feel very strongly that the risks of twins or high order multiples isn't worth transferring more than 1 for now and my doctor is on board.

So in the meantime, John and I are trying to have some fun and relax and enjoy the break from meds and shots and doctor appointments. We got our new car and took it on its first adventure this weekend and headed to Acadia National Park in Maine. We had a great time and we love our new car (Toyota RAV4). My back is mostly healed from the accident and all of that stress is nearly behind me. The weather had been beautiful in New England and super mild and we are loving it. So things are pretty good and that is what we are focusing on for now.

Acadia National Park-Maine