The Waiting Game

I usually have very long cycles, 40 days or so depending on what medicine I’m on. The past 3 cycles, I’ve been on a regimen where I take increasingly larger doses of Clomid and then get ultrasound monitoring around day 12, with the plan to use the “trigger” shot to better time intercourse once the eggs are big enough, but we haven’t made it to this step yet.

In fact, every time I go in I’m given roughly the same message, “Wow, you have a LOT of eggs!” [which I’m learning is both a good and a bad thing, as it puts me at risk for hyper stimulation] and also “None of them are very big”. Sometimes they bring me back for additional ultrasounds to remind me of the lack of progress double-check and give them some extra time to grow, and then eventually they give up and prescribe progesterone to induce a period. My body responds inconsistently to this well, sometimes taking up to two weeks after stopping the medicine for anything to happen.

So if we do the math, I spend about 2/3 of the time waiting for the next cycle, with no hope from the current cycle. Days 1-12 are nice because there’s a little hope and excitement, although I do admit that I’ve been pretty jaded the past few months, but then days 13 – 40 are spent waiting, hoping, anticipating for… a period! Very anti-climactic, I know.

So that is my real, live, late-breaking-update. I finished the Provera 10 days ago and now become hopeful and then subsequently annoyed every time I go to the bathroom and wipe to only the color yellow (gross, I know, sorry). This time I am actually a little more eager for the next step because we’re trying something different: Femera. After 9 months, I’m glad to be getting off this Clomid train. But until this is possible, I need to work on not obsessing about it and focus on the things in my life that I actually do have some control over.