IVF Monitoring Appointment #3: Good, I think

Saturday (Stim Day #8) was my third monitoring appointment. I now have 8 follicles over 10mm, with the largest at 17mm. My estroidal levels jumped from 400ish to 1191, making me feel a little silly for asking the nurse if they can be too low and that being problematic. They want to keep me at the same Follistim dose of 150iu, which is the same dose I've been at from the start. On the one hand, I think this means things are going well and they don't want to mess with it, but I am actually getting a little bored with this dose. I am also continuing the Ganirelix at F'ing 6am every morning.

It was interesting to have a monitoring appointment on a Saturday because there was whole different crew and atmosphere. The nurse today was great, and I'm little sad that she works at another location during the week. The ultrasound tech, yeah, she was very pregnant. I had to wait in the regular ultra-sound waiting room, meaning that there was also a pregnant woman waiting there with her daughter of less than a year old. My blood work had be drawn in the regular hospital lab, which is always crowded and full of sick people. None of these things bothered me, partly because I think I was too tired from the shitty sleep and lovely wake-up call of a needle in my abdomen.

I'm happy that my follicles are growing and are all relatively consistent. However, I'm confused about if I should be less than thrilled that there are only 8 follicles at this point. They only measure the ones over 10mm, so it's possible there could be more by retrieval day, but considering I've started off with ">20 under 10mm" of both sides, I was hoping for more. The nurse said they like at least three over 18mm, but preferably wait until there are at least 3-5 closer to 20mm. So knowing that we still have some time yet, is 8>10mm alright? I totally should have figured out how to word this question before she called me back. I will definitely have to ask at my next monitoring appointment tomorrow.

After the appointment, I had to make another short trip to the pharmacy and drop another $400 on more Follistim and Ganarelix, bringing my entire medicine total to a clean 2K. This trip was much less exciting than the first.

The other exciting thing is that, when C was flicking the pre-filled syringe of Ganirelix Saturday morning, he accidentally dropped it on the floor and bent the needle! Again, I was too tired to really get upset about this. Plus, he's almost done with his nursing schooling so I trusted him to figure out. And he did. He got an empty syringe that was supposed to be used to for something else, and squirted the medicine from the bent syringe into this, then used the new syringe to inject me. It may have been more technical than this, but I stayed in bed.

I've got another appointment Monday morning so the earliest retrieval date would be this upcoming Wednesday, but I'm betting it will be at least Thursday or Friday. Actually, this is my hope because Wednesday would be a tough day to miss work. We're also hoping it's not Saturday because C is not allowed to miss his nursing clinical days and that would really complicate things. It feels weird to admit the factors that we think about affecting our fertility timing, but I'm working on not making fertility all consuming. It's all part of my plan to remain calm and low key. And on the weekends, I'm pretty good at this.