A Waiting Game

Waiting. When you're going through fertility treatments your whole life is a waiting game. And the waiting makes you crazy. Seriously. Insane.

When you're on a medicated cycle, using injectible stimulation, your doctors watch everything very carefully. You know, they don't want to cause the next octomom. ;) So, over the course of a cycle, you are in the office about 7/8 out of 18 days. By the time we go in for our IUI, usually on day 16/18ish of my cycle, I know how thick my lining is, how many follicles I have, how big my follicles are, and what all my hormone levels are.. (Estrogen, Progesterone, LH, FSH) Really, there are no surprises. And because I know everything, I am even more involved and emotionally tied to each cycle.

This is one of my injectible cycles...
Day 3 of cycle - blood work, baseline ultrasound to check resting follicles, possible cysts, and begin stimulation
Day 7 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation
Day 10 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation
Day 12 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation
Day 14 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation
Day 15 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation, trigger and IUI
Day 16 - Trigger shot @ 10pm
Day 18 - IUI @ 9am
Day 25 - blood work to check Progesterone
Day 32 - take pregnancy test

I get tired just thinking about those weeks. It is so involved and the waiting is heart-wrenching. You wait to see what amount of meds you are on, you wait to get the call to see how much your meds increase, you wait to see if the meds are working, you wait to see how many follicle you have, you wait to see if your follicles grow at every appointment, you wait until they are the perfect size, you wait until you can trigger, you wait for your IUI, you wait for your progesterone test to be sure you ovulated, you wait for the day you can take that pregnancy test, if it's negative you wait for your cycle to start again... wait. wait. wait. And all the waiting and knowing totally consumes you.

And now my waiting continues. I have 9 days until my next blood work - we're waiting for my hormone levels to get back to 0. Once everything is at 0 I can then do my Repeated Pregnancy Loss blood work. Then I have a 2 week wait for the results. I'm also counting down the days - 17 to be exact - until I'm done my birth control pills. Barring any negative test results, once I'm done the birth control and I start my cycle, we'll be able to begin trying again. So for now, I'm still waiting. And I'll continue to wait and endure. It is hard, but it will be worth it when one day we are able to bring home our miracle. So, I will continue to wait, and hope, and pray...