IVF Journey: Drugs day 20

This is my IVF diary. My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for three and a half years now, and have a diagnosis of 'unexplained infertility'. We have finally reached the top of the waiting list for IVF - a form of assisted conception. I'm blogging about what happens as it happens, as a kind of therapy for me and as an awareness raising exercise of what IVF is all about.

It wasn't a great start at the fertility clinic today as my appointment had not been recorded by the last nurse I saw so no-one came down to collect me. It ended up starting 15 minutes late. Add to this the fact that the bus took more than an hour and a quarter to get there during the pre-work rush hour, and it felt like a long morning before anything even got started!

Well I had another internal scan, and the doctor counted and measured my follicles - the bit where the eggs grow. Without the stimulation drugs I had 12, and today I had around 20 with sizes ranging from 6mm to 12mm. This is good, the doctor seemed very pleased that things were progressing as planned. In fact, better, as the nurse told me later that 20 follicles was better than usual for someone with my AMH level (ovarian reserve - of which mine was on the low side of normal). To put this in perspective, during IVF they might see between 5 and 25 follicles so this progress is ideal. The size is also good, as they grow at about 2mm per day and the aim would be that some would reach 18mm by next week. I was thus told to come back in on Friday for a check, with a view to harvesting the eggs early next week. The only down side is that the more follicles you have, the more poking about with a needle they have to do during the harvesting, so the nurse warned me it might be a bit sore after. I guess I'll just have to put up with that.

I then had an appointment with the nurse, who took some blood to check my hormone levels. I phoned in for these later and found that my hormone levels were a bit lower than they'd like (400 when they'd like to see 500) so I have to up my drugs dose slightly. I'm pretty sure this is just a fine tuning of the drugs (they start you low as they don't want to hyper-stimulate your ovaries or they explode or something) but it feels a bit worrisome. I think I might worry about it. I have to try not to worry about it. I am worrying about it.

Called the clinic back for a bit of explanation / reassurance but no answer. Resorted to looking online (not a good idea, I had resolved not to do this way back) and got some info. Many women having this issue, most with hormone levels well below mine (like 100) at this stage, and plenty people saying not to worry, and plenty people saying theirs started low and perked right up for no apparent reason. Found out that these things are supposed to build up in an exponential-ish pattern, so it is to be expected that things will start slowly and jump up around this point and continue to do so. Continued to worry. Went for a run which is one of the things I do to break myself off negative cycles. And these days I feel like I might be prone to getting into a negative cycle that I can't get out of so I have to head these things off.

After that I felt much more reasonable and I am now of the view that this is no more than an issue of tinkering with my medication to get to the right level, and that in any case there is f-all I can do about it so I should just ignore the thing until my next appointment on Friday and see what happens then.