Ah, just when I begin to wrap my head around the idea of doing another honest-to-God IVF, we hit a few roadblocks, ironically put up by ourselves.
It all started with that damn Clomid.
See, I had it all planned out. We would do the Clom.id challenge in November, I would have my usual and customary 30 day cycle which would oh-so conveniently start at the beginning of the month and end at the end of the month, and so on through December and January. Then, at the beginning of February I would start popping those good old ovary-suppressing BCPs, maybe adding a little Lupron into the mix if Dr. Salsa is feeling particularly saucy. Then, I would start stimming in March and bob’s your uncle, I would have the retrieval and (hopefully) transfer by the end of March. Perfect plan! Mr. X had scheduled work travel around this plan. I had scheduled work travel around this plan. It was a thing of beauty.
Unfortunately, it was all based upon me having 30-day cycles, which is where the aforementioned evil Clomid must take credit for totally derailing the plans. I popped the Clomid as directed, showed up for my date with the dildocam and then Mr. X and I got to the business at hand. Two weeks later, I have a very light period, Dr. Salsa does a pregnancy test to rule out an ectopic (negative, thankfully), and I go on my merry charting way. But, there is something underfoot. My temps are above coverline, when they had not been the entire two weeks after I ovulated. Sure enough, 20 days in to the new cycle, Big Red shows up with a vengeance. WTF.
In addition to causing me a great deal of anxiety, frustration and teeth-knashing (not to mention huffing, puffing and glowering at my nether regions), this also has the extremely annoying side effect of moving my schedule for IVF up by three weeks. Case in point: today is CD 30, my temp is precipitously flirting with the coverline and I had spotting this morning. I’m pretty certain Big Red is around the corner, which means that CD 1 when I would start calculating the IVF schedule extraordinaire is now 21 days early! Why is this a problem, you ask? That pesky work travel. From my (amatuer) calculations, I would probably start stimming right around when my travel is supposed to be. Since I have had my travel on the books for several months now, I cannot in any way under any circumstances get out of it (nor do I want to. It’s a very important trip). Considering the monitoring required, this is not ideal, but possibly doable.
But then, there is Mr. X’s work travel. Bless his heart he did exactly as we had discussed. We had planned that March would be the Big Month when it came to his required assistance because I figured I would be stimming in March, not February (damn you Clomid!). So, he scheduled a week-long business trip in another time zone at the end of February which is – yep, you guessed it – right around where I (again amatuerishly) calculate that we would have egg retrieval and his presence would be required. Oy gevalt.
We have several choices. I can go on the BCPs now and we can see if the stims and retrieval can hit the appropriate windows when we are both in town. Or, we can wait another cycle, meaning I wouldn’t start BCPs until mid-February (again, I’m assuimg a 30-day cycle, which I seem to be very capable of having if no extraneous hormones are introduced. We would be stimming from mid-March to the end of March with an egg retrieval around the end of March.
Personally, I choose to wait another cycle because the stress of getting everything coordinated is so not worth the negative effects that stress would likely have on the entire process. Of course, this is also dependent upon the schedule of the clinic. The good news is that Mr. X’s travel schedule appears to be pretty flexible after February and I have no travel scheduled or even on the horizon.
Extra bonuses: another month to try to slip one past the goalie the old fashioned way, no traveling with needles, I can get some extra acupuncture in to help with egg quality and there would be no chance that I could miscarry in March!
We will get it worked out. Someway, somehow. It will all fall into place. It always does.
image: markymarko