CD 8 - Day 5 of Stims

Day 5 and things are changing. I am starting to bloat a bit (I gotta muffin top, ok?) There is more ovarian activity happening inside of me, I can feel it. It's like a bunch of small prickly insects running around in my uterus area. It feels a little full, nothing unmanageable at this point, just tight.

I also have on and off menstrual type cramps, especially in my back and where my ovaries are. I'm very conscious of everything that is occurring on the stimulation medicine. I'm visualizing the follicles growing and growing and forming our future child. I know it sounds silly, but it calms me to be so in touch with the process going on in my body. I don't like unknowns. I like to know all and be in control. Sometimes to my detriment I think.

The weirdest side affect that cropped up when I started the stims is EYE TWITCHING. What the hell. My right eye keeps twitching on and off about every ten minutes. If I sneeze, it twitches, I laugh, it twitches. It's very irritating and officially made it to the side effects list on the right side of my blog. I googled it and found other IVFers talking about eye-twitching as well, so I'm not too worried about it.

I feel like a big negative blob. The people at work and my own lovely husband is tired of me complaining, I can feel it. This only polarizes me more, and I try to fight the feelings of fear, confusion, and sadness by myself. I think it's just really hard for other people to understand what one goes through in this process. And maybe I'm just Wendy Whiner, or maybe it's even a little bit of both. Whatever it is, my emotional state is worn, but overall I have an upbeat outlook and am looking forward to completing this cycle in the next week or so.

Today we went in for another stimulation check appointment and they took my blood and did an ultrasound. He found about 4-6 nicely growing follicles on one side, and 5-7 nicely growing follicles on the other.

I called Nurse S (my favorite nurse of all time) and asked to her explain what all of this means. She said they expect to see at least 1 good follicle on this ultrasound, she said I had at least 2 total, and that I'm progressing very nicely.

My thyroid levels also changed to 1.7, that's awesome from 4.5! woot!

We'll see how it pans out, my next appointment is Friday. M has a different doctor appointment so I'll be going by myself to this one.

My estrogen levels came in from today's check and the results are below:

Estrogen Level on Suppression Check: 32
Estrogen Level on Day 3 of stims: 80
Estrogen Level on Day 5 of stims: 192 (sweet!!)

Next Steps:
Take my last Menopur shot tonight, and start taking two doses of Gonal F
Another Stim check on Friday @ 8:30