...moved on over to blogger/blogspot, because I am Google's bitch.

See you there, I hope! If you don't have a Google account, you can leave comments there with OpenID, any name, a name and a website, or completely anonymously.

Thanks to all of you who have come along on this wild ride.

Thank you for the chanting and the cheering and the commiserating! My numbers are just peachy keen, nothing that even hyper-anxious me can get worried about.

For the historical record:

FSH, 6.5. Below 10 is considered good. Under 6 would be superstar, but 6.5 is juuuuust fine with me.
Estradiol, 52. Below 80 is good.
LH, 5.9. Over three and yet lower than FSH is good.

Ratio of FSH:LH is 1.1. Over 2 predicts badness. 1.1 is ducky.

I know exactly what my doctor would say (I think I'll call him Dr. Stewart, because he totally reminds me of Jon Stewart). He'd say "What we know here is only that this blood test does not show any of the markers associated with diminished ovarian reserve." He would then quickly point out that we know nothing about the quality of my eggs, response to stimulation, etc. After my HSG he was careful to state that tubal patency does not mean anything except that dye moves freely through and then spills from the fallopian tubes.

Can you see why I like him? No? Well, I do. His downbeat approach makes me feel positively blithe and reckless in comparison. I don't particularly want a doctor who radiates positivity.  REs are in the business of selling an expensive, invasive procedure that doesn't work more often than it does.  A little bit of negativity feels like honesty to me.

I start pills tonight.

Well, my marathon 41 day cycle finally came to a close. This means that, like Portnoy, vee finally may perhaps to begin, yes?

Tomorrow I get my Day 3 bloodwork (for the innocent: a few hormone tests that are used to -- sometimes inaccurately -- estimate just how tough this project is going to be.) I am terrified. If my FSH is high then that's bad and an indication of diminished ovarian reserve, which has a grim prognosis. If my estradiol is high then it has artificially lowered my FSH, see previous sentence. Alternately, I may have an ovarian cyst. If my LH level is low then it could indicate diminished ovarian reserve; if it's high it may indicate polycystic ovarian syndrome (of which I already have some signs -- it's not too bad a thing to have, though).

Infectious disease testing is done from the same blood draw, including hepatitis and HIV. I am also terrified of these, which is completely irrational. I have been in a monogamous relationship for 10 years. My sole risk factor would be that 8 months of exposure to KD's semen. If I hadn't felt I could trust him not to endanger me I wouldn't have gone ahead with him as a donor. But. But. I'm terrified anyway.

After I get my blood tested tomorrow, I will take my first birth control pill. Like every single woman who has trod the long downregulation IVF path before me, gay and straight, I will have a good chuckle at this.

I should get the results by the end of the day, or the day after. I will heave a sigh of relief, or not.

My whole life I have been frightened of having fertility problems. This is not significant. I am a worrier, and my whole life I have been frightened of car crashes, cancer, choking, falling, being wrongly convicted of a crime, having all my teeth fall out, going blind, mass transportation accidents, and a thousand other things that have never happened and kinehorah never will.

So think good-number thoughts for me. Low FSH, low estradiol, LH the same as my (oh-so-low) FSH.

And then? Vee begin.

Good news: I finally ovulated!

Bad news: I ovulated 2000 miles from the tank of sperm. Thus I am rating my chances of pregnancy this cycle as "very low indeed".

Whatever. I keep telling myself that there's an 80-85% chance that the only effect of skipping this month's insem was to save us $1300. The odds are freaking depressing when you look at it that way.  It's one thing if you have a known donor (or husband, for that matter) and every spin of the wheel is free. It's an entirely different thing when it costs so very much for such a slim chance.

I am really looking forward to playing a game with better odds.

Did I mention that I'm in Las Vegas? Love this glittery town. I put a dollar in a slot machine and ended up with $2.50. See, Vegas loves me, too.

In November I had a 38-day cycle; looks like I'm going to rival that this month -- CD22, estrogen low, progesterone low (so I haven't ovulated), LH low. Nothing to see up there but a crop of scrubby little follicles.  Chances are excellent that I won't ovulate by Friday. This is relevant because Friday is the last chance to inseminate before we head off to Vegas for a long-awaited vacation.  Can't feel too sorry for myself about that, but it means that this cycle will automatically be a bust.

I wanted to do one more IUI before IVF. You know, a threatening sort of listen up, reproductive bits, this is your last chance to do this on your own before I start hitting you with the big hormone stick. Like the rest of me, my endocrine system is stubbornly deaf to threats. When I was little there were all sorts of jokes about how I could be never be bribed nor threatened to do anything on anyone's schedule but my own. It's not a quality that has served me well in life.

I have a pack of birth control pills to start on cycle day 1, whenever that may be. 21 days of birth control, some time period of ovarian stimulation. Trigger shot for final follicle maturation, egg retrieval (aka the huge honking needle through the vaginal wall. erp.) Then, kinahorah, embryo culture, embryo/blastocyst transfer, the blessedly short 10-day 2ww.  And then, and then. And then.

I don't know where to start telling this story, so I'll just tumble it out.

• No, I'm not pregnant. In my opinion, any TTC blog that puts up a post with the title "omg" is morally obligated to state pregnancy status in the very first bullet point.
  
  
• Sperm is our major out-of-pocket expense. Natural IUI cycles are running us around $1500/per, $1200 of which is sperm. There are radically cheaper options; I know of two "discount" sperm banks, Midwest and Northwest (what is it with the word "west"?) Using either of these banks would save a cool $800/mo. But Midwest doesn't offer ID-release donors, and Northwest only offers them in a very desultory, non-committal way. I want a real signed-on-the-dotted-line assurance that Kid would be able to ask for and get identifying information at age 18. I know there's nothing guaranteed from there, but at least I will have done the best I can to ease that situation. So that leaves me with the $1200 banks.
  
  
• One of our little dogs just puked all over the sheets and quilts and pillow, not to mention my girlfriend. This is not directly related to the story at hand, but I thought I'd share anyway.
  
  
• I am 34. I want more than one. I am really impatient. If I am going to use medical intervention, I want to proceed aggressively.
  
  
• Her Indoors and I both have a morbid fear of multiples. This fear prevents us from doing anything that will increase the risk of multiples at all. Not all of our reasons for this are selfish, although some of them are.
  
  
• That rules out medicated IUIs, Clomid or injectables. There are exactly two choices for trying to get pregnant that do not increase the risk of multiples: natural IUIs and IVF with single-embryo transfer.
  
  
• I don't think I have mentioned this much, perhaps out of embarrassment at my own intensely good fortune, but: I have amazing insurance with fertility coverage. It's more amazing than I had previously thought, and specifically includes lesbians (when I came to work for this place 5 years ago, it specifically *excluded* lesbians. Yay progress!). One cycle of IVF will cost around $2000, including sperm. Additional cycles (I'm allowed three) will run $500 each, since I'll have maxed out my deductible. Yes, this is amazing. Yes, I am very very grateful.
  
  
• Given the above facts -- even the dog puke factors in, in a complex way -- if I am not pregnant this cycle, next cycle we will embark upon IVF. Our doctor is open to doing three fresh cycles with single-embryo transfer each time. It's unusual, but he'll do it. We'll bank (knock wood, if we're lucky, etc) any extra embryos. If after three attempts I'm not pregnant, we'll pay for frozen transfers out of pocket.
  
  
• Stephen Colbert refers to cryopreserved embryos as "tiny frozen Americans". I think this is hilarious.

That's it. My mind is swimming. Our consultation with the doc was this morning, and I had anxious dreams about it all night. I knew exactly what I wanted -- three rounds fresh IVF with single-embryo transfer of a day-5 blastocyst, please! -- and didn't want to be rejected and have to shop around for a clinic. Our doctor is kind of manic-crazy (he got lost today in a metaphor about surf 'n' turf and peanut butter sandwiches; I think he even confused himself), but I like him, and he and the hospital he works out of are literally five minutes from our house. Considering how often I'll have to go to the office during an IVF cycle, location is not nothing.

I am so excited. I once quipped, because I am nothing if not quippy: "TTC is endlessly repeating the same process, hoping for a different result."

Fuck that. We're gonna mix it up a little.

All the prices at my sperm bank have gone way up, with no warning. An IUI vial that last week was $450 is now $530. Shipping that was once $120 is now $160. So the monthly cycle cost has now gone up $200. Dammit. Things just get harder. What the fucking fuck. Sure on one level I'm grateful that these banks even exist to give me an option I might not have had in another time, but I am also so angry that they charge so much for so little, that we can't do a thing about it other than suck it up and pay, pay, pay, that if we switch sperm banks we have to go through the harrowing and (don't forget) expensive process of buying profiles to pick another donor. Well hey, getting screwed a lot should get you pregnant, right? {insert weak laugh here}

On the upside, now I don't have to do all those things I promised I'd do if only I were pregnant this month.

Yesterday
Her: Invisible triplets?
Me: Damn, do they even make invisible strollers in that size?

Today
Her: Let me guess -- invisible quads.
Me: *out of snappy one-liners*


Well, back to the party.

I feel just great. On Friday night I was in our kitchen, looking at our spice shelf, and was just suffused by joy and gratitude. We are so lucky. Of all the people who have ever lived throughout human history, we are among the very luckiest. We live sweet easy lives, with warmth at the click of a button, extensive food choices, soft bed linens.

Most importantly, right at this shining moment, everybody I love is healthy and alive. I know this is not sustainable, but I am so grateful for it, right this second. Right now.

I even believe in the possibility that, if I keep shoving sperm up there, someday we might have a baby.

also, a big TTC greeting to Old Friend From Grad School, OFFGS. We had a wonderful evening last night. She and I attended a humanities doctoral program together at Swanky Ivy League University (SWIL-U) a million years ago. I washed out after the MA; she finished and is now a (tenured!!) professor.

Anyway, last night we figured out that of the eight people who started at SWIL-U in our year, ten years later, *two* of them now have their PhDs. Two out of eight. I liked all of them, and I'm sorry that more didn't make it through. But I don't think it's schadenfreude to say that figuring this out was kind of healing to my soul. See, I'd always taken my graceless departure from grad school as the golden opportunity that I blew, mostly though my own laziness and lack of direction. But when I started I had no idea that my chances of success were so slim to begin with. It was a golden opportunity for a very few people, but for the rest of us it was... something on the way to something else. And that's okay.

So. The future is roses, yes?