Day 11 stimming - how to stay positive

I was having a discussion with a colleague yesterday about the fear that some people have about terrorism, when actually the chances of dying in a terrorist attack are incredibly low. Dying in a road accident is far more likely. I was thinking about how you can't change your life based on fears about things that are pretty unlikely to happen.

It got me thinking about this whole TTC thing. My associated worries that are actually quite unlikely to happen - miscarriage if I do get pregnant, birth defects, birthing issues, and the list goes on, are things I just should not think about. Although I am at increased risk of all kinds of pregnancy associated things because of my age, the risks in general are still pretty low. So I am going to take the same tack as for terrorism - worrying about it isn't worth it. Actually worrying about anything at all, ever, isn't worth it, but it's hard to break lifetime habits:-)

Anyway, I had my Day 9 BT and ultrasound this morning. All is going very well. I can see that the reduced doses of FSH and total blocking of LH are causing my lining to thicken faster and my existing follicles are growing bigger instead of just growing loads more small ones as I did last cycle.

The stats are: Left ovary - 10 follies; 13mm, 14, 15 x2
Right ovary - 10 follies; 11mm, 14, 15, 16, 17.

The sizes are far more uniform this time. At this stage of the last cycle, I had 34 follicles!! The endometrial lining thickness is 8mm. For comparison, at Day 9 in my last cycle it was 6mm.

And my hormone levels are behaving as well. My E2 is 3273, which was nearly double at the same stage last cycle. P4 is 2.2 and LH is 0.5, so the Orgalutran is doing its stuff.

In my vast experience of IVF, I am predicting that we will get about 11 mature eggs and will fertilise about the same amount.

I am stimming for another two days at least and then we will see on Sat if I am going to trigger or not. I think egg pick-up will be either Monday or Tuesday.

The good news is, I won't be having embryo transfer on the same day as my post-melanoma surgery. The bad news is lovel husband will probably have to delay his work trip interstate. His bosses know what is going on so it should be fine.

I am feeling generally fine, except that my ovaries are starting to hurt a bit - seems like more than last cycle. I don't feel so tired at the moment and my mood is generally pretty good, although I am finding it hard to get to sleep at night. I am doing relaxation exercises every day now to try and keep myself on an even keel.

I have also found out that we can get the pregnancy test BT done in Melbourne so I won't have to fly back for it, which is great news. Means I don't have to interrupt our christmas holiday.