It’s Looking Like We May Have 3 to 5.

Good afternoon! I can’t believe that it is the middle of April and actually snowing here in Chicago today!

I had my 2nd follicle check this morning and blood work done. The u/s tech was able to measure 5 follicles on my left side, however she still was unable to find my right ovary. She said one time she “found” one hiding up by a patient’s kidney so she actually did an external u/s after the internal one to see if my missing ovary was up there, but it wasn’t. She did say that my kidney and gall bladder looked good though! 😉

The 5 follicles measured as follows: 1 – 14mm, 2 – 12mm, 1 – 10mm & 1 – 9mm. There were also still 6 less than 10mm. So it appears that the 3 – 10mm from Monday all got bigger, 1 of the 9mm grew and 1 of the 9mm stayed the same. The nurses explained that not all follicles have an egg, so to please not hold them to there being 5 that might be available for the ER. They explained that our RE likes a minimum of 3 good looking follicles to do IVF and they think we look like we will have at least that many. She also said they usually have patients do the trigger shot when there are at least 3 follicles that measure over 17mm.

From what I understand having 5 follicles maturing at this rate is about average for only working with one ovary. And keeping in mind that they will only be transferring one embryo (if at least one makes it that far), we are encouraged that it is looking like we may have 3 to 5 eggs. We understand that they may not all fertilize and those that do may not all survive to day 5 or develop into blastocysts, but time will tell and we are trying to remain cautiously optimistic.

My Endo Grade was 5 line (I need to read up on what that means) and the Thickness (of my uterine lining) was 8mm (they said they want it to be more like 10mm to support implantation, but that it should get there over the next few days). They told me to stay with the 300 IUs for the Follistim shot tonight unless I get a call telling me differently. She said my E2 (estridol level) from Monday’s blood work was 125 and they like it to be closer to 200, hence why they upped my Follistim dosage. Hope that wasn’t TMI! You can tell I ask a lot of questions and appreciate them being willing to give me answers!

I am feeling more tired today (though I didn’t get as much sleep last night as I have been trying to over the past week or so) and crampy (likely from my developing follicles), so I am trying to take it easy, especially this afternoon while Sean is napping. He had his second swim class at one of our local park district’s field house’s this morning and did well! Afterwards he told me how much fun he had today and how much he likes swimming class! His instructor gave him “homework” to practice blowing out a candle to help him learn to blow bubbles in the water. So maybe we will “work” on that later!