Waiting by the Phone

I had another monitoring appointment this morning, and I'm waiting for the call but I think tonight is trigger night. My regular doctor was on monitoring duty this morning so it was nice to see him--although some people have described him as looking a little like a young Elliott Gould, an image I just can't get out of my head. Since I've recently seen the remake of Ocean's Eleven, in which Gould is a fabulous crooked casino magnate, and the episode of Friends in which Gould, as Monica's dad, gives Monica and Chandler some advice on getting pregnant it was all I could do not to giggle throughout the appointment. But I digress.

The bad news is that there's only one really mature looking follicle in there and it's hanging out on the right ovary and measuring at over 19 mm. There's another medium-sized one also on the right at 16 mm. Everything else is less than 15 mm. Now, this is my first injectable cycle so all this sounded reasonably good to me, but as he was leaving, Dr. Gould (hee hee) said we'd probably play with the meds next month to get a better response. And since I didn't know until that moment that my response had been at all disappointing, I was sad.

Oh, but there was good news, and it comes in the form of a nice little drug called Ovidrel--it's a sub-q HcG trigger. Woo hoo! I'm not nearly as much of a badass as getupgrrl so I was dreading the IM Novadel shot. So, phew.

Anyway, my sweet husband woke up and drove to the appointment with me, and it's much faster by car--1/2 hour by car versus 1 1/2 hours by subway (I can't drive during the week because I work in midtown and there's no street parking and garage parking is outrageously expensive). I was done by 7:30 and we had the morning spread out before us so we headed over to the Doughnut Plant, which was nowhere near the doctor' s office or our apartment, but which I'd heard makes wonderfully delicious fried bits of dough and hence was worth a detour. We got sugar doughnuts that were still warm and so very tasty. The counterman said that you feel like you're eight years old again when you eat food like this, and as we gobbled them down and covered ourselves in sugar, I had to agree: two eight years old on the loose in lower Manhattan, waiting for a call from their reproductive endocrinologist. What could be better?

Afternoon Update

We are going to trigger tonight with the IUI on Monday. I'm supposed to call tomorrow to make an appointment tomorrow for the semen wash and insemination. Of course Monday morning's not great for me: I have a Spanish test. There's really nothing on earth that meshes less well than an undergraduate classroom and fertility treatments, which my husband and I were chuckling about this morning. Trying to convince these kids that it's hard to get pregnant goes against all cultural programming. I mean when I was an undergraduate (in the age of "No glove, no love") we were all so damn sure you could get pregnant just by *thinking* about sex. Somehow we'll muddle through. Anyone know how to say intrauterine insemination in Spanish?

Comments

[Julie]

Congratulations on triggering. You're one step closer to being vomited on by your own offspring!

From the Department of Soothing Reassurances: Your follicles will keep growing after the trigger, and they grow at the rate of 1 to 2 mm a day, so it's quite likely that the one that was 16 mm today will be in play when you get basted on Monday. You still have a good shot this month, so don't let Dr. Gould get you down just yet, eh?

Oh, and the translation might be inseminación intrauterina. But I prefer the idiomatic explosión de la esperma.

[getupgrrl]

I'm very close to figuring out a very funny joke about Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger, but this Follistim is screwing with my brain, so I can't get there. Instead, let me just wish you a happy trigger. May your eggs be rotund and his sperm be swift.

I'm going to go work on that Trigger joke now.

[Monica]

Sounds like your follicles are doing just fine. Give them one more shot and they'll be all grown up in no time. Best of luck!

[Lisa]

Thanks ladies...All hail Ovidrel! Sub-q triggers--what will they think of next. I'm trying to think happy thoughts, but it's just so not in my nature.