Cycle 3: Day 8

Had my scan this morning.  Nothing eventful to report as it all seems to be very routine now.  The doctor measured 5 follicles which are 'growing' and 3 that are 'just behind'.  I've also now dropped from 300 Gonal-F to 225 and will stay on the lower dose.

I'll be honest.  The numbers are slightly disappointing at this stage.  As I got 6 eggs from my first cycle and 4 from my second, even though I've been on a higher dose of drugs, this cycle seems to be smack in the middle so far, and that's assuming I get an egg out of every follicle.  I was definitely hoping for more.  But we're still only about halfway.

That's the other thing- the doctor had said that due to the higher drug dose, the cycle might be shorter.  But at the moment it looks like it's going to be just about the same amount of days.  So I have another seven days to go give or take.

It is times like this where I do get a bit frustrated that I am not convinced that the UK clinics are using the best drugs or the best protocols or doing everything they can.  On the eggsurance forum, most of the women are from the States and it's like we're doing completely different things.  Part of me wonders if I wouldn't be getting more eggs on a different regime.  But as per usual, this sort of thinking is vaguely pointless.  I have to remember that my clinic has some of the highest pregnancy and live birth results in the UK and not because they're selective and turn anyone away.  Newer stuff and more tests isn't necessarily better.  But I am used to a system of having more information and more discussion.  That doesn't mean it's actually more useful, it might just mean I feel differently about everything.

But I go back to this all being a stressful process (and 7 days of hormone injections later, it's not entirely surprising I'm starting to feel a bit anxious).  There are so many unknowns about what I'm doing that it makes me desperate for some small inkling of certainty.  And I'm just not going to get it.  Who knows if these eggs will fertilize?  Who knows if I will ever be in a position to fertilize them?!  There's just a lot of questions that I can't answer at this stage.

Oh, and I should also say that since I have a dermoid cyst on my ovary, it's probably not at top form either.  Every time I see the cyst on the scan it just annoys me.  Who knows how it affects that side of my ovary on which it lives parasitically?  So really, I'm not complaining.  Or, I am complaining, but I'm more complaining about the unfairness of life, the fact that I find myself in this position at all, and that life hasn't turned out the way I thought it would.

As far as the cycle goes, really, everything is fine so far.