IVF 6: Baseline

What a week!!! I had a mail-merge catastrophe at work where 94 letter templates needed to be edited in their entirety in two days. My whole office is out on vacation and I had an enormous and time-sensitive project to complete. I've been on an extremely limited diet in prep for baseline so I'm tired and hangry. And I didn't win the powerball lottery even though I bought two tickets. So ready for the weekend!

I went in for baseline this morning. It was ok and I'm working to process whether it was good or bad. Only one stick for blood: good. Pay out of pocket for a cycle: ouch. Ultrasound news: yikes.

It wasn't the ultrasound, per se, but the news the doctor shared during the appointment. My clinic has very strict bmi rules and apparently mine is too close to the limit. After our last loss in May I gained 12 lbs in addition to the 3 lbs of bloat I carried from the pregnancy. Looking back it was dumb to just let go but I was in no place to think about it at all under the cloud of grief. Once I got a grip, I was able to lose most of it but it's still not all gone. Would it be nice not to be so borderline? Sure. A lot of things would be nice, including the clinic not having such strict limits.

Technically speaking, I am under the limit and I am cleared to start. But I'm only under by 2.4 lbs. The concern is that the anesthesiologists at egg retrieval won't move forward if the bmi hits the max, which means that I only have a 2.4 lb cushion to work with. The doctor doesn't want me to be crushed if the cycle gets canceled if I go over, especially since some of it is beyond my control regarding bloat from the medication. For comparison, the other clinic we visited for a second opinion had a limit too, but it wasn't nearly as strict and I was 40 lbs away from it. Just saying.

It's up to us whether to risk it. If the cycle gets canceled before the retrieval we get an 85% refund from the clinic. The risk is that would be two weeks of hormones for nothing and of course there's no refund for the medication used, which was also paid for out of pocket.

The alternative is to wait to lose a few more lbs. The issue is that we're already on the border of the Jewish holidays which start 9/20. If we delay by a week I may lose 2 lbs but then retrieval will be really close to Rosh Hashanah, risking a holiday retrieval. So if we're delaying, it means delaying the entire cycle to after the holidays are done in October, which puts a retrieval at the start of November. I tried finagling the schedule to try to fit a cycle mid-holidays, but it's not possible. It's not just the egg retrieval day, it's also finding several consecutive days to go in for bloodwork every day and if I'm not driving because of the holidays there's just nothing that works. The only time it may work is risking a retrieval on yom kippur and that's just not an option. This is elective surgery and I can control the schedule - if I don't have to be in the hospital over the holidays I don't want to be there.

I'm on board to risk it. My husband wasn't so sure but eventually agreed. I prefer to go into it knowing there's a risk rather than waiting and doing nothing for two months. There's no chance I'll be able to maintain my strict diet over the holidays. There's also a chance that this cycle might be a complete bust and we'll have to do another cycle in October anyway - who knows!

I'll have to watch what I eat carefully for the next two weeks leading up to retrieval because excessive exercise is frowned upon when your ovaries are the size of tennis balls. It will be a hellish two weeks but then it will be behind us. And then I can celebrate with piles of Chinese food and doughnuts.

So... here we go. Shabbat shalom!