On Thursday I went in for another blood test and ultrasound. This time my husband went along with me - it was nice to have him with me. The blood draw at LabCorp went fine - the same guys as Monday were working again that day. This one is in the same little complex as Ohio Reproductive Medicine, so they have a separate sign-in sheet for the ORM patients. They get us in and out of there very quickly - which is nice! Then we went to ORM for the ultrasound - we had a little bit of a wait in the waiting room. I watched my husband play "Where's My Water?" on his phone to pass the time. Penny, the nurse that coordinates all of the IVF cycles, was the one that took us back to an examination room. She asked if I had to go to the bathroom and I told her I was good. We got in the room and I did the normal drill - undress from the waist down and hopped on the table with my lovely paper sheet. We kinda had to wait awhile and I started to feel like maybe I did have to go to the bathroom afterall. The longer we waited, the more afraid I became of the thought of having some type of accident during the ultrasound. So I decided to get dressed and head on to the bathroom to be sure that nothing like that would happen. My husband was a little surprised - I kinda felt like a little kid that said they didn't have to go and changed their mind 5 minutes later. But I made it back from the bathroom with some time to spare - feeling much more comfortable about the ultrasound. :) We had the female doctor do the ultrasound that morning - she was really nice and this time the computer cooperated and allowed her to take the proper measurements. She said that my uterine lining was looking nice and thick. Then we looked at the follicles on both of my ovaries - they kinda looked about the same size as Monday from my perspective. But she said that even though the follicles didn't look quite ready yet, they are growing and that we were doing everything right. :) For whatever reason I was expecting to come in and have them say they were ready to go - so I was a little surprised to hear that they weren't ready yet. Later that afternoon McKenzie called with my blood test results and next steps. My estrogen level jumped up from 115 on Monday to 871 on Thursday - which she said was a nice big jump that they like to see. She said when the estrogen jumps up like that, the follicles usually aren't too far behind in terms of maturing. So she asked that we continue the nightly shots at 150 mL and come back on Saturday morning for another blood test and ultrasound. I was really thinking the insemination was going to be Saturday/Sunday - but now the earliest it could be is Monday. I went ahead and blocked off Monday & Tuesday morning in my calendar at work and just gave my manager the heads up that I may need to take a 1/2 day PTO on either of those morning. So tomorrow morning we will get to see what's going on with my follicles! ;)
Today when I was leaving work I was saying "bye" to a few guys and we ended up having a little small talk about our weekend plans. There is another girl on our floor that's pregnant with twins and another couple that's expecting - so one of them asked me if I was going to have kids. At first I thought he was asking if I had any, so I just said that I didn't have any. Then he clarified that he was asking if I was - to which I responded, "Yeah, maybe someday..." The other guy seemed surprised that I didn't have kids and asked about the pictures of all the kids in my cube - which are of my nephews and niece. He didn't think they were all mine- but thought at least one of them was mine. So then I kinda deflected the conversation by focusing on them and how we have 8 nephews and 1 niece. They both have all daughters (one has 2 and one has 5), so they both agreed that I should have girls. :) In these situations - especially when we're in the middle of a treatment cycle - I always wonder how people would react if I gave them the honest answer. Like what would they have done if I was like, "We've actually been trying for 4.5 years - I've been doing nightly fertility shots for a week and I'm probably going to be artificially inseminated on Monday/Tuesday of next week." :)
In closing, I'd like to thank PG and my LC for their "WWYD" responses. Shockingly, my first two responses were from guys - so far we have one vote for adoption and one for stealing a baby from the hospital. ;) There's still time for you to weigh-in on what you think you would do if you were in our "parents in waiting" shoes. Good night!!