slow growing.

Well, this is new.

I'm at CD9 today (Day 8 of stims) and this morning's check revealed a 6, two 9s, and a 10. I'm guessing the 6 is the same 6 from last time, and that fucker isn't likely to grow. But the 9s were 7s on Friday, and the 10 was an 8.

I took a look back at some notes I had on previous cycles.

IVF #1: on CD9 I had five follies that measured 7, 11, 13, 14, 14. So, three tracking the same size and two lagging behind. When I triggered on CD12, I only had one follie left. I don't have any notes about what size it was but I think it was around 20.

IVF #2: Had my second check on CD8, which revealed four follies measuring 15, 12, 9, 7. For that cycle, I triggered on CD10 (so, two days later); only two follies remained (a 21 and a 19). The 19 was the one they got the egg from and it was immature, so they grew it in culture for a day before fertilizing with ICSI.

Other things I found out today:

My lining is at 5. I said, "That's thin, isn't it?" My favorite nurse practitioner (Fave NP) told me not to worry about it. She said my lining had the triple stripe and she felt confident that it would thicken in time. No one's ever mentioned me having a triple stripe before but I've never had a lining issue. Just a rotten egg issue.

My E2 was 71. I wish I didn't know that. It seems awfully low, even for a DOR gal like myself. When I expressed concern to the NP who called with my results (not the Fave NP but the one I think secretly hates me), she told me that I shouldn't count myself out yet. She said that since my follicles grew, I needed to stay the course until Thursday. If my follicles grow between now and then, she said, it's likely that my body will kick in and the E2 level will rise appropriately.

This cycle is clearly very different from the previous two and I don't know what to make of that. I'd been thinking that could be a good thing, since those cycles didn't yield tiny humans. But then I got my low E2 level, and now I'm wondering if I'll even make it to retrieval.

I don't feel sad, exactly. Remember, I went into this cycle thinking that if I ended up pregnant, it would be from the donor embryos. But, like, the AFC of 8 kind of fucked with my head. For a few days, I thought, "What if...?" Now, I'm back to thinking my eggs are shit and that my four donor embies are the Obi-Wan of this particular cycle (as in, my only hope).

Earlier today I told Fave NP that I wanted to try to grow my own embryos out to blast, even if that meant I had nothing to transfer. Ditto for the donor gametes. I did say that if Dr. Smiles disagreed, I'd defer to him, but really, I just want the greatest shot at success. She said she understood and made notes in my file.

What I don't understand is why I feel so completely hormonal. I mean, if my estradiol is that low, I shouldn't be crying at Beach Boys songs in the car. Right?

Another mystery of my broken body, I suppose.