Attitude is Everything

The title of this post sums up why I think this cycle has been better.  Well, also not being on birth control pills probably helped, too.  But this cycle I really had no expectations.  When my first cycle was cancelled I was torn up.  Going into it I had low expectations of a successful transfer but I thought I’d at least get there.  Not even getting to retrieval was a real blow. 

What did I do wrong?  What did the doctor do wrong?  Honestly, I think it was a combination of both.  For me, I think I read way too much and had a negative attitude going into the cycle.  Since I have such a low AFC I worried every time I’d read that someone with twice as many follicles got only a handful of eggs.  Add to that my fear from before I even started that there was a good chance I would be cancelled.  This was because I had an elevated estradiol level before I started anything.  I read soooo much that my number should have been no more than 50 when I was 191!  I even had my doctor do a pre-baseline scan and bloodwork to see what was going on.  And you know what – the estradiol was even higher – 212!  So I went on BCP for two weeks, which took care of E2 but I also think it really over-suppressed me (this is where I think the doctor messed up).  I also paid way too close attention to the metrics (I’m an analyst IRL).  I made sure to write everything down, ask questions during the ultrasounds, question why I was taking what dose of what. 

So this time around, I was easy peasy.  I didn’t ask a lot of questions.  I “chatted” with my Resolve message board friends more about how they were doing than how I was.  Up until today, my sixth monitoring appointment, I hadn’t even seen a doctor at monitoring.  Just the ultrasound tech and me.  Some are a little tighter with information than others and I decided to go with the flow and not ask detailed questions.  Couple that with monitoring for three days with another nurse calling me, I got very little detail this cycle.

Plus my husband and I met with another RE last week and decided to make the switch to him after this cycle is over.  We really liked him and he had some good ideas of what he’d do differently for my hard case of DOR.  Since I have that backup plan in my back pocket I kind of have the attitude of, if it works, it works.  If not, no big deal.  We go to plan B.