Worry wart

The ovary party has quietened down for now, so I guess that burning was just them waking up after a long snooze. Hopefully they've settled into a quiet growing mode that is just growing a bunch of follicles for me. I'll find out tomorrow how many I'm dealing with, and I'm really quite nervous. It was such a pleasant surprise last cycle at my first post-stims ultrasound to find out that I had 20 follicles, that I became positively giddy. 20 follicles after your previous cycle was cancelled for a poor response is a pretty amazing turnaround, and after an antral follicle count of 10-12 because the ultrasound technician didn't bother to keep counting. Not that all 20 made it to egg retrieval, as I went in with 6 big ones and 8 medium sized ones which yielded 14 eggs, of which 10 were mature. But I was pretty darn happy with that crop.

Now, however, I don't know. I secretly hope for more follicles, because I've been taking the DHEA for longer. I have put so much faith in the DHEA working that if it hasn't made more of a difference, I will be upset. But anyway what I really want is more mature eggs, and more embryos. I should say that I want more good quality embryos, as it's quality that really counts, not quantity. Out of my 10 mature eggs, I got 7 embryos. However, even though it's quality that counts, IVF is such a numbers game, that more embryos would make me very happy indeed, because I have more potential chances for high quality embryos if I have more eggs. In other words more = better. But then again, most people don't end up with more. They have more or less the same numbers, especially if their meds protocol is the same. And with my propensity to grow follicles at different rates, even if I have more follicles, there's no guarantee that any more will mature at the same time as each other.

I was going to try not to worry this time around! And here I am, worrying. But although I'm worrying, I'm not stressing about it, if that makes sense. I know that what will be will be, and me worrying about it, while giving myself something to think about, will not change what happens. So I'm trying to keep it at the level of mental worrying, without allowing it to sink to that gut-wrenching emotionally tied in knots level of worrying.

In other news, my belly is already covered in bruises and welts from the injections. It's not a pretty sight! And it makes giving shots a bit harder because as time goes on it becomes harder to find a clear patch among the welts. But I shall wear them proudly as a badge of my courage to stick myself in the search for a baby. Well, OK, I'll wear them proudly under my pants, thank you very much, I'm not that proud that I want to show them off to anyone!