Vodka-less Vodka Night

Well, as many of you long time readers will no doubt recall, I have a tradition of drinking vodka with cranberry and orange juice in moments of vaguely self-destructive wallowing. There will be no vodka tonight, but I am marking yet another negative pregnancy test with a decongestant, chased with Spanish wine. (At this rate, which is a mere half glass in an hour, I expect to be quite happily drunk by the time LG falls asleep)

I've run the gamut of emotions today. I honestly thought it wouldn't hurt to hear the "not good news" from the nurse; after all, I've known (you might not have believed, but I've known) for a good week that this didn't work, confirmed by not one but three HPTs. Over the course of the week, my breasts went from swollen and sore to pleasantly full back to their small, quiet life in 32B. And my ovaries have been working on pumping out follicles; they spark, they ache, they groan. Despite that, I have to say my immediate reaction, upon hearing the news, in the lobby of the library while LG was in story hour, was anger. Not anger at the negative, but anger that it became time to scramble together a plan because no one, not even my doctor, was willing to listen to me two days ago that the damn IVF just didn't work. None of that was surprising. I gave up on the cycle the minute she told me she only got 4 eggs; sure, I had a momentary glimpse of hope in looking at those embryos, but I knew their quality probably sucked.

What I know is this: the only time I've gotten pregnant and carried to term was on an unmedicated cycle (if you can call hcg, progesterone, and heparin unmedicated!). I thought that was a fluke for a long time. More recently, in the aftermath of the aborted IVF, I've come to realize that my body responds better to less "manipulation," as Dr. G puts it. While I'm not willing to go back to unmedicated cycles--the chances of success are simply too low--I'm really banking on low dose Follistim being the magic bullet, telling my body to do just a little bit more (two or three follicles please) than what it knows how to do on its own, without throwing my entire endocrine system out of whack. I'm not sure what Dr. Gorgeous thinks, but she's game.

This is my last shot before I turn 37. This is my last shot with LG's donor. This is a completely new protocol for me. But, oddly, today holds more hope than I've had in a long time.