14 dpo

…and still BFN.  Stopped the progesterone last night (no more greasy underpants, hooray!) so I expect the period to show up today or tomorrow, once the progesterone is thoroughly out of my system. 

It’s so interesting how different this BFN is from the last one.  I don’t feel bad at all – although I wish it had worked out, of course, but I don’t feel sad or even that disappointed.  Perhaps I just mentally steeled myself this time after the trauma of last time; perhaps once you get one BFN you learn how to cope better; but I really think having a plan for the future is what made the difference.  I’d feel pretty crappy right now if I knew I was just going to continue with more pointless IUIs.

Of course there had to be a thread on the WTE app last night about are IUIs effective for older woman and one 40-year-old chimed in that it worked for her on the first shot!  Ha ha.  Well, I guess I’m just not that lucky (and she was probably using her husband’s live sperm, so timing wasn’t an issue). 

So the minute the period shows up I’m making an appointment with this clinic in Irvine.  You’re not out until you’re for sure OUT, so until ol’ AF flows there’s still a flicker of hope, albeit a very faint one.  But like I said I’ve been having lots of pre-menstrual feelings lately so I seriously doubt anything is awaiting me other than my usual monthly bill.

Still thinking about the wonderful luxury of taking the rest of the summer off (I get to sit in the hot tub, whee!) and spending the fall, when I have most of the free time, doing retrievals, and then the winter doing implantations.  In a way this mini-IVF process pushes women’s reproductive freedom to a whole new level – IUI seems so antiquated comparatively; you’re totally a victim of your own body’s timing (and people screw up the timing all the time), you can only do things all at once (as in, the month you go in for the IUI is the same month you’ll be pregnant, technically), and there’s zero opportunity to preserve embryos for future use.  I’m especially interested in this “vitrification” process which apparently brings the thawed embryo survival rate from the old 50% to 98%.  I need to ask the Irvine clinic if they use this.  If they don’t, I may keep shopping around.

I still want to know what happens if you get NO viable embryos from the retrieval process – does this happen to people?  How often?  And what do they do then?  Should this be expected?  Curious.  Can’t wait for my consultation.  I hope I can get in quickly.