Double Fail

My one and only follicle on Tuesday measured in at 14mm, below the minimum 18mm needed to proceed with an IUI. They typically grow 1-2mm per day, so we gave it three days and came back today to check again. Know how big it was today? 14mm.

Stupid follicle. Stupid lazy ovary. Did I mention how much this sucks?

So, two possibilities. Either I actually ovulated yesterday, and the follicle grew really fast and then shrank again (unlikely, but Dr. M held it out there as a possibility) or the follicle just isn't growing (probably a bad egg). (And now I want to go rent The Bad Seed.) (My mind works in weird ways.) I'm going back for another ultrasound on Tuesday so that he can check whether it has grown (unlikely), shrunk (also unlikely), or just stayed approximately the same (that's where my money is). Based on how it looks, we'll figure out where to go next. Dr. M thinks that I could probably do one more clomid cycle, at the same dosage, based on the belief that everybody has bad cycles sometimes. He also mentioned maybe trying a cycle or two of femara instead, to see if I respond better. Or perhaps it's just time to move on to injectibles.

My hesitation with injectibles, by the way, isn't a fear of needles. S is scared of needles, but I'm not. I know that S won't be able to help me with injections, but I think that I'll be able to handle it myself just fine. I am a little annoyed with the added expense, but our insurance isn't too bad. My bigger concern is that I'll need to switch doctors. Dr. M is my ob/gyn; he's not an RE, though he does handle a lot of fertility patients for his practice. I've never doubted that I was in good hands with him, and I like him a lot. He helped us to have LL, in only three cycles. But, his office is not equipped to do the extra monitoring that's necessary with injectibles. They have too many patients to be able to handle all the extra monitoring appointments, and too few people with the expertise to make the little day-to-day adjustments that are common with injectibles. So Dr. M will be referring me elsewhere if we need to try a completely different treatment.

My biggest concern with injectibles is all that extra monitoring, especially since the appointments would have to be at a doctors office that is much further away. More frequent appointments that are far from both my home and my office? Not exactly what I want to be doing while finishing my thesis and looking for a job. If that's what it takes, then I'll do it. But I was hoping not to have to. Given today's news, though, it looks like that's where we're heading.

On the bright side (yeah, I'm stretching here to find a bright side), since we won't be doing an IUI tomorrow morning, we'll be able to leave on-time for our trip, so no need to come up with an excuse to tell our friends. I had a good one all figured out, too....