u/Chanel1202

I had a rough start to this (my first) IVF cycle. I did estrogen priming for 9 days during the luteal phase. When I went in for my CD 3 appointment, my estrogen was 71, but I had a dominant follicle/cyst. We did two days of ganirelix and I took the estrogen patch off on CD 3, when I got the instructions call from my nurse.

On CD 5, the dominant follicle had shrunk, and my estrogen was 19.8 (I had been off the estrogen patch for 48 hours). So doctor decided it was a corpus luteum cyst not producing hormones,and I started stims (150 menopur, 300 gonal, 50 units omnitrope, .5mg dexamethasone) the evening of CD 5.

I had my first monitoring appointment this morning, after 3 nights of stim medications. My estrogen came back at 85.2. I’m continuing the same meds and doses for two more nights and going in for bloodwork and ultrasound on Thursday (the morning of day 6 of stims but after 5 days of meds).

Estrogen of 85.2 feels really low after three nights of meds, but I also have a very low baseline (19.8). Should I be worried?

For context: AMH is .709 and AFC is 4-6.

My husband and I have been trying to conceive for two years. We have had three miscarriages and one ectopic pregnancy. We decided to move forward with IVF because we can test any embryos we create for chromosomal normality, which our doctor thinks will drastically reduce the risk of miscarriage.

My mental health spiraled into a severe depression after the ectopic pregnancy last fall. The treatment (four doses of methotrexate) was physically hard on me and it was our fourth loss. I am prone to depression and I was very depressed for about three to four months. I admit that I wasn’t fun to live with during those months. I basically went to work and came home. I didn’t want to do much else. My psychiatrist also told me that I have PTSD from the ectopic. Apparently that’s not uncommon for people with infertility diagnoses.

During all of our losses and after the ectopic, I did my best to be there for my husband. I am well aware that the man is often overlooked during pregnancy loss and infertility, and I wanted to ensure his feelings were heard and that he was supported. They were his losses too. He has often told me that I make him a more compassionate person. I’ve also told him I wish I could do more to make him feel better when he’s going through hard times, and he tells me that I’m doing more than enough. It is, however, extremely difficult to get him to verbalize his feelings. His instinct is to make a joke out of everything. Our couple’s therapist has even called him out on that.

We were supposed to start IVF at the end of January, but our dog passed away quite suddenly the week before our cycle was supposed to start. We were both a mess, and we decided to postpone.

In March, my husband (who is an actor- I’m a lawyer) mentioned going to Los Angeles (we live in NYC) for a workshop at the end of April. It sounded like a good opportunity for him, so I said he should go. His best friends both live in Los Angeles so he mentioned staying an extra day or two to see them. That made sense. I mentioned at the time that IVF would be starting around the same time, so he shouldn’t stay too long, but one or two days was fine.

Then, before he had booked his return flight, the workshop was canceled. Without really asking me, he told me that he was still going to go to LA for a week to see his friends. I reiterated IVF would be starting around that time, and maybe he should postpone. He found a different career opportunity earlier in April, but he wouldn’t have been able to stay with/see one of the two friends, and he didn’t want to pay for a hotel, so he ended up not booking that workshop.

He was supposed to leave this past Wednesday, but the friend he is staying with was sick, and his other friend had work Thursday and Friday. My baseline IVF appointment was Thursday. He changed his flight to Thursday, saying I would be happier, to which I said it doesn’t make a difference to me so he should do what makes sense for him, but that if he wanted to make me happy he would postpone the trip to a time when we aren’t going through IVF.

My baseline appointment didn’t go well. There is a dominant follicle. So I didn’t start stims and did two days of suppression meds.

My husband didn’t come to the baseline appt, despite my asking him to. I told him he didn’t have to come because I will not demand he do anything. But I told him I wanted him to come, and he knew I was anxious about it.

My husband left yesterday and told me I was making it hard for him to leave because I looked sad.

I’m barely communicating with him, since he left. I told him to have a safe flight and liked the text he sent when he landed.

I’m honestly angry, hurt and disappointed. He texted me at 5 AM my time telling me good luck and he’ll call when he wakes up. I had mentioned that he should wake up at my appointment time. I don’t feel supported or loved. He knows how difficult this entire process is. Because he isn’t here, I hired a nurse to help me with all of the injections. I can’t do them all myself because of the location some of them need to be.

This entire situation makes me re-evaluate our marriage. He isn’t a partner. He’s a roommate. He doesn’t ask me about plans. He informs me. When I express how difficult the fertility journey is or how it makes me feel, he says he knows/is sympathetic but he doesn’t say or do anything else.

I will say that I know he thinks I’m needy because every time he travels (which he does for work) I get sad before he leaves. I also admit (as I did above) that the months after the ectopic were difficult and I was very depressed. I am sure I was difficult to live with. I am recovered and back to my mental heath baseline now, but I know I was hard to live with those months.

AIO to be considering stopping fertility treatments over him leaving me for a vacation during a very physically and emotionally difficult time?

EDIT TO ADD: I appreciate the time everyone has taken to respond. I 100% believe that my husband and I share the fault for the issues we are facing. I tried to be as objective as possible in this post and have written what I know my husband would write himself (that I was very difficult to live with last fall). I try to see myself as clearly as possible, and in writing this I have tried to see myself as my husband sees me. I’m not sure if people are assuming I’m *worse* than I say, but if anything, I’m erring on the side of being as damning as possible about myself to be fair to my husband.

Some additional context: I am the only one in our marriage that earns money regularly. My husband is not indigent- he comes from money and has a very solid nest egg (750K+). We split rent and all our bills equally. My husband also is very frugal and exceptionally good with his money. What we have saved and invested is not enough, however, to support kids. We need two incomes for that as NYC has a VHCOL. I have less saved and invested than my husband does (490K). Our nest eggs will disappear quick once a kid or kids show up on one income in NYC. I feel pressure to maximize earning, which means I am currently interviewing to pivot back to big law (I am currently in house). My husband is taking a real estate course and has taken meetings about teaching full time.

More context: fertility is not my identity. I do feel a lot of guilt about failing to have a child. I’m type A, as many lawyers are. I am not used to failing. Sadly, I can’t control my fertility, and not having control is a foreign concept to me. So I do take recommended vitamins and supplements to try to help. Since taking our clinic’s IVF course in January and having our genetic counseling appointment, my husband and I have not spent much time discussing fertility. We have been living and enjoying life together. It came up when he was booking the trip he’s on, because timing overlapped. My main concern was not knowing how long stims would last and him missing the egg retrieval (which matters because he needs to give sperm that day to fertilize the eggs). I asked if he wanted to come to the appointment thursday because he was asking me a lot of questions about the process and I thought our doctor could answer them better than I could. Otherwise, it’s pointless for
Him to come to the three minute ultrasound appointment.

Final context: I would be happy to be child free. My husband is the one for whom kids are non-negotiable. Because of financial consideration, I’ve point blank asked him if his dream is an acting career or if his dream is fatherhood. He’s picked fatherhood each time. He always tells me that he feels useless until the kid is here. He thinks I’m indispensable now because he can’t carry the child. He also says that when the child is here he can bring the child to the doctor or school or the park etc. I do believe he will be a wonderful father.

We also are only creating and PGT-A testing embryos now. We are not transferring any embryos yet.

Stims Day 8- Estrogen 289 with 4 follicles between 14 and 18 mm