RE follow-up appt

Even though my talk with DH went well on Sunday night, the meeting with the RE on Monday didn't go so well. He started off my saying how sorry he was that the IVF didn't work and how, as an office, they really go through the cycle with you. Yeah, right, you pompous ass--you're just pissed cuz I'm bringing your numbers down! (Clarification--I like my RE, he's good and has numbers on par with CCRM, but he's an arrogant jerk)

So, we ask him what we learned from this cycle and he points out the embryology report that said poor quality eggs despite the beautiful-looking stim. Of course, none of this was relayed to us during the cycle, which I told him was just one example of the poor communication that they have set up during the post-ER part of the cycle. Anyway, I asked him about the fibroid that the u/s tech had seen on my last few scans and he rudely dismissed the tech's findings, despite the fact that he removed several fibroids last year. Then he essentially told us he was too busy with IVF's to bother with another myomectomy, so he would refer us to someone else to get it done if needed.

Then he jumped back into the poor egg quality and was pushing us toward donor eggs. DH is definitely against that (I'm not as opposed as I was before) but the RE kept pushing it, even though we already told him we wouldn't go that route. So back to my piss-poor eggs. I asked him about ways to improve egg quality, and he went on and on about DHEA and how he was the first in the area to use it and how CCRM didn't start using it until after he did. Ugh!

He did say that he would want to do genetic testing on all of our embryos if we went ahead with another cycle with my eggs. He didn't really want to hear that we wanted to do it this time but that his staff talked us out of it because we seemingly didn't have any risk factors. He finally admitted that he should do another SSH prior to cycling again, just to make sure that the fibroid wasn't causing a problem. He said that he would put me on DHEA for 8-12 weeks before another cycle if we wanted to go ahead with using my eggs.

Then he told us that we needed to take a break and get away from it for a while. We couldn't cycle again this year, partly because of the DHEA and partly because they shut down at the end of the year for routine embryology lab maintenance. He encouraged us to just relax and enjoy the holidays without this hanging over our heads. Then, he was done--he didn't really want to talk anymore or answer any more questions. He apparently had told us all that he wanted to tell us, and our time was up. I had gotten through most of my list of questions, so off we went. He made a copy of the embryology report and our cycle monitoring sheet for us, and we were on our way.

Needless to say, I cried most of the way home. I called my mom and cried about how unfair it was that I went about things the right way (job, marriage, house, then baby) and that I felt like I was being punished for it. She brought up using my sisters as egg donors, this time suggesting not just the older fertile myrtle, but my crazy younger sister too. I couldn't seem to get through to her that I wanted my baby, not just a baby. I met DH for dinner (we had taken 2 cars to the appt since he had been at work) and managed not to cry at the restaurant. It was a very quiet dinner, though--not much talking since just about anything would have set me off on another crying fit.

I've gotten past most of the crying now. I spent a good part of the day yesterday looking up ways to improve egg quality. I went to the store and bought some supplements (maca, royal jelly, l-arginine, wheat grass, CoQ-10) though I can't find anywhere how much of this stuff I'm supposed to take. I'm going to get my baseline labs drawn for the DHEA and get started on that. I'm still not sure if I want to cycle again, but if we do decide to try again, I don't want to have to wait even longer. At this point, it will be the end of January before I've done my 12 weeks of DHEA--hopefully we will have made a decision by then.

If anyone knows of other ways to improve egg quality (heck, I'll stand on my head 3 hours a day if I need to), please pass the info along. Or, if you can tell me how much of these stinking supplements I'm supposed to take, let me know.