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We had our follow up meeting at our RE's office. We met with the nurse practitioner. It was okay.

First, a few of the bad things. There was no new protocol in the chart -- which we expected. She didn't look over our chart closely enough to realize they only got two eggs -- she assumed that only two embryos survived. Their attention to detail is kind of lacking. We had to set her straight on that. Lastly, she has no idea why they were only able to get 2 eggs from the 7 follicles. She said 6 our of the 7 should have produced an egg. She didn't know if it was due to ovulation, which would mean I would need more Lu*pron, or if it was because the eggs were simply too difficult to remove. Again, there was no notation in the chart. This means the doctor has to "remember" what happened. He has a lot of patients, and I don't have a lot of faith in this method. I just feel like getting things right is not a priority at this place.

The slightly better things are that she thinks we should be really aggressive this new cycle. She said that I need to be treated like an egg donor -- that the maximum number of eggs is what is important. I thought that was a great analogy. It's a numbers game, and the only way to get a healthy embryo is to have lots and lots of eggs. She is going to try to contact our RE and get a new protocol. If she can't reach him, she's going to contact the doctor in charge of the donor egg program to get me a protocol. This isn't too bad. It's the kind of effort we were looking for.

She also said that the lack of parity in my follicles might have been the problem. I need to find some way to get the follicles to grow at the same rate. She said they may have me stay on the pill a bit longer to try and get that to happen. I wonder if I should have a pre-Lu*pron scan to see if there are any follicles before I even start. I forgot to mention that to her. I could call. But of course, that might just cancel my cycle. But I also don't want to waste one again.

We went to an infertility support group last night. We have never gone to one before and didn't know what to expect. I went thinking there wouldn't be many men, but there were two couples and one woman there. The woman had come last month and there were only women there, so she didn't bring her husband. I think she would have liked for him to have been there. I think it's really great that there were men there. T hasn't had any interaction with men dealing with infertility yet, so I think it was a real positive. We talked about donor insemination/eggs, adoption, and just generally living with infertility. I'm glad we went. I will go again.

The other thing we talked about was acupuncture. I need to do it. It may help the follicles grow more evenly, even. So I need to look to find a place close by. The places the other women had been are a bit far away from me. But I live in (or near) a progressive area, and there has to be someplace near by. I'm going to look into it this week. I should start asap if our cycle is starting soon.

I'm feeling a little bit better now that I have all this information. I don't feel great, but talking about all this stuff out loud for 2 hours last night did help a bunch. I didn't even feel like crying much while there. It was so nice to be surrounded by people who are going through similar things. The online community is great too, but there is just something about sitting in a room of real people and talking to them face to face.