Lucky Like That

New mortal enemy: the HCG Trigger Shot.

After our first IUI was unsuccessful, I decided to take matters into my own hands...er...needle.

What happened was, during the first cycle of IUI, the doctor had me go for bloodwork every Monday and Thursday to monitor _____(something) that would show that my eggs were ready to go. When he was satisfied by the results, he called me in, did an ultrasound, saw they were big enough and we did the IUI. And then...nothing. I did not ovulate for 5 days after that (CD 23), basically rendering the IUI meaningless. However, that week leading up to the IUI he kept asking me if we were "triggering" me. I had no idea what that meant, but I got the gist that if we were, I would ovulate within 36 hours of that. Basically eliminating hours of guess work and peeing on sticks on my part. Yes please!

So, when AF reared her ugly head after that first IUI, I called up N at the front desk of Dr. D's office and asked if there was any way to move up my ovulation. She said no. I asked about that "trigger " thing Dr. D had mentioned and she said, "Oh, we can do that" and voila! My salvation was ordered and shipped directly to my door.

Except, as you can probably guess by the fact that it is now my mortal enemy, it wasn't.

The second month of IUI was pretty uneventful. I was trying to scale back on charting for the sake of my sanity and my marriage, so I was only doing it sporatically. But when I DID do it, I noticed that my temps did not seem to rise all that much after the shot. Like .3 of a degree which seemed smaller than the usual spike. I read online that you may not see a huge temp rise due to the shot so I was okay with that (lies - i was really neurotic and obsessive about it); however, I decided to mention it to Dr. D. With that in mind, for this third IUI, he decided that on 7DPO, I would go in for a progesterone check. However, he also thought it was no big deal since my dear AF still visited at exactly 12 DPO like every other month.

This month after the trigger, my temps didn't just not go up very much. They PLUMMETED. Like, down to corpse level of body temperature. I had D take my pulse just to make sure I was still alive. And they stayed very very much down. But again, I was reassured that you pretty much have to ovulate after this shot and I was at least getting the progesterone test at 7 DPO. The most frustrating part, I said to D, is that the bloodwork is going to show I ovulated, so I am just going to have to wonder why my temperatures react so differently to the shot.

Well, I got the call yesterday morning and I was wrong. That would have been delightful comparatively. Instead, my progesterone level was .5. Less than one, my doctor felt the need to expand. Which is way low. If I had ovulated, it should have been around 10. If I did not ovulate, under 5 is fine. This was most definitely under 5. Dr. D says he has no idea why I did not ovulate; even if the trigger did not work, I should have ovulated on my own at the normal time.

I've of course googled the likelihood of the shot not working. I can't find anything official. Anecdotally, I've seen people say it's (a) impossible not to ovulated if you had mature follies (b) .1% likelihood of not happening (c) 3% chance of not working. All I can say is (d) it's just my luck!