22 mm follie + 9 mm lining + 92,000,000 sperm = IUI complete!

This week set a record for having my hoohah violated I must say. CD12 ultrasound on Monday which revealed two follicles we thought would be good contenders for this cycle. I tested all week with OPK's but still no + by Thursday, so we went in for another ultrasound on CD15.  This was by far the best ultrasound I've ever had, and for one reason...my endometrial lining was 9 mm!!! RE's want to see it at least 7 or 8 mm for increase chances for successful pregnancy. Mine has never measured more than 6.8 mm on it's own (last cycle) so I was thrilled with the new progress. Outside of that, I also had a very mature follicle on my left ovary @ 22 mm and another almost mature on my right @ 15 mm. It was clear from the ultrasound that I was about to ovulate from my left ovary at minimum in the next day or so. The one on the right ovary isn't technically considered mature because it was under 18 mm, but there have been people who get pregnant with 14 and 15 mm follies, so you never know. This is the earliest I have ovulated in the past 15 months, which is what we've been going for all along! I feel like I responded pretty well to the Femara.

Although I hadn't gotten a +OPK yet, I knew it was coming soon. Dr. Vaughn told me to keep testing, because if I got a +, it meant we could schedule our IUI for the next day. Now that we have moved onto IUI, it's become even more important to detect the LH surge as soon as possible when it happens, because that is what they rely on to schedule the procedure if you aren't using a trigger shot. 

If I didn't get the smiley face by Thursday night, it meant I would have had to give myself an hCG shot (Ovidrel) and prolong the IUI until Saturday...Hubby and I weren't excited about A) Giving me a shot or B) Having to do pay extra to do the IUI on Saturday. Lucky for us, I finally got my smiley at 8 pm and so it was on for Friday!

Yesterday, we went in for our first and hopefully only IUI. Prior to going, I went to acupuncture to have a special "follie blasting" session, or at least that's what we jokingly called it. The goal was to blast the egg out of it's follicle as close to the time of IUI as possible. I could feel my left ovary twinging shortly after needles were inserted into those points, and that is a good sign! The IUI itself was a completely painless procedure, but just involved getting violated yet again by my 60 year old doctor for the third time in 5 days. lol  They basically just take the sperm sample, which has been "washed" to separate the healthiest forward moving sperm, and insert the swimmers directly into the cervix via a tiny little catheter. The word catheter scares the crap out of me, but turns out I had nothing to worry about, because I didn't feel a thing. I laid there for 10 minutes post IUI until the timer went off and we went on our merry way. 

According to the sperm analysis done, the sample contained 92,000,000 moving sperm. In case you didn't know, that is a lot of swimmers! Pregnancy rates are decreased when the sperm count falls below 10,000,0000 so at least we don't have anything to worry about with hubby, which we already knew. Still it's just nice to get good news every once in a while. Hubby definitely deserves bragging rights on that one!

Between my picture perfect 9mm lining, the 22mm super follie, and my gold medal sperm donor of a husband, I think we have a good shot this cycle.  Plus, we babydanced 2 days prior to the IUI and also afterwards, so our bases are definitely covered in that department.  There have got to be like a quarter billion sperm vying for their chance at this egg by now!  Even though we technically only have about an 8% chance of conceiving through IUI, even with all the right conditions, it's better than the 1% chance we had on our own without IUI or the Femara. We just need one little guy to put on his best Michael Phelps game face and make it happen! Two weeks from now we'll know if it worked!