The Challenge Results

Hello again. I must say I'm a tad disappointed that we couldn't set a record in the comments section of the last post. I wouldn't have thought 3 was a huge number to shoot for. But many thanks to Christy and MB for your thoughtful words.

I thought I'd explain a bit more as to what a Clomid Challenge is, for those fertile folk among you who are blessed to not understand the female anatomy as intimately as I do. Bet you never realized a lack of knowledge could be a blessing...

Okay, so here is a brief crash course on the female reproductive system. You know about eggs and ovaries. Each egg is contained in a sac called a follicle. We all start off life with about 500,000 to a million eggs. When we reach puberty, the eggs begin to mature, about 30 per cycle (15 per ovary.) The female body produces a hormone called Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) which causes your eggs to mature in the ovaries until one of them bursts forth from its follicle and begins to travel into the Fallopian tube. If the egg meets a sperm in there, it can be fertilized and become an embryo, in which case it keeps on trucking until it reaches the uterus, where it embeds itself in the uterine wall and the cells multiply and divide and grow into a fully formed baby. If an embryo is not created, your egg dies off, as do all the other eggs that were growing in their little follicles, and that's it for those 30 eggs. Your body sheds the lining of the uterus (your period) and it starts all over again.

As we grow older, the eggs start to deteriorate, much like the eggs you buy at the grocery store. Ever left them in your fridge for a REALLY long time, and then when you cracked them open, they were all shriveled up and dried out? Well, you get the idea. So you have fewer eggs as the years go on, and the quality of the eggs you do have declines. Your body, desperate to reproduce, freaks out and starts producing higher and higher levels of FSH. So the level of FSH can be used as an indicator of fertility levels.

Here is where the Clomid Challenge comes into play. Because FSH levels can vary from day to day and month to month, the goal is to get an idea of the range. So we draw blood on day 3 of the menstrual cycle, when the FSH level should be at its lowest point. Then we artificially stimulate the production of FSH by taking the drug Clomid on days 5-9. Then a second blood draw on day 10. Comparing these two FSH levels will give the doctors an idea of how fertile a woman really is. In this case, me.

Ideally, Dr. P would like my FSH to be below 10. 15 or higher would be an indicator that all hope is lost. My levels were 7 something and 8 something- in normal range. Based on my history of two failed IVF cycles, my chances of conceiving with a third IVF cycle are at best 25%, according to Dr. P. He says that he doesn't see any red flags that would lead him to say we should NOT attempt another IVF cycle, but ultimately we will have to make that decision ourselves. (Apparently he doesn't see an expenditure of $15,000 as a red flag.)

IVF is a gamble. Do we want to bet $15,000 that we will succeed this time, given 1 in 4 odds? I've never been much of a gambler, myself. So that is where things stand as of today.