Gearing up

I spoke to our IVF nurse on Friday. (When you go from IUI to IVF at our clinic you immediately jump to a whole new level of handholding, including having ONE dedicated nurse who coordinates everything about your cycle.) She set up an appointment for us to come in this Wednesday and redo all the bloodwork and paperwork we already did two years ago (when we came thisclose to doing IVF but backed out at the last minute)--infectious disease testing, consent forms, hormone levels and ultrasound for me, SA for my husband. We don't have to take an injection class, since we did it before, but she recommended I go online and watch the videos for mixing up the Menopur and doing the PIO injections just as a refresher. She also went over the cycle in a little bit more detail and we talked about timing. Given that I'd like to have the transfer happen as close to the first week of November as possible, it will look a little something like this:

-Start birth control pill Wed or Thurs (assuming bloodwork and ultrasound show my ovaries are doing nothing on their own). On the pill for 3 weeks, then back in for blood and ultrasound.
-1 week of Letrozole to get things started
-Start Gonal-F injections (starting at 200 IU) to juice up whatever follicles the Letrozole started--target date for this is around 10/27.
-As we near retrieval, add Ganirelix (to suppress ovulation) and Menopur (to keep the Ganirelix from crashing my ovaries). So at this point there will be three injections a day, Gonal-F in the morning, Ganirelix and Menopur in the evening.
-Trigger and retrieval sometime in early November, ideally we have one or two nice embryos that go to day 5. PIO injections through the 2ww, naturally.

My biggest fear is that I'll hyperstimulate (unlikely with this low-stim cycle, but you never know--I had mild hyperstimulation the cycle I got pregnant with Bat Girl) and they'll cancel transfer, and given that we don't want to freeze embryos, we'll be left with NOTHING to show. It's possible my husband might bend on the freezing in that one scenario, though (we've talked about it, it's not just my wishful thinking).

I also talked to my friend, who's a licensed acupuncturist, about supporting the cycle through acupuncture and diet. Remember this? Yeah, not making fun of it so much anymore. Basically I'm going to do acupuncture treatments in the pre-cycle stages, during stim, and the day of and day after transfer, also possibly some moxa. I'm also going to help strengthen my spleen (yeah, I know) by trying to avoid cold and raw foods and drinks. I figure it's fall, I don't like cold stuff that much anyway, and I'm going to throw everything I can at this cycle. My friend will do the acupuncture treatments and I'm very comfortable with her--she'll do them outside normal office hours, in her apartment or mine, so it's super convenient for me.

It's past my bedtime and too late for me to come up with anything profound or clever to wrap this up so I'll just leave it at that. More updates after our Wednesday appointment.