Levels & growth...

Started off the morning with an estrogen level blood draw on my way to work this morning. Tonight I received a message with the results, my estrogen level was at 35 which is a little lower than they would like at this point so my Gonal-F is being increased from 225 IU to 300 IU & we will be doing an extra injection this evening. For the next couple days they've told me to continue with the Lupron at 5 units in the am & do Gonal-F 300 IU in the evenings. Then the part I was really excited about, my next appointment at the RE's for another ultrasound & blood draw is Saturday morning at 8am! Boo, definitely not a fan of this...no sleeping in on a Saturday, you'd think I was already a parent :)

So as far as the estrogen level being low really nothing to worry about at such an early point into stims. From what I've read it's actually normal on a Lupron cycle for the estrogen level to rise slowly. The estrogen level helps to measure how many follicles are developing & it's important for this level to also not get too high which could signal OHSS & cause a cancellation of transfer. Doctor's don't like to quote "normal" estrogen level figures, b/c what is too low or high for one person can be different for another, so I wasn't able to find exact figures. But from what I've read a rough guide is to be around 150 to 500 on the 8th day of stims (I'm only on the 3rd day right now). An approximate doubling of this level every 48hrs is considered promising as a sign of continued follicle development. We're just hoping that they don't increase the Gonal so much that we have to purchase another of those pricey little pens...keep your fingers crossed for us!

So here we go, hopefully we'll see a little growth in the next few days!