Over the Edge....Taking it one step at a time.

I am not a very good skier. When renting skis I am never tempted to describe myself as a Type III skier. I am more comfortable cruising along on greens and blues rather than attacking black diamonds. Part of this could relate to my memory of fracturing my collar bone while on a college ski trip to Mount Snow in Vermont. Sadly enough, that injury occurred on the first day of skiing and while on a trip that I had worked hard to organize. Oh well. Meconium happens. So fast forward to this past weekend when I found myself staring into the abyss of black diamond slopes while skiing with son #2. Good grief! The damn trail just dropped off into the ether...How was I going to get down this slope and not have to change my underwear? The answer was one step at a time. Suddenly I was actually doing it and actually enjoying myself. What a shock!

Going down that black diamond was not as different from some of those blue trails as I had feared. So it is with Natural Cycle and Stimulated Cycle IVF. At first Stimulated IVF just seems totally overwhelming to some of our patient. But really it isn't such a huge leap from NC IVF.... There are ultrasounds and blood tests and an egg collection and usually an embryo transfer (but sometimes in the month after the egg collection). The fertility drugs are the difference and these days the drugs are a lot easier to handle. Using GnRH-a (Lupron) to trigger instead of HCG has nearly completely eliminated OHSS but does necessitate freezing all the embryos (in our opinion). So going down those black diamonds is a lot less intimidating after getting experience on the blues and doing NC IVF prior to stimulated IVF may help patients ease the transition as they look over the edge...