it's the only way you're ever going to have peace of mind. You are filled with doubts and with each day and each week and each month those doubts grow more and more and more. You're stress and anxiety is piling up on you and you're in a tunnel where you aren't seeing the light. So you need to back out of the tunnel you're in and find a new avenue to go down.
I have a friend who is going to be consulting with Check after many failed cycles with a local (and btw, very reputable clinic in my area and she's not a high FSH case). What I told her is that you have to go in with a plan. You have to say (sake of argument) I'm willing to give up the next 6 months to try naturally (DH's sperm is fine), and if at the end of those 6 months, no success, then I move on to whatever other plan with no regrets because I went in knowing that 6 months was what I could tolerate.
The issue is that I don't think you have come up with an outline for yourself to figure out what you could live with in terms of time lost.
I knew that I could live with
ZERO time lost.
ZERO. I was the chick who came on this board and very emphatically proclaimed that I refused to be 39andTTC (my board screen name at the time was 38andTTC). The ladies on here came on and said but why, it's OK to be 39 and TTC..keep trying with OE, DE will always be there. But I didn't care that I could have a baby with DE when I was 45. I wanted a baby
NOW. I was determined to have a baby on
my timeline for very specific reasons. It's my body, my life, my goal, and what I say goes. So you can imagine that when Check said try naturally for 6 months, I laughed and said thanks but no thanks. He was completely fine with that. If you let him do what he wants with you then you can't "fault" him/Cooper for going about things their way. If you know upfront that you want to push forward with IVF then voice that right away to Check. Be straight forward with him: "my CD 2 FSH is always high in the 30s, 40s (whatever it is) and the one-time I did estinyl it didn't bring my FSH down enough so I wasn't put on stims. I've done 3 IUIs with no success and I need to move on. What can we do if I want to do IVF
right *away* with Cooper, otherwise I need to move on to another clinic."
I mentioned once before already too that you need to ask your local RE what
he plans to do differently. As we mentioned in prior posts, it doesn't seem like his clinic is fully "equipped" to handle high FSH patients. How's
he going to handle you when you come in for what is supposed to be your first IVF cycle and you blow an FSH of 38 on CD2? Or does he have something planned for your luteal phase to ensure that your CD 2 FSH is not 38 in the target cycle?
It's very easy to say yes we'll take you on as a patient but it's an entirely different story when you actually go to cycle and your CD 2/3 FSH is not under their cut-off. I had this rude awakening when I went to Dr. Davis at Cornell...sure he's high fsh friendly...but I quickly came to learn that only means he will take me on as a patient for IVF if in the cycle I'll be doing IVF my FSH came in 12 or under. I thought, what??? how is
that high FSH friendly??? I couldn't guarantee a good FSH, especially when just a cycle or 2 earlier I'd had a reading of 25. But at least he had a "trick" to make sure that my FSH was under control. You need to find out what this local RE's trick is. Unless he is so high FSH friendly that he doesn't even care what your CD 2 FSH is...maybe he'd cycle you anyway.
In my opinion, because you are 32 and you are using donor sperm, I don't think that it's been a terrible idea to be doing IUI cycles. Unless I am mistaken, because of DH's lack of any sperm, you never had the chance to even try with timed intercourse. Think about these IUI cycles as the cycles you would have been trying naturally on your own had you and DH not had the severe MF.
So what Cooper is trying to do is get the golden egg. And the golden egg does not have to come by way of stims by the way. But if at 32, your timeline and your goals say "time's up", can't lose any more time, then pull the rip cord and move on. Don't feel bad about it. Check and Cooper can't and won't be able to help everyone. It's just not possible. What makes them special is that they are not looking to turn people away; or conversely, take people in and tell them IVF is the only answer.
If it makes you feel any better, here's a story. I recently had to switch OBs and the new OB asked me what my IF diagnosis was. I told him "high FSH". He said "high FSH is not a diagnosis for needing IVF; just because you have high FSH doesn't mean you can't get pregnant. there's got to be something else for you to need IVF".
That was music to my ears. He never heard of Dr. Check but was VERY interested after I told him my story - he heard me talking about natural monitoring and was immediately intrigued.
That said, if you want to bypass time lost, then yes, IVF could help with that.
Set up appts.; get out there and talk to other doctors. See what they have to say. You can only make an informed decision by doing that. Don't feel bad if it means leaving Cooper and trying elsewhere. Or if you leave Cooper and go somewhere else only to find yourself back at Cooper. Who cares. You can't care about what anyone thinks. Look at me, I did 2 cycles with my local clinic and left for Cornell. I did my monitoring with Cornell but sometimes had to use my local clinic for my Cornell monitoring. When I failed with Cornell after 2 cycles I moved to Cooper. That local clinic was then my OOT monitoring clinic for Cooper. Those people thought I was nuts for sure. When I got my chemical with Cooper on first try, some ladies on here thought I was silly for moving back to Cornell. I moved there for 3 more cycles, only to go back to Cooper for 2 more cycles. Only to go back to my very first RE (the local one) to consult on moving on to DE. I was all over the place. So don't feel bad to jump around. Just get yourself out of this rut you're in now. That's step one.