I had my transfer today.  We transferred two thawed embryos that had been frozen at blast stage and were, according to my doctor, "looking great."  It has been a ho-hum cycle this far, since it's my sixth IVF and my 3rd FET.  But somewhere in the last five days I've acquired a big black cloud.  Part of it is the progesterone.

One advantage of having done so many IVF cycles is I'm pretty familiar with what the various hormones do to me.  Very low estrogen can be a weepy miserable feeling, higher estrogen levels feel pretty good, although sometimes I get a weird crawly skin from it.  I get bloaty from estrogen and sometimes I get stomachaches because of my endometriosis.  Progesterone is calming, can mitigate the high estrogen jitters, and at high levels makes me feel like a rubber chicken with zero ambition.

My experience of these hormones while cycling is more pronounced because 1) I'm thinking about it and 2) everything is being artificially manipulated.  I may sound blase about this but rest assured that I hate it.  Riding the hormonal rollercoaster is a necessary evil for me. 

Anyway, I don't remember in previous cycles that the progesterone kicked in so fast.  Usually I started getting that rubber chicken feeling after a week or two, right about the time I was wondering if I was pregnant.  While I probably still have my two passengers at the moment, being pregnant is at least a week away.

Anyway... the last two days I'm suddenly flat-on-my face depressed.  I went to the hardware store with my husband (he talked me into it because he was worried and didn't want to leave me alone) and while I need a new strain for my bathtub drain, after visiting the plumbing aisle, I told him "it was too hard."  And it was.  I was supposed to go to a barbecue yesterday, and that was also too hard.  I got rid of the sugar-free ice cream that had been becoming my brand new best friend around here, (it's a long story) otherwise curling up with several bowls of it might have been the only thing that wasn't too hard.

I have battled depression my whole life.  Most of it for me has been life stuff that I have fought hard to work out in therapy.  I've had good therapists and put in a lot of time and for me depression is usually the candy coating on top of something softer and scarier, like grief, anger, or fear.  So it could be the drugs or it could be that I need to do some digging and figure out what I'm feeling that I don't want to feel. 

This being cycle #6, there are plenty of things that could be.  My husband prayed that this would be our last, and he meant that it would be our last because we actually have a baby from it, but I thought about it being our last for other reasons.  Giving up, for one.  You can tell I'm not ready to stop because I still see it as "giving up."  I think for someone who's ready to stop it would be some other kind of thing like "moving on," or whatever.  I don't want to give up.  I don't want to be still doing this, either.

I'm also pretty scared of being pregnant.  Having a loss.  Having a baby.  It's all pretty damn scary.  But after cycling five times I am under the impression that I've felt everything and said everything and none of this is new.

Maybe I'm wrong.  I think I need to try & get to the bottom of whatever this is.