An unintersting update

Nothing interesting happening right now. We've put another IUI off indefinitely, it's just too expensive without much chance of success. It makes more sense to save for something more expensive but with a higher success rate. I also broke it off with Dr. Needles Saturday. I really enjoy acupuncture (in spite of the dirt tea) and I 100% believe it's helped me and I would recommend  it to anyone However, we aren't cycling right now and in order to save money to cycle again at some point I had to break it off. We just can't save for more treatment while continuing to pay $135 per week for treatment and tea (especially such crappy tea). He did wish me luck and I told him I would probably come back to some point, I'm just not sure when.

I've read two of the three adoption books we bought and Doug (slow reader that he is) is  halfway through one of them. I've liked all of them so far, most everything I've read makes sense to me, there haven't been any big surprises. I enjoyed the stories about ordinary people who adopted. I feel like we aren't the 'perfect couple' that people might choose to parent their baby and so it gives me hope that somebody might choose us one day, even without the white picket fence.

I went to church yesterday, Doug was out of town so he didn't come with obviously. It's the same church we went to briefly several years ago but didn't join.They seem to be a pretty progressive group but with a  fairly traditional service, which I like. I did see one of my professors from last semester there (awkward) but he didn't see me. Towards the end of the service one of the pastors read anonymous prayers members had written on scraps of paper. One of the prayers was "I pray for a baby for our house." My heart sunk a little for someone else then, someone else who is going through this shitty, shitty situation too. 

We're still muddling through, thinking a lot and trying to make decisions. Sometimes it feels like this whole thing is like pushing an anvil uphill. Every.single.thing. is complicated and requires phone calls and consults and a lot of money. I wonder if we'll ever be able to take a deep breath and relax? There has to be an end to the madness eventually. 

I hate everything

Well, actually I don't hate everything but today I hate a lot of things. My bosses gave me this new project to work on and it suuuuucks. They want it done a certain way but don't understand there are limits to what I can do. I'm on spring break this week from school but I still have homework and I have an 18-page research paper draft due the first class day back. This weekend we cleaned a little bit and we both realized we really need to hire someone to do a deep clean. We just don't have the time or energy for it. I'm so busy through the week that when Friday afternoon comes around I just want to hole up in the house until Monday. Usually I have a vegetable garden but so far I still haven't cleaned up last year's garden or even bought seeds. I feel overwhelmed with the things I have to do and the things I need to do. 

I (we) also can't really come to good decision on where to go next on this long and never-ending road to parenthood. I change my mind every day or some days every hour. I thought we'd cycle again in March/April but the more I think about it the more I believe my body needs a month in-between injectable cycles, especially considering the left ovary situation this month. Then I don't know if we should do another injectable IUI cycle or just save our pennies for IVF #3. There are just no simple or good answers. We've considered getting a second opinion like maybe at CCRM but holy heck it's expensive - even just for the initial testing, that we've already had done at our current clinic. Plus we'd have to pay to travel there on top of the more expensive IVF cycle fees. If we had an unlimited supply of money we'd just go straight to IVF #3. However, considering we don't have Celine Dion's IVF budget we can't do that. There are so many other things we'd like to use our money for, house repairs/upgrades, travel, etc. but instead we're using it to do what it costs other people nothing to do. Hate.

IUI #4

Got to clinic at 9AM, waited f o r e v e r. We had to wait so long Doug had to leave for a meeting. Eventually they came out and said the vial the lab thawed only had a count of 4.3 million and did we want to thaw another vial to add to it? I said yes please and had to wait again while they thawed the second vial out. Finally I got called back and the total count was 9.something million and the motility was around 38%, all on the low side. Anyway, normal IUI, a little cramping and then it was done. I laid down for a few minutes before jetting off to the acupuncturist.

He only did my front side, he put needles in my arms, legs and forehead. He also covered my abdomen, apparently I'm supposed to keep that area warm. It was relaxing, except for the person in the next room that had a wall-shaking cough. Ick. 

I know I'm supposed to be thinking positive and all but I'm not feeling this cycle. With the left ovary crapping out on me and the super low counts I'm not holding on to much hope. Ugh.

Follicle check #3: Trigger happy

I was late to the clinic this morning because I stopped and got a latte. In my defense they've been kept me waiting for 20 minutes or more lately. Quick and easy blood draw and quick and easy ultrasound. The nurse (not my normal one) asked "Do you have a left ovary?" Bwahaha. I said yes I did but it seemed to be sitting this cycle out. My lining is 9+ and there are three follicle on my right ovary. One 21mm, one 17mm and one 15mm. Trigger shot is tonight and IUI is Wednesday at 9AM. I hope that 21mm hangs in there until Wednesday.

Doug and I celebrated our 7th anniversary yesterday, I can't believe it's been that long. We've been 'together' for 10 years this coming September. Our first RE appointment anniversary is this November, it will 7 years too. My chart is starting to resemble a novel. I saw it the other day and almost laughed, it's so thick.

I can tell that something in Doug is changing, he's always wanted kids and he's always been 100% on board with everything we've done but I think he's finally getting that yearning feeling I've had since the beginning. He's made comments lately about when we have a kid and what it'll be like. 

Acupuncture is still going well, this week's tea is gag-worthy. It tastes like rotting mushrooms, dirt and spearmint licorice - but not in a good way.  He has put a couple of needles in my arm that made me flinch. It's not painful I just 'feel' it more than the others. 

Life is busy but I've managed to put together a routine of sorts during the week. After I get out the shower I brew up the tea, finish getting ready and then divvy the tea up into two jars and one mug. Then if I have a follicle check I head to the clinic. The jars get taken with me to work and I drink them at 9:30 and 1:30. My acu appointments are at 10:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays so once I come back from them I don't leave work again until 5:00. At 5:00 on Mondays and Wednesdays I run off to class and I'm on campus until 8:35. Then I drag myself home, eat a bowl of Cheerios, spend a little bit of time with my husband, choke down my last cup of tea, get my Bravelle shot and go to bed. I'm tired but not overwhelmingly so. I've kind of developed the attitude of "quit stressing, it'll either get done or it won't". I'm not saving the world over here so I think it's okay for me to take it easy. My English class is non-stressful, writing comes easily to me. Macroeconomics and math however, ick. Those subjects I need to try a little harder in. 

I know it's bad to not think positively and all, but I'm already thinking about the next cycle. I'm hoping we can just do a less aggressive protocol with maybe Femara and a few doses of Bravelle mixed in there. Although based on the current results with all the Bravelle I'm taking now that may not be the best idea.

Little lazy ovary

I had my first follicle check this morning. I got there at 7:30, along with half of Memphis apparently, because I didn't get out of there until 8:50. My lining is at 8mm right now and on my right ovary I have two larger follicles and several smaller ones. My left ovary is lazy, there's not really any growth over there but the nurse said she saw a lot of little follicles. I have about four more days of drugs so maybe the left ovary with kick it in gear and get something growing. 

My only discomfort this cycle is the burning the Bravelle causes going in, holy crap it stings. I can't figure out why it does that but it hurts.

Groundhog Day

Yeah, it's not Groundhog Day but it feels like it. It's actually Cycle Day 3. This morning I made my return to the clinic for bloodwork and ultrasound and to give them all of my money. We had a balance of $340 from last cycle, can't really explain that because we paid them every time I stepped foot in the door. I think it has something to do with out shitty insurance/deductible, which I don't get because we're paying out of pocket anyway. So within seconds of getting there this morning I had to empty my wallet to the tune of $1000 - and that's not the last of it.

Sweet phlebotomist was there and despite her best efforts she had to stick me twice. There was yet another woman with her toddler in the waiting area. This makes me batty. We're in an infertility clinic people, leave your babies at home please. My ultrasound was fine, although at first the nurse thought I was on day 10 or something and was confused as to why there was no growth. Then I told her I was just day 3 and hadn't had any drugs yet. She counted 17 antral follicles, yay for that. 

I start Bravelle tonight, 225U until Wednesday when I go back for follicle check and bloodwork. My guesstimate is that the IUI will be on March 1, a Tuesday like last time. Acupuncture is still going well, this week's 'tea' mix is tolerable, I'm able to get it down without gagging so that's good. I'm trying to go into this cycle with a healthy dose of optimism and reality.

Good news for a change

Finally broke down and called the clinic yesterday afternoon. Coordinator-nurse called me back and said they did receive HSG results and tubes are clear! Even better, they are going to be on-call during New Years so when AF arrives we can cycle! Now I just have to order my Bravelle and we have to finalize our donor selection. It's progress!

HSG Part Deux

Since we're doing IUI again and you need your fallopian tubes for IUI to have a chance of working, Dr. K told me I needed to have another HSG test. The first one I had was six years ago, shortly after our first appointment with Dr. K and it showed not blockages. I had that one done at the women's hospital next to Dr. K's clinic. A lot of women have severe cramping/pain/bleeding after the HSG but luckily I've only had minor cramping so it's not too big of a deal for me to have the test.

This time around, my clinic suggested I go to a new diagnostic clinic about 25 minutes away. I was skeptical since the women's hospital is 5 minutes from my work but the nurse said everyone was raving about this new place. So I figured it was probably fine and made the appointment for last Friday. The clinic is in North Mississippi which is an interstate ride away. I made it to the clinic in time, after getting lost after I got off of the interstate. The clinic is within sight of the local hospital but it's in an office building that looks almost industrial. This did not instill confidence in me. My insurance does not cover this either so I got the privilege of paying $530 out of pocket for the experience. When the nurse called me back and took me to the room she had to make sure I wasn't pregnant, in fact she needed my clinic's negative HCG test from a weeks ago faxed over to her to confirm. Even after I explained I had had a miscarriage, AF was just last week and it was not physically possible for me to get pregnant on my own. After I said that she then told me she had IVF twice and recurrent pregnancy loss, which was nice of her to share I guess. After they got confirmation I was indeed not pregnant then I got to shed the bottom half of my clothing and lie on a table the width of a plank waiting on the doctor. One thing that bothered me was that their table/machine didn't have stirrups, which made it pretty awkward during the test. It made concerned that maybe they weren't doing enough of these to warrant a table with stirrups. After waiting in a super uncomfortable position on the plank for what seemed like eternity, the doctor finally arrived. He was nice but kept explaining in detail every little thing, which is fine for some people but I had already told him this was the second time I had this test. After it was over they made sure the pictures were good and sent me on my way. They didn't really say if there was any blockages so I have to wait until Dr. K reviews them and confirms the tubes are clear.

I'm hoping for this cycle to start before New Year's because I'm not 100% sure the clinic isn't closed for the holiday. I was going to give them until the end of the this week before I called to pester them about the test results and ordering my meds.

A new plan

Our follow-up with Dr. K was yesterday, it seemed to go well. We left with a renewed sense of hope - but that always happens after we meet with him. I got a copy of the cycle summary, contrary to what I thought he meant last week, I responded really well, my post-transfer estrogen and progesterone levels were "excellent" and our embryos were of great quality. He did talk about how it took a lot more medicine for me to produce than it did last time. I was taking about $500 worth of Bravelle every day for 10 days (450 units per day). That's a lot of Bravelle. The fertilization rate was excellent and overall I responded much better than I did during our 2006 IVF cycle. Unfortunately we don't know why the miscarriage happened or what caused it, sometimes they just happen. My antral follicle count in May was 17 (good) my AMH level was 1.2 (good) and my FSH was 9.21 (not great but better than it was). There's still some eggs in there, we just need to find some good ones. While we were there he had the lab call the bank we got our donor from and confirmed our donor was a proven donor (meaning someone else had gotten pregnant). No other issues came up during the cycle, everything seemed to go well, except for the miscarriage. 

After a lot of talking we've decided to do at least three IUI's with Bravelle/trigger shot and use a mixture of Doug's remaining vials and donor. I re-ordered the Bravelle/trigger yesterday from the specialty pharmacy and I'm praying we can get it for the insurance rate of $60 instead of the actual cost of $5,000. Although Doug and I are both still on the fence about using his stored sperm because we can't find any good information about the risk of birth defects with irradiated sperm. If the IUI's don't work we may consider doing a third IVF cycle. On one hand I feel like that's a massive emotional and financial risk and we should probably move on with embryo or traditional adoption. On the other hand I'm not even 30 yet and I can't let go of the idea of having a child genetically linked to one of us. That's probably selfish, but so be it. I think we'll also start gathering information on the homestudy process too. If we do go the embryo adoption route we'll need one so it's probably better to look at starting that since it takes so long because of all the paperwork.

The first thing we asked him was "when can we try again?" and the result was we need to wait at least one cycle for my body to recover. So (fingers crossed) my period will return in December and we can move forward with our first IUI in January. It seems regressive to go back to IUI after two failed IVF attempts but at least it's something. Maybe since we've never used donor with IUI we can have a better chance of success. Again I'm trying to walk the thin line of optimism and realistic expectations. I think our new plan is good, at least we'll have something going at the start of the new year. It's almost crippling for us not to have anything happening now that I'm in the "must procreate" mindset. So the plan for the next eight weeks is to relax as much as possible, continue my fish oil/prenatal/DHEA, enjoy the holidays as much as possible and get ready for January. My first meditation class was last night and I think I'm going to really enjoy it. Plus I've been to the gym three times this week so far. I feel so good after I make myself go. I want to continue the momentum so I can shed a few pounds because I'm sure that would be helpful.

So we're back to waiting, the most painful part of infertility. The journey isn't over yet, the road has just gotten longer.

Looking for answers & direction

Dr. K called me Wednesday night, a much different tone of phone call than I received last Thursday when he called to congratulate me. He gave me the normal "this is not how we wanted this to turn out" talk. I like him a lot, even though we haven't gotten the results we've wanted he's always been very honest and open with us about our options and I don't feel like he gives us unrealistic expectations.  He said they can't really say why the miscarriage happened because it was so early and they didn't really have any tissues to analyze. He very truthfully said he doesn't know what we should do. If this cycle had been a total failure it would be easy for him to tell us we should probably move on past ART, but because *technically* I did get pregnant he's torn as to what to tell us. I told him we're just as torn about what to do. Based on our conversation, I'm pretty sure he thinks there's an egg quality issue. Now I didn't come right out and ask him that but I feel like that's what he was inferring. He said the embryos this time were not as good as the embryos from our 2006 cycle, which I thought was surprising. In 2006 my FSH level was around 12 and this time it was 9. With the use of donor sperm I thought we would have produced better quality embryos than last time. He spoke briefly about embryo adoption, via the National Embryo Donation Center. He's very enthusiastic about the process and said one of their former embryologists now works at NEDC.

Doug and I are compiling a list of questions we want to ask Dr. K at our appointment next week. We need some straight-forward answers about certain treatments aspects so we can make a better decision as to what we should do next. Doug wants to do an IUI cycle and use up the last of his stored sperm, even though we both know that the chances of success with that type of cycle is like -0%. However, for his piece of mind I'm willing to do it. Dr. K will probably think we're crazy but you gotta do what you've gotta do. We did agree we would just do Clomid for that cycle and save the big guns for donor sperm. In my head I think we should do one IUI with what Doug has left, two IUI's with injectables and donor sperm and then make the decision to either do one more final IVF cycle or more on to embryo adoption. 

I feel like I'm on information overload, but really its my own fault. All these possibilities pop into my head and I start trying to compile data on everything. I'm still trying to heal physically and emotionally from the miscarriage. I thought the bleeding/spotting I had over the weekend was it, oh but I was wrong. On Tuesday the bleeding came back with a vengeance and is still ongoing, it's like a very heavy period. Dr. K said it could last eight days! The cramping isn't that bad thankfully, but I have had several headaches, breakouts and nausea since stopping the progesterone and estrogen. Emotionally I'm still have mini-breakdowns at least once a day but it's much better than it was last weekend/Monday.

I'm so tired of the infertility roller-coaster, the ride is too long and expensive and I'm ready to get off. It's nearly the end of the year and by this time next year I either want to be pregnant or moving on with adoption, whether it be embryo or domestic infant.