It's been too long...

Sorry it’s been so long my lovelies. You’ll all be happy to know that my body has stopped some of its revolt. I finally started spotting on Saturday. So at least the cycle has started. You’ll also be happy to know that my husband finally persuaded himself that we need to do something about the situation and that just waiting for it to happen naturally wasn’t getting us anywhere.

So I have to give a little background here. We were about to pursue treatments in June ‘04, we saw the RE, were going to go clomid and IUI for the next cycle. Lo and behold I was pregnant at the time we were making these arrangements. So fast forward to August, I had a couple spotting episodes and with each one ran to the OB/GYN as fast as I could for an ultrasound. The first ultrasound was early and everything looked OK. The last ultrasound was when we got the dreaded news that there was no heartbeat but the baby measured 8 weeks and I was at 8 weeks and 4 days. So the baby died just a few days before. It was devastating. I have no other words than that.

So September rolls around and I have my first post-m/c cycle. Everything appears to be going normally. I need to preface this “normally” by saying that I hadn’t had a normal cycle since I started metformin in January ‘04. So I thought I was getting back on track. Little was I aware of the revolt my body was planning. In December, my cycle was MIA for 60 days. I decided to take the provera I had laying around from my pre-metformin days so I could finally start the next cycle. Here comes the *confession* that I promised you lovelies from my last post. I got to be my own doctor for the months that followed. I had clomid lying around too and decided that I was going to make my body behave as it should and I naively thought the clomid would do this.

How on earth does my body know that I don’t have an MD from Harvard hanging from the wall of my perfectly decorated study? Huh? So I took the clomid and was excited when I got a positive OPK, my monitor was reading peak, and my bbt did exactly as it should all at the right time. I thought great at least I was able to accomplish that feat. My lp (luteal phase, for those of you not in the know) was 13-14 days pre-m/c so I assumed it would be the same on clomid and certainly not longer than the 18 days that FF (fertility friend) swears by. I start testing like a mad woman at 12 DPO (days post ovulation) and everything is negative. I finally slap and shake myself and say get a hold of yourself man. My period was 1 week overdue and I finally started the next cycle at 22 DPO. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse I took clomid the next month too. I wanted to prove to my body that I am a good doctor and know what I’m doing. So what if my Harvard degree was purchased on the internet and says that my name is Dave Thomas (founder of Wendy’s you know) and is not hanging in a perfectly decorated study but on the wall in my head. [You’ll soon learn about me, if you don’t already know, I go off on tangents, tirades, etc. on a whim. You’ll either love them or hate them.] So where was I, oh yes, I was talking about my latest Dr. Thomas prescribed cycle. I wound up going all the way till 29 DPO with this last one. So, to save my sanity, I’ve decided no more clomid. My husband was actually quite um…upset, no, disappointed, no, worried, a little, didn’t want me to do it was his general attitude. He thought I was insane to be taking these meds without doctor’s orders. I tried to explain to him that at one time they were given under doctor’s orders and that I thought that this was what the doctors would be doing anyway. He thought I should stop being Dr. Thomas and quit consulting with my best friend and colleague Dr. Google. But how, my friends, can you stop trying when you seemingly have everything at your fingertips and your husband wants to wait to seek professional help (an RE not a psychiatrist-although I may need one of those soon too).

I’ve now explained my last 2 cycles and why I need to take my Harvard MD off the wall in my head but let me explain the part where we wanted to wait to seek professional help. It wasn’t so much that WE wanted to wait it was that HE wanted to wait. I was on board with him on the thought till my body pulled it’s latest and decided to revolt. I was all for waiting and trying again “naturally” but my body had different ideas. Our thought was that if we did it once naturally we can do it again. We’re not sure what caused the m/c. It could’ve been my hormone imbalance meaning not enough progesterone to sustain things. God the guilt I’ve felt over that one. Or if it was chromosomal, it could’ve been his misshapen puppies. We know he has some. As my little intro says we have slight male factor. His numbers are slightly under the 20 million/mL that they like to see (analysis #1-19 million/mL, analysis #2-11 million/mL) and his morphology was low but I don’t remember if it was on the low side of normal or the high side of less than normal. Whatever the case, there’s nothing that can be done about it now. I’d even attempted to have recent discussion with him about wanting to see someone now and me being sick of waiting. I finally had it and said we are seeing someone in June if nothing happens before then. He agreed and became more comfortable with it as time went on.

So now we fast-forward to 2 weeks ago, my friend, who I lost touch with due to all this infertility crap (you know how it is, you isolate yourself and stop returning phone calls, etc), and her boyfriend and me and husband get together for lunch. Before getting together she and I have a nice re-connection and I explain to her about the fertility and the PCOS etc. She is going to school to be a doctor of physical therapy so she’s researching and stuff. She says she wants to help me with my condition and to do everything she can. She really is a good friend and I really missed her friendship. I know I’ve given you a lot of background here but I promise it’ll be worth it. When we get together for lunch, she has a gift for me. In the bag is the book “What to do when the doctor says its PCOS.” This was after I told her that I’d really done all the research and pretty much any book is gonna tell me all that I already know. Of course I said that before she gave me the book, I may be infertile, but I’m not a complete ass. So I feel really bad about it and profusely say thanks. So I’m in the middle of reading other books and that one is next on my pile. So I read the first few pages and haven’t had a chance to look at it since. In the meantime, husband picks up the book and reads the table of contents and flips to what he calls the meat of the book. He then comes to the realization that we’ve been waiting far too long and we really need to do something about this now. It was like one of those moments you see on TV or at the movies, the heavens opened up and the light shone down and the angles started singing halleluiah. At that moment I was the happiest woman in the world.

See, I told you there was a point. So the short of it is that we have an appt. with the same RE we saw the first time back in June ‘04 on May 4 at 11:30, that’s 19 days away. I can’t wait. Husband mostly agreed to it if we go back and tell him how it is, meaning we go in there and tell him that we want me fixed and we don’t want to jump on the IUI track right away. If he says no, we’re gonna do an IUI then we will go elsewhere. So, for now, I’m being optimistic and hoping that he’ll say that we can work on fixing me.

So that’s all for now, I think it’s an overdose too but there are gonna be times when there’s not much at all so these long posts make up for it.

Hope all is well in the infertile kingdom.