Two years, 24 months, 104 weeks, 730 days. Two years ago we started trying to grow our family.
just a note, this may be long, but this is for me really, so that hopefully, one day I can look back and see how far I have come
It all started Dec 26, 2010. We were putting away Christmas decorations and I felt something. Something I had not felt ever before except when I was pregnant with Abby. I remember looking up at Dave and saying “ I think I am pregnant”, I just felt it. Obviously I was not, but that got the ball rolling. From then we decided that it was time to start trying again, it did take us two years to get pregnant with Abby. We tried that whole year with no fertility treatments until December. My doctor found a cyst growing inside my left ovary and it had tripled in size in three months, bottom line, it had to come out. During that surgery he was able to remove other cysts that were around my ovaries and burned out all the endometriosis he could find. The bright side of this surgery was that he was almost certain we could get pregnant within 3-6months afterwards. Obviously that did not work either.
Around April I went back in to talk about the next step and what our options were. He told me he thought we should start basic fertility treatments, and I of course said no. Here's the thing,I don’t like medicine, like at all. I have weird reactions to it, usually opposite from what everyone else has, so I really didn’t want to start going down that road. I love my doctor and he knows how I feel about all that so he simply said he would recommend me going to a fertility specialist by August if we were not pregnant then. So it was set, Dave and I had agreed that was what we were going to do.
Funny thing happened when August came around…Dave got laid off. Yup, the exact same week I was going to make the phone call too. What did we do? We went ahead and set up the appointment, the consultation is free, so why not?
The consultation went really well, we loved the doctor and he was really optimistic. He made it seem like once we were ready to move forward it would be so simple and I would be pregnant in no time. I will never forget Dave looking around at all the pictures of babies and then saying “ wow, there sure are a lot of twins”.
We were so blessed that Dave found a job right away and they only made us wait thirty days before our insurance kicked in. The same week our insurance kicked in was the same week I needed to start the treatments. Our original plan was to do Clomid, and Ovidrell and nothing else. After a couple of appointments and some sonograms the nurse thought we would have a much better chance of getting pregnant if we did an IUI. This was on a Friday morning and I had to make the decision by noon. The odds were really looking good at this point. At the last sonogram they saw that I had 6 good eggs, so of course I was thinking that there was no way this could not work. Some more info to know, every time I walked into the doctor it was fifty bucks, unless my appointment falls on the weekend and then it was eighty. Of course most of mine were on the weekends, because why not? So I went in on Saturday and had the IUI done. Two weeks later they tell you to take a pregnancy test and come in for blood work if its positive, if not, you start the whole cycle again. One cycle like this cost us over 1100 dollars. Yep, insurance covers nothing!
Round two. During all the visits you don’t actually see the doctor, I am ok with this because the nurses are awesome, super sweet,and most of them have actually dealt with fertility issues themselves. After a sonogram the nurse tells me that they are cutting my Clomid dosage back because, come to find out, they were actually afraid I was going to be the next octomom with me having 6 good eggs. They had started me on the lowest dosage to begin with so now I had to start cutting my pills in half. The next sonogram showed that I had four or five really good eggs and again talked about doing another IUI, but decided against it. Round two…FAIL.
Round three. From the get go, we had decided that we would do this three times and give it a break, so this was it. I had decided that we would do everything this month, so that if it didn’t work at least I knew we had tried everything, no regrets sort of thing. At this point they had put me on half a pill and only for three nights. Normally they have you take it for five nights. When I went in for my sonogram where they see how many eggs I have I pretty much lost it when I got the results. One egg. I lost it, not in a making a scene sort of way, but in silent,heartbreaking, gut wrenching sort of way. I held back the tears while the nurse was talking to me and tried to remain optimistic. Then it came out “ Erin, we actually think you have been getting pregnant, but we think it just isn’t sticking”. Their reasoning…most women on Clomid have issues with their lining getting thinner, I did not have that issue, exact opposite in fact. She told me that we might want to consider a D&C to get rid of some of the lining that may be to thick for actual implantation to take place. Uhhh, no thanks! On December 24 I had another IUI. This time the doctor himself did it. The nurse told me she asked him to come in that morning specifically to talk to me and do the IUI because they knew I was frustrated and discouraged. I asked the doctor if he thought this was a waste of time (and money) since I only had one good egg. He told me he tries to get women to have one, sometimes two eggs, but no more than that. In fact he told me that doing an IUI with anything above three eggs would be reckless. WAIT, WHAT??? So why was I allowed to have an IUI the first go around with 6 good eggs? Still don’t know the answer to that one. Round three…FAIL. So now what? Now we take a break and step away from what has dang near consumed me for the past two years. How long of a break? Don’t know, maybe a few months maybe a year.
All I know is this. God is good. He is in control and I am not. I am beyond blessed with Abby and Dave and actually feel selfish sometimes for wanting more. God is bigger than science and medicine and all things infertility.
