Well, I'd like to see your uterus...

Well, I'd like to see your uterus....

Not really the words that you're expecting to hear when you go to the doctors office.  Not that this was the first time I've had a doctor want to do an ultrasound. It was just a new way to get there. Our story starts when Nick and I met in February 2009. We met at Lutheran Hospital. I was working as a nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Nick was working as an EMT on the transport service for the hospital. Long story short we started dating and got married August 13, 2011. 

Well, now that I think about it our story starts before that. When I was a teenager my periods were never regular. Not that that is a problem when you're a teenager. I didn't think too much about it and it never bothered me. Until college that is. In college I was finally diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycystic_ovary_syndrome 

Basically PCOS is a syndrome that causes you not to ovulate and have irregular periods. There were times when I would go months without having a period. In college I was put on birth control to make my periods regular. So when Nick and I were planning on getting married and having children we made the decision to stop the birth control before the wedding so that I could get it out of my system. So I took my last birth control in March 2011.  We were prepared for the fact that there was a possibility that I could get pregnant prior to the wedding. I didn't want to wait because I knew that I was going to turn 30 this year and that the older I got, the slimmer our chances were of not only getting pregnant but a greater chance of having complications. When my periods we not regular after coming off the birth control, I knew that we were going to have problems. After we got back from the honeymoon I bought an ovulation kit. When the first one didn't show that I ovulated and I hadn't had my period, I bought another one. I continued to wish and hope that we would be able to do this naturally, but I think deep down in my soul I knew that we wouldn't. Once the second kit failed to show that I ovulated, I made an appointment with my OB/GYN. We met and talked. We decided to do another baseline ultrasound to see if I really had cysts on my ovaries and some blood work. On a whim, she had Nick get a sperm count done. We didn't think there was going to be anything wrong since he had Dakota. My ultrasound showed some small cysts on both ovaries consistent with the PCOS and my blood work was fine. Nick's sperm count on the other hand was not good. His swimmers didn't swim and his guys were funny shaped. In our follow-up appointment we were told we needed to see a fertility specialist. Nick also needed to go and see a urologist. 

December 12th, 2011 we saw Dr. Bopp, the fertility specialist, for the first time. Since I hadn't had a period since October 20 he gave me medication to start one. That sucked! When it started I had to go and have a bunch of labs drawn. Then I had to have an ultrasound done with dye to make sure all of my parts were in working order. Did I mention that insurance doesn't cover any of this? Nick had another sperm analysis done and this time the results were better. We went to see Dr. Thomas, the urologist, and he suggested that Nick have some labs drawn. His testosterone came back low so he put Nick on a medication called Clomid. It's the same medication that some women use to ovulate to get pregnant. This is an off label use. In the meantime all of my labs and ultrasound came back good. Dr. Bopp thought that we would have a good chance at conceiving with a technique called IUI (Intrauterine insemination). I was going to use the clomid to start my ovulation and then when the ovulation kit said I was going to ovulate we would go in and do the insemination. The insemination was supposed to help Nick's sperm get passed the cervical mucus and give us a better chance. With the sperm being funny shaped they would have a hard time getting though the mucus. When they start clomid, they start you at 50 mg. I took it from day 5-10 of my cycle. I never got a smiley face on the ovulation kit telling me that I had ovulated. When this happens they draw blood to check a progesterone level. This level can tell you if you ovulated. Mine this time was 1. Nope, didn't ovulate.

So next month they increased it to 100mg. I took it from day 5-10 again. We never got a smiley face.  So we had my progesterone drawn. Guess what? It was 9.8. I did ovulate and the kit missed it. I was furious. It was a missed opportunity. Each time we start a cycle we have to pay up front. One round of IUI is $1,650. If we don't do the IUI we can continue to use the money that we paid for the next stuff. 

Every time I start a cycle I have to go in for an ultrasound before they would give me the clomid. So the third month they increased the clomid to 150mg. This time it worked like it was supposed to. I got a smiley face and we went in to have the IUI done. Nick had to "make a deposit" in a cup and then they spin it down and give them a bath to make them swim better. To do the IUI they insert a small catheter with the syringe of Nick's sperm attached to it through my cervix. Then they push the syringe. I had to lay flat for 10 min. That's it. That's all there is to it. A week after the procedure I went back in to have a progesterone level drawn. It was 17! This was great. It means that my body was preparing to be pregnant. That was a Friday. The next Wednesday I started spotting. I was hoping it was just implantation bleeding. Boy was I wrong. Aunt Flo came in full force on Thursday. Did I mention that Nick was gone in Arizona this whole week prior to Aunt Flo starting? His Uncle had been hit by a drunk driver and died. I was supposed to check a pregnancy test that Friday May 18th. I didn't need to. I already knew. I wasn't pregnant. I was devastated. Nick wasn't here to comfort me. I called Dr. Bopp's office and we had decided to go ahead and try it again. I had an appointment for the next Tuesday (May 22). 

When we got to the office we decided that we wanted to try something that would give us more of a chance. We were lucky that Dr. Bopp was in the office. He is only here in town on Tuesdays. His other office is in Indianapolis. He suggested that we try doing injectable medication. This would give us a 4 times better chance of conceiving. It also doubles our chances of getting twins. So that night I started shooting up ;) It's a medication called Follistim. I stimulates your follicles or eggs to grow. They started me on 75IU. I did this for 5 days. Sunday we drove to Indianapolis (the Ft. Wayne office isn't open on Sunday) for an ultrasound a blood work. The ultrasound checks to see how many follicles you have growing and how big they are. I had 4 on my left and 5 on my right. They all measured around 7mm. The blood work they draw is an estrogen level. As your eggs grow they secrete estrogen. The bigger they are the more estrogen they secrete. My estrogen
level was 89. This is ok. They just want it to go up as the follicles get bigger. So, they increased the Follistim to 125IU. I did this Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights. I went back this morning to be checked. This time she only measured the biggest one on each side. Both of them were measuring at 10mm. They want them to be around 18-20 to be considered mature. My estrogen level was 189. So we increased the Follistim to 150IU and went back Friday to be checked again.  This time I had a 12mm and 14mm on one side and an 11mm on the other. We kept the medications at 150IU and went back on Monday June 4^th. When the follicles were big enough, I gave myself another shot, this time  called ovidril. This stimulates the egg to release. 36 hours after that we went back to the office and had the IUI done again. Then the 2 week wait began. One week after the IUI, I went in for a progesterone level which was fine.  Only two days after the progesterone level was drawn I started bleeding. That when we knew that the IUI hadn't worked. 

We did one more round of the IUI with the injectable medication (Follistim). This round we started at 125IU. The follicles got big like they are supposed to and we triggered the ovulation. We went in and had another round of IUI done. Again my progesterone level was great. Again I started to to bleed a couple of days after the progesterone level was drawn. Another failed round of IUI.  

One of the reasons I started this blog was to put my emotions down on paper, well computer. During our rounds of IUI we found out that Nick's 17 year old niece was pregnant. Talk about a gut shot. How is it that an unwed, irresponsible teenager could get pregnant and I couldn't?! I was married, had a good job, wanted a baby.   Why is it that people who don't need to be having children can get pregnant so easily and I, who is married, has a job can't? Why is it that I have to pay out of pocket for infertility expenses and she gets government assistance? I have never felt so angry and betrayed. Eventually, I decided that that I was better than that. Better than her, better than them. I decided that I was just going to not be around them. 

So far it has been ok. It helped that we moved to Akron, OH for my new job as a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner August 2012. We decided to take a break at this point. We were going to have to switch infertility offices and with starting a new job in a new place we thought it would be better to not have the added stress.   

Now that we are settled in Akron, we have decided that its time to try again. We have started in a new office Reproductive Gynecology, Inc. http://www.reproductivegynecologyinc.com/  Today we go in to sign the consents to start IVF. We have our appointment in an hour.