Background...and the beginning

Today is my first time ever writing in a blog. I figured this format was the best way to express how I am feeling and let our friends and family know what is going on with our journey to become parents.  I also thought this might be very therapeutic for me to express how I am feeling and not just keep everything inside.  
Here is a little back story up to this point.

Justin and I met in 2006 at the Lake of the Ozarks. Party cove to be precise.  We had instant chemistry! After coming home from the lake we realized that we had a lot of mutual friends, hung out at the same places, and EVEN lived across the street from each other in the same apartment complex!!  After 2 years of dating, Justin proposed on a romantic gondola ride in Venice Italy in May of 2008, our 2 year anniversary of meeting.  It couldn't have been more romantic.  We set the date for our wedding and kept the Italian theme going by getting married at a winery on Sept 19, 2009.  It was the best day of my life!

Right after the wedding Justin and I decided we wanted to start trying for kids right away.  After a couple months I decided to go visit the doctor and just ask some questions and make sure they thought everything was ok.  The doctor said not to worry and just relax. Well a year went by and still nothing.  So we revisited my Obgyn and she suggested getting a semen analysis and some very generic blood tests for me. Our obgyn also suggested we have an HSG which is where they shoot die through my tubes and then take xrays to make sure my tubes aren't blocked.  Wow, it was super painful and i was awake with no sedative for the whole procedure.   All tests came back normal, so she said to just relax and keep trying.

Two months later we decided to be proactive and start asking questions.  Intuitively I knew something was wrong, but everyone kept insisting we just needed to relax.  After that our Obgyn said if we wanted we could go visit a nurse practioner who had low cost infertility procedures that might help us.  The nurse, Becky did some blood tests to see my hormone levels, and an ultrasound and said we would be great candidates for IUI.  IUI for those who don't know is where they insert sperm with a small catheder tube directly into the uterus, bypassing the cervix which decreases the length that the sperm have to swim to meet an egg.  IUI can be done with or without stimulating drugs.  We were told our best chances were with drugs.  

So October 2010 was our first IUI.  Becky told us clomid which is a pill stimulant would be great for us. We tried clomid with IUI, 2 times before Becky suggested I should have a surgery called a laparoscopy to inspect the outside of my reproductive organs to make sure they were normal.  Once again, not really knowing what to do I asked my ob what she thought and she said I should do it.  

December 2010, I went in and had a laparoscopy performed.  They basically make a small slit in your belly button and a tiny incision by your left hip bone and stick cameras and a probe in there to look at the outside if your uterus, ovaries, intestines, etc.  They are looking for cysts, endometriosis, anything abnormal. My results came back and it was determined that I had mild endometriosis, but none attached to anything important in reproduction, so my ob said I shouldn't worry about it. 
My ob and nurse practioner Becky decided to put me on a low dose steroid called predisone, which they said would lower inflammation in my abdomen from the endometriosis, and hopefully help our chances.  They said I wouldn't have any side effects from the steroid since it was a low dose, so I said I would take it....more on that later.

January 2011 we decided to resume IUI.  We decided to be more aggressive and start doing injectible stimulant drugs along with the clomid.

Oh wait...  I forgot to mention in the beginning of the journey the fact that I am DEATHLY afraid of needles!!! So we are already to January 2011 and I have already had 16 vials of blood drawn over several appts, 2 fsh trigger shots, and 1 IV.

So back to January where I get to add to my needle tally with another round of IUI with 1 injectible drug, 1 fsh shot, and no results.

In February 2010 our nurse practioner Becky decided to do a clomid challenge test.  This meant along with the normal IUI protocol I would be going daily for 1 week to get blood drawn to see how the clomid was affecting me.  Well I ultrasound and blood draw into the challenge Becky said I had been overstimuulated the month prior, so we could not continue with the test or any stimulant medications for this round, but we could still do IUI.  We did with another failed attempt.

At this point Justin and I decided to sit down and have a conversation about what we would do next.  We decided we would do 1 more IUI, and if it didn't work we would take a break and then regroup in a couple months and decide our next plan of attack. 

March 2011, IUI #5, failed.  Ugh, such a disappointment! But honestly I knew in my heart this wasn't going to work. Sometimes I guess I should just listen to my gut feelings.

We took a couple months off and decided to stop thinking about having a baby and just enjoy each other.  But honestly do you know how hard it is to not monitor your ovulation when you have been doing it every month for almost 2 years, because you keep thinking in the back of your head this might be the month!?  If I miss one month of ovulation that might have been our one shot!? It is all consuming.

In the interim I decided to try some wacky herbal vitamin treatment that I found online because a girl I knew said her cousin got pregnant within 1 month of taking it.  The supplements included Norwegian salmon oil pills and wheat germ oil pills.  My 60 day supply came without a pregnancy. So stupid!

In May 2011 I decided to start researching the next step in the infertility journey.  At this point we were categorized as undetermined infertility, which basically means we think you should be able to have a baby, and all your tests have come back basically normal, so we don't know what's wrong. Very frustrating! Sometimes you just want a diagnosis, so you can say exactly what should be done, but then again isn't it better to be healthy and undetermined?? 
Ahhh, the chaos in my head!

I must also note that I am the kind of person to research EVERYTHING! And the Internet gives you access to anything you want to know.  But with the amount of information and conflicting diagnosis' for every test result,  it could send a person to the mental hospital.  There are good outcomes and bad outcomes for every level, age group, syndrome out there.  So I decided to stop trying to solve my problem and diagnose myself from google searches. It is what it is, even if it is undetermined, and I have to live with that.  No amount of google searches are going to get me pregnant.

So Justin and I decided to each choose an IVF doctor and we would choose a doctor from these 2. Doctor #1 was super creepy and we both walked out of the consult confused and feeling like we had just sat in on a medical seminar, not an IVF consult. He said our problem could be the endometriosis, semen quality, or my egg reserve count.  We didn't bother doing any testing with him.

Doctor #2 came very highly recommend, had great results, and had published several books and even been on Oprah.  I thought he would be the one. We did a preliminary ultrasound before our consult which we were told would tell us my ovarian reserve, (how many eggs i have left).  The ultrasound showed that for my age I had a lower than normal egg reserve, and that that was our problem.  He said screw the other possible things that everyone else has guessed about. Eggs and sperm are what you need, and that was that.  He said I should not have had any of the procedures I had had so far including the surgery or the iui's!! He said they were all a waste of time and money. Ok.....really?? I think my jaw fell on the floor. He said all I needed was a simple ultrasound to determine our infertility issue.  He also said I should have never been on that low dose steroid medication for 5 months.  He said it was very dangerous and that I needed to be weaned off of it immediately.  I told him i had stopped taking it a week ago abruptly....more on that again later. Ugh!!  What now??  After waiting in the waiting room for 2.5 hours past our appt time, and having this little man yell at us and his nurse, we decided he probably wasn't for us either, but the information he had provided was infuriating and calming at the same time.  We had wasted a year of time, but we finally had a probable cause for not being pregnant.

Doctor #3 kind fell out of the sky and we were told he was the cowboy in the IVF world and had an amazing personality and bedside manner.  I called and ironically got a cancellation appt for 2 days later. (their next available appt was 2.5 months out) I thought that was a good sign.  We walked in and met the doctor and we both knew instantly he was the one!! It's funny, but it is almost like when you meet your husband you just know and you have that feeling inside.  For us, it was the same with Dr. Simckes, he was it.  We talked to him for over an hour and he was so nice and friendly and agreed with dr #2 about us having too many things done.  He also performed an ultrasound, a blood test, and a swab test to confirm doctor #2's opinion.  His results confirmed that I have a low ovarian reserve and also the swab test confirmed that Justin and I had a bacteria that can cause miscarriages.  So even if we might have gotten pregnant over the last 2 years it wouldn't have stuck because of the bacteria.  OK seriously???  Why the heck weren't these SUPER simple tests performed 2 years ago by my ob??? I was angry!! These tests should be standard before you put someone through surgery and a rigor of needles!!

But the past is the past and you learn from it, so onward and upward.  Dr Simckes said IVF was the best solution for us to get pregnant.  This was the end of June 2011, and we decided that IVF was going to be our path.  We both felt very good about it.  Dr. Simckes said there would be many things we would need to do in preparing for IVF.  He said first things first, go on vacation immediately!

Sooooo, that's what we did.  The end of July 2011 we went to Florida for 5 days to lay on the beach and just relax.  It was nice to just enjoy each other and know that we didn't need to worry any more because we finally had an answer and we were in good hands with someone who was going to get us pregnant.

Oh, I forgot the ending to the low dose steroid story, well about 10 days after I stopped taking the medicine in early July my hair started falling out! Really!?? I called the my doctor and they said that might happen for up to 6 weeks after you stop taking the medicine. Oh, really, just awesome! Someone probably should have told me that!! Lesson learned! And to anyone out there entrusting their well-being to a nurse practitioner practicing medicine like a doctor, don't do it!! Scary stuff! 

Wow, that was a lot of background! It has been quite a roller coaster so far, and the journey is far from over.

We began the IVF journey about 9 days ago now, July 26, 2011.  Our first step was Justin taking an antibiotic to get rid of his bacterial stuff, and I started taking birth control pills. (He and I will both take the antibiotic again in sept). Yea, I know, why birth control if you are trying to get pregnant?  Well I guess it helps the dr regulate my cycle to be on target with the dates he has set for retrieval and transfer, and the birth control kills off old dead eggs stuck in the ovaries.

Then yesterday August 3rd, I had another procedure called a hysteroscopy and d&c.  The procedure only took about 15 minutes and i was knocked out for it.  The hystero scopes your uterus to make sure you don't have any polyps or cysts or anything that would interfere with a fertilized egg from attaching.  The d&c portion just cleans the uterus out. So another procedure under my belt, and another needle IV to add to my list.  It was the least painful of all the procedures I have had, and I am actually feeling pretty normal today, just a little sore.

So for the rest of August I will just continue to take my bc pills for a total of 38 days, until we begin the stimulation injections in September. Can't wait for the needle injection training!! Ahhhh! I just keep telling myself the end result is all that matters, so I just need to get over the needle thing. Ha! Easier said than done. 

Well I just wrote an essay. But that is our story, and I am glad you know it and I hope that you if you are reading this you are sending positive energy, good thoughts, and prayers our way! Love to you all! Until next time..

Jenny