Well, here we go again. We’ve been on the infertility roller coaster before, and we are definitely in one of those scary loop parts of it. I know not many people would want to blog about such things, but I need to. First, it’s therapy. I get it out of my head, and then I don’t think about it. Secondly, it’s a lot easier to write and share information with family and friends than it is to talk about it. I need prayers and support. If it takes a village to raise a kid, then I need a village of prayer to conceive a kid.
When we were trying to have Emma, I remember reading somewhere that patients who suffer from infertility go through the same amount of stress and react to it the same way as someone who suffers from cancer. It’s a battle, and I have to fight it. I learned yesterday that I have to fight harder for number two than I thought.
Just to recap for those who want to know the whole history. We’ve been trying to conceive since last July, and I started acupuncture. I took leftover Clomid in the fall (without the doctor’s guidance). I got pregnant in late October and miscarried in early November at just five/six weeks. Until that time, we had been battling the Tricare system and military bureaucracy since August. Referrals weren’t put in right and didn’t have the right information. Just when I miscarried, we had received the call from the REI office at SAMMC that we had been accepted, but we had to wait until January for our orientation and then a few months later for a first real meeting with the doctors.
We met with the doctors in February. Mark wanted to be more involved this time, so we tried with Clomid for three months with no success. This cycle was supposed to be our first IUI cycle where we mirrored the process that got us Emma. I was going to take Clomid, get ultrasounds in the first few weeks of my cycle, we’d trigger ovulation, and have an IUI the day after the trigger shot.
Yesterday, I went in for my first ultrasound. Of course, Mark was out of town. My appointment was too early for daycare, so I was up at 5:15 a.m. and Emma and I were at the lab for my bloodwork at 6:20 and in the REI clinic by 6:30. I was prepared to keep Emma entertained. I had an iPad loaded with Sesame Street, a coloring book and crayons, books to read, a banana for breakfast, some puffs, and a sippy cup of milk. Once I got into my own room, I got Sesame Street going, and Emma was amazing.
The doctors did my ultrasound, and they noticed there was a cyst or something on my one ovary. She wasn’t overly concerned though, and she decided to put in my prescription for the Comid and trigger shot and we were to come back to repeat the process the following Wednesday. I asked about IVF, just in case. The next opening they had was for August. I figured that gave me three IUI cycles before IVF. All I had to do was repeat my HSG test for the third time (essentially, the docs shoot dye into a woman’s fallopian tubes to make sure they are open).
The pharmacy didn’t open until 8 a.m., and we arrived at 7:30 a.m., so I pulled out Sesame Street and food for Emma. While we were waiting, I received a call from “Unknown”, which if the universal sign for a call from the hospital or clinic. I didn’t get to my phone in time, and after listening to my voice mail, I learned my doctor wanted to talk to me again. At 7:50 a.m., Emma and I left the pharmacy and headed back to REI.
My doctor explained that after I left she showed my ultrasound images to the chief REI doctor. He was concerned about the cyst. Now the doctor was saying it could even be a possible tumor. If it was something wrong with the cyst/tumor and it had to be removed, it’d be bad if I got pregnant, especially if it had to be removed during pregnancy.
So, now I am having a laparoscopy and hysteroscopy next Friday. They’ll check the ovary; my doctor said there’s only a 10 percent chance I’ll lose it. They’ll clear the cyst/tumor. They’ll check out where my septum was from my last surgeries and make sure it is healed. They’ll redo my HSG. My doctor seemed to think that IVF was a good path to take, and we should have at least one IUI try before going to IVF.
Of course, I couldn’t get a hold of Mark when I was learning about all of this. He decided to come home early from his trip and came back today. I’m just waiting now for it all to really sink in and for the meltdown.
I’m scared about IVF. As someone who has tried so hard to get pregnant, I need to figure out what to do about unused embryos. We need to prepare ourselves for the possibility of multiples. IVF means we are not traveling anymore to visit family and friends since we’ll have to pay off the cost. The military rate is about half of the normal public rate, but it’s still expensive for a single-income family. There are just so many factors to let sink in and contemplate.
So yeah…it’s not going to be a fun few months for us. But every time I look at Emma, I know this is what we have to do. I want her to have a sibling. I want another kid for our family. I’m not sure why we are on this roller coaster, but here we are. Please pray for us. If you have friends who want to share their IVF experiences, I’d love to hear about them. Mark has a co-worker who went through this at SAMMC so we’ll be having dinner with them and their two adorable kids soon. If you are Catholic and disagree with us, I don’t care, and I don’t think you can judge until you’ve experienced infertility. We’re not trying to create designer babies. We just want kids who are our own and who we can raise to be awesome people who do amazing things in this world.
It’s not a fun road. We didn’t ask for this, but we are accepting and going to fight it.
