Onto IUI#10

AF should be here sometime today, 15dpiui.  I had what I thought could have been the start of a BFP at 10dpiui on a frer, but I'm pretty sure now that it was just a little bit of trigger that was left over.  I used another frer at 11dpiui and then one at 13dpiui and they were both completely negative.  I need to learn to stop testing so early, it just disappoints me when it's a complete negative after seeing a "line" on the test.  I'll try to not test until 12dpiui next time.

I'll call my RE when AF fully shows, (I've been spotting on and off the whole second week of the TWW), but I know its coming.  I've got spotting and cramps today.

I'm also going to finally register us for the IVF program at our clinic too.  Where we live, there is only one clinic, and it is very busy.  It can take 3-6 months on a wait list to begin an IVF cycle.  We need to go to an orientation meeting too, so I'm going to get the date of that and sign us up for it too.

We will do one or maybe two more IUI's while we wait for the IVF, but it is time to move on.  I know I've said that before, and I may end up saying it again, but after 9 attempts, I need to be realistic.  It's the three "successes" that keep me wanting to stay the course with the IUI's, but I am starting to think that the IVF may be our best chance for a sticky pregnancy and a healthy baby.

9dpiui #9

I went 2 days ago for a progesterone check, just to make sure that my level didn't need any supplementation, in case that may have been a cause of the miscarriages.  My RE likes to see anything over 10 to show ovulation has occurred.  My research has told me that anything over 20 is good for sustaining a pregnancy.  I just got the call with my progesterone level at 7dpiui.  It was 96.7!  I was actually shocked!

I have been testing the trigger out since 5dpiui.  I still had a very, very faint positive test yesterday.  Today's is pretty much negative.  There is "something" there, but I can't tell if it has any color or if it is just the indent line on the cheapo tests I use.  I'm thinking I might try a frer tomorrow to see what it says.

I've also had some spotting, that started with pink cm on 6dpiui, and has been a little more red over the last couple of days.  I hope that it is implantation spotting.

Either way it goes, I should have a better idea by the end of the week if this one looks like a success or not.

2 days past IUI#9

I triggered for my IUI on Friday Jan. 11th at midnight.  The ultrasound showed that I had a 20mm follicle on the left side.  The Dr. didn't bother to check the right side, since my tube on that side is gone anyway.  (eta)  My lining was up to 7.7 with the letrozole.  With the clomid it has been 7.  Hopefully that little bit more helps!

I went in on Sunday Jan. 13th for the IUI.  It went well, as it usually does.  I had a little cramping afterwards, especially into the evening, but that is normal for me.

J's counts for the previous 5 IUI's have been fairly consistent, though the post wash numbers have been all over the place.  I'm going to detail all the numbers over the IUI's in another post, more for my records than anything else.  This time his total count was 178.6 million, the highest I've seen it since we started with the IUI's.  Post wash we got 10 million, with 64% motility and 2% morphology.

I plan on taking a test to see if the trigger is still in my system, but I've been waiting for my mail order tests to arrive.  Hopefully they will be here soon.

I'm 2dpiui today, 3.5 days past the trigger.  The triggers usually last about 8-9 days in my system, so it should be gone by Sunday.  I'll post the progress.

IUI#9

After the chemical loss with IUI#8, my Dr. and I decided to make some changes.  The first change is with the medication I had been on.  For the last 6 IUI's I have used clomid.  This time we changed it to femara.  It works pretty much the same way, as an estrogen blocker which makes my body produce extra estrogen which in turn ends up telling my ovaries to produce more follicles.  The main difference is in how the medication affects the uterine lining.  The clomid is known to thin the lining some, and I've thought that could be part of the reason why I've had chemical pregnancies. The femara is not supposed to thin the uterine lining as much, so that an embryo can attach more firmly to it.

The other changes are with the recent diagnosis of the clotting disorder that was discovered from the recurrent loss testing I had done.  The treatment for this disorder pregnancy is to take a low-dose daily aspirin and to use a low-molecular heparin injection throughout a pregnancy.  My Dr. left it up to me if I want to do the heparin injection, as he said it is controversial as to whether or not it really does prevent miscarriage, and I've already had one healthy term pregnancy while having this issue.  He said the aspirin may be enough.  I'm still trying to decide what I want to do, should this IUI work, but right now I'm leaning towards just taking the daily aspirin.  I reserve the right to change my mind in an instant though, hahaha!

I go on January 11th to have a follicle check ultrasound done.  On the clomid I was usually making around 5 or 6 measurable follicles, and usually releasing two mature eggs with the trigger shot.  I need the leading follicle to be on the left side, because although the left tube can pick up eggs released from the right ovary, it is less likely to happen than it grabbing eggs from the left ovary.  I'm feeling all the familiar twinges from both my ovaries, so I hope that there is a big one on the left!

The ultrasound on the 11th will hopefully give me the day of when my IUI will be.  I will be triggering with an HCG injection again, and then it will be back into the TWW.

I'm really hopeful that these small changes will result in a healthy pregnancy this time.

Our continuing story...the IUI's

We began trying naturally for our second child when our daughter, C, was just 9 months old.  When she turned 3 we figured it was time to look back into getting some fertility help.  It takes 9 months (ironic much?) to get an appointment with the local (only) clinic here, so C was 4 before we had more testing done.  Those tests revealed that I was again "normal" albeit older, and J now had only 1% normal morphology.  We were back to where we began, only a little worse off this time.  We again decided to try IUI.

We did the first IUI cycle unmedicated in April 2011, because I was convinced that all that was needed was to get the boys closer to the goal.  It didn't work.  The second IUI was done with meds and timed with OPK`s.  It also didn`t work.  Through circumstance and timing it was nearly a full year before we tried our third IUI in Dec/11.  At that point I was ready to go ahead with IVF, but wanted to do a natural cycle IVF.  The fertility Dr.told me that doing a natural cycle was very difficult and financially risky, as the process and dollar amount was the same, but the chance of missing the egg or not getting a fertilization were very high.  He suggested instead doing a mini IVF, with low dose meds, so that we would get more than one egg, but not the large amounts that would come from a traditional IVF.  In order to determine my response to meds, we agreed to do two final cycles of clomid with IUI, only this time we would use ultrasound to check follicle response.  I went for my first ultrasound to check the follicles and I had 5 large follicles, 3 of them were mature, so I was told to use an HCG trigger shot to induce ovulation.  I triggered and two weeks later AF showed up.  Another failed cycle.  We used the same protocol for my fourth and would-be final shot at IUI.  I tested out the trigger shot with hpt's, and although I really wasn't expecting any different outcome, I was still holding on to some hope.  It was a true celebration when I saw that very faint little line start to reappear on the tests.  I watched the lines on the hpt start to get darker daily until there was no mistaking it.  Our "final" IUI had worked.  We were finally pregnant after so many years of trying.

Looking back now, I think I must have known it wasn't going to end well, because I insisted on getting a very early ultrasound.  When I asked the Dr. for one, I said it was to determine if there was more than one baby, and to make sure that it was in the right spot.  I remember saying to the Dr that I wanted to make sure it wasn't ectopic.  I went for my ultrasound on March 2nd.  I honestly can say that it has been the worst day of my life so far.  The tech placed the wand on my stomach, and then started asking me questions.  "Are you sure of your dates?".  "You've had a positive pregnancy test?".  "Have you had any bleeding?".  "You're sure you are pregnant?".  At that point I knew.  I knew what was happening.  The tech said it was probably just too early to see anything yet, and maybe I wasn't as far along as I thought, and that I should reschedule for a couple of weeks later.  I refused to leave.  I knew my dates.  Knew that it was 6 weeks from the start of my last cycle.  Knew exactly what day I had conceived.  And I immediately knew what was about to be said to me.  So, I insisted that they do an internal ultrasound.  The tech pulled the images up on the screen, and then he turned the screen away.  That's when I started to cry.  He didn't even need to say a word to confirm my very worst fear was being realized.

I went straight from that ultrasound to the hospital ER.  I was going to be losing my baby that day.  I've made my peace with it now, and am able to live my life in the present, but thinking back to that day, reliving the emotions still stings.  The hospital confirmed the ectopic, and then confirmed something the ultrasound tech never told me.  The little being stuck in my right fallopian tube had a beating little heart.  Somehow that made what I was about to go through so much worse.  The Dr told me that I'd need to have surgery.  That I was likely to lose the right tube along with the embryo.  My baby.  My long awaited, hard fought for baby was going to be cut out of me.  I spent the most of the rest of the afternoon crying my heart out.

I had the surgery that evening, and awoke from the anesthetic to be told that I indeed did lose my tube as well as the baby.  They told me that it was on the verge of rupture and it did rupture when they touched my tube.  My physical recovery was good.  I only needed one dose of pain medication as I was coming out of the anesthesia, and nothing more after that.  It was the emotional recovery that was hard.  I cried on and off for a couple of weeks afterwards.  I was resolved to move forward, however, and have done just that.  Even though I had said that IUI#4 was our last one before going ahead with IVF, my Dr and I decided that because it had worked once, it could work again.  Once I was healed from the surgery and had a couple of normal cycles and a repeat HSG test, I jumped right back into the same protocol.  IUI#5 failed also, and then we were on to IUI#6 in June/12.  Again I triggered and was in the TWW.  I again tested out the trigger shot, and towards the end of the cycle the second line came back.  It was faint, but there.  I had again succeeded in becoming pregnant.  I went for HCG blood work that showed the HCG was very, very low (only 7miu) and in the next two HCG checks it had doubled but then started to drop again.  I'd had a chemical pregnancy/early miscarriage.

Since two out of four IUI's had given us positive tests, we decided again to keep going.  IUI#7 failed, but then IUI#8 in October/12 worked.  Again I got to see two pink lines show back up on the hpts.  That one unfortunately also ended as a chemical pregnancy, the only difference is that it threw my whole system for a loop and screwed up my cycles until just recently.

That brings me up to date.  We have begun our 9th IUI cycle, but there are some changes this time.  I went for some recurrent loss testing after the second chemical, and the results show that I have heterozygous factor V leiden.  A clotting disorder, that can cause recurrent miscarriage.  I would have had this gene mutation during my first pregnancy too, so I am even more grateful now than I was that my daughter is here.  She truly is a miracle.

Our Story...the beginning

When my husband (J) and I began thinking about TTC, we never imagined that it would be so difficult.  We never expected that having a baby would involve anything other than the two of us behind our closed bedroom door.  When we first started to try to get pregnant, 10 years ago, we thought it would be just like "everyone else", you decide when, and then you get a baby 9 months later.   It hasn't exactly worked that way.

We tried for over a year before starting to look into why we hadn't been able to get pregnant.  We were referred to a fertility clinic in our city, and we both had some testing done.  My tests all came back "normal" and J's tests showed that he had an issue in the morphology of his sperm.  At that time I believe he had 6% that were considered normal.  By then another year and a half had gone by with no positive HPT's, and after the test results, we were told by the fertility Dr. that our only chance of conceiving would be with IVF.  I requested instead to do try IUI first and we were given a reluctant go ahead.  We were waiting on my cycle to start so that I could begin some medication for the treatment.  That was in April 2005.  When I realized on Mother's Day that I was "late", I bought a home pregnancy test.  When I took it the next morning, I stood there staring, then shaking and then crying at the two pink lines that were staring back at me.  We had conceived naturally.  Our "surprise" baby girl was born in January 2006.

Now, it's 8 years later, and our daughter is about to celebrate her 7th birthday.   She would love to be a big sister and has been asking for a sibling for years.  We have been trying and will continue to do everything we can to make that happen for her.

Welcome to my blog!

I'll be documenting our fertility journey here, both the one we've already been on for 8 years, and what is still to come.

Thank you for reading!