IF journey to date...

I finally caved and decided to start a blog. I'd like to think that maybe this will help me to express myself so that I don't feel like I am holding things in anymore.

So, here it goes... my infertility (IF) journey (thus far)... this might be a long post.

After our 2nd wedding anniversary, my amazing husband "B" and I decided it was time to start a family, so I stopped birth control pills in June 2006. We honestly were so nervous because we thought we would get pregnant in the first few months, and it was scary to think that we were actually ready to have a family! I had been on BCPs for at least 12 years, and for some reason when I stopped my body didn't seem to know what it was supposed to do by itself. So I went for 60+ days without a period and my ob/gyn gave me a prescription for Provera to induce it. I then had one normal-length cycle, and then I had 90+ day cycle which had to be induced with Provera again. At that point my ob/gyn did some bloodwork on me, and B had to do a sperm analysis. Everything came back normal for both of us, so she put me on Clomid. The first month (50 mg) I didn't ovulate. The second month (100 mg) I did ovulate, and the third month (March 2007) I ovulated and got pregnant!! Wow, what a wonderful feeling. Everything changed as I started to think about how we would tell our families, would it be a boy or a girl (we thought it was a girl), when the baby would be due (12/12/07), and my future life as a Mom. B even took pictures of my belly so we could start tracking my "growth". About two weeks after my pregnancy test, I started spotting brown blood and I was so scared. A couple days later, I went for a blood test and my pregnancy HCG level was low (176). I went back a few days later, and my HCG had stayed at the same level and I was bleeding red. I knew it was over and I was truly heartbroken. I bled nonstop for about 4 weeks until my HCG got back down to 0.

I tried Clomid again for 3 more months, ovulated only 2 times, and then I decided to go to an RE (reproductive endocrinologist). I got a referral to Clinic #1, because my insurance covered diagnostic testing there. They did more blood tests on me and I had a HSG test which showed that my tubes were open. Then I did a Clomid + Injectable (menopur) cycle with Ovidrel trigger, and BFN (big fat negative). I did another cycle of Clomid + Menopur, another BFN, and then I decided I wanted to leave Clinic #1. They had terrible customer service and I was uncomfortable with continuing clomid cycles since I had done research that there were potential long-term health risks.

After getting recommendations (online!) I went to Clinic #2 - Dr. T. At this point it's November 2007. He told me that I have PCOS, and recommended I start Metformin 1500mg/day and also a baby aspirin daily. He actually recommended we jump straight to IVF for our best shot at pregnancy, but we weren't ready for that. So we did an injectable cycle with Follistim, trigger, and back to back IUIs. BFN. We tried the same thing again in January 2008 and BFN. I was tired of spending $3000 per month with nothing to show for it, so we decided to jump to IVF ($15K). I did the long lupron protocol, 28 days of BCPs, overlapping with lupron last 7 days, then added Follistim 2x per day. I actually was on 225 iu 2x per day (450 iu/day) for almost the whole cycle. I stimmed for 14 1/2 days (which is a very LONG time - most people are 8-12 days), and at my retrieval on April 23, I had 16 eggs retrieved. 11 were mature and fertilized, and we had a 5 day transfer on 4/28 of 2 blasts. 5 additional embryos made it to freeze. BFN. Dr. T indicated that he thought it was because we had overcooked my lining by having such a long stim period. In June we did a FET (frozen embryo transfer) of 2 more embryos and BFN. No reason why.

So that brings us pretty up-to-date. It's been over 2 years now, probably $35K with nothing to show for it, and I'm not willing to give up yet.