I’m a Dumb Dumb Head

I don’t know when exactly I got the idea that this dream RE was in my medical group, but apparently I was oh so very wrong. Today I managed to get my gyno’s office to refer me to the clinic I wanted (the aforementioned “dream RE”) instead of the one they were going to refer me to. But after checking again, I realized that my dream RE was in a completely different medical group than me. Oops. I’m sure that is a fact that will dawn on my gyno’s office soon enough. And that is probably why my gyno wanted to refer me to the other clinic to begin with. So, not to be outdone, I said screw that and changed my medical group. Oh yes I did. Might sound a little drastic, but I wish you could see the stats. The clinic I was originally going to be referred to had an IVF success rate of about 30% for women my age, while my dream RE has a success rate of over 50% for women my age. So yeah, if we end up plunking down 10K for all this stuff, I’m damn sure going with the clinic with the best stats. And they also come very highly recommended by a couple people I know. If nothing else, they are much friendlier than the clinic I was going to be going to. And friendly is important when someone is going to be poking and prodding, like an RE.

So time will tell if my scheming worked out. It is touchy because my referral is coming from my gyno (who is in my current medical group) to my dream RE (who is the medical group I will officially be in as of January 1st). Confusing enough? I think so. I hate insurance sometimes. So wish me luck and may the fertility clinic fairies smile upon me… or some thing along those lines. 😀

Referral in the Works

I will hopefully have another update with the rest of hubby’s SA results this afternoon. Fingers crossed. In other news however, my doctor is putting through a referral to a fertility clinic for us. We are just waiting to see if my insurance goes along with it. He didn’t refer me to the clinic I was hoping for and, being the pansy that I am, I didn’t push the issue. Why am I so bad with confrontation? Anyways, I just looked up the clinic online and their stats are less than impressive, and the doctors have less than stellar ratings on those websites where patients review doctors. So all in all I’m not thrilled with my doctor’s choice. I think I might go to the clinic I chose originally despite who my gyno referred me to. My insurance is an HMO, but it has an option where you can refer yourself to a apecialist if you are willing to pay a higher co-pay. Which doesn’t really matter anyways, because they don’t do the co-pay thing with infertility. We pay 50% of everything infertility related, except for IVF, GIFT, etc. which they don’t cover at all. So I think I will call my insurance and see if I can just go to where I want to go instead. If I’m going to pay huge amounts of money to some doctor, I’m going to go with the best for my money.

Some Sad News, Some Good News, And Some Unanswered Questions

I don’t even know where to start. I guess the bad news. I found out today that my dear friend just had a miscarriage. I feel horrible for her. We had a long talk and I was there for her as best as I could be. We’ve been pretty secret about our fertility issues, so no one really knows that we had a miscarriage, including her. So I decided to tell her about our miscarriage. We were able to mourn together. She said that in some weird way she was relieved when I told her, and I completely understand. I felt the same way when she told me. It isn’t that we are happy about what has happened to us, but there is comfort in knowing that someone else knows what you are going through without even having to say a word. I just feel really sad right now. I’m sad for her and I’m also reminded of what happened to us. It definitely brings up all those emotions that I have tried not to deal with. So I know you don’t know her, but keep her in your thoughts if you can.

I don’t want to dwell on that too much. Goodness knows I will be dwelling on it for a long time. So I will move on to the test results. Hubby’s SA results are in. His sperm count is 79! Normal is over 20, so this is a very good number. His motility is on the lower end of normal at 51%, but with 79 for a sperm count I don’t think that is much to worry about. His pH is a little high at 8.5, so I think we might go to a urologist and have that checked out. It might be a sign of infection. The main concern with high pH is that it can kill sperm, but he doesn’t seem to have that problem, so I’m not too concerned. So with the results that we have things are looking good. I’m shocked all in all because I was sure the count would be low. Yay for a promising result. About a month and a half ago we started hubby on a whole list of pills that are supposed to help with sperm count and quality, so maybe it is working. I know they usually say it takes 3 months, but I’m being hopeful. Afterall, if hubby’s count was bad before and just improved because of these pills, then maybe we will have luck soon. A girl can dream, right?

Now for the unanswered questions. The SA results are not yet complete. If you have gone through this before you might notice that I left out morphology. Some would argue that is the most important number of all. Well it turns out they didn’t write down how long we had abstained for and apparently they need that info to finish the morphology calculation. So we called them today with that number and hopefully we will have the morphology results in the near future. At least that is what the girl at the lab said. Hopefully she is right because I REALLY want to know the morphology results.

So that is that. I’m going to go take a nice, warm shower and try to think good thoughts. Hope everyone has a good night!

Testing Complete

    Just a quick update to say that the testing went well. No major problems. I’m sure it was beyond awkward for hubby, but he was quite the trooper about it. And in celebration we blasted Bad Brains on the stereo the whole way home. Good times. Fingers crossed that we get the results tomorrow!

Testing, Testing

And for once, it isn’t me who has to take the test. Poor hubby is going to be doing his SA today. Fingers crossed that everything goes as planned and that it is a truly uneventful trip to the lab. My tasks for today are to call the lab and make sure that the location we have chosen does SAs and also to make sure they will accept a lab order from so long ago (we originally got the order in September, but still haven’t done it. Slacker? Yes.). If they won’t then I need to pick up a new one from my gyno on the way home from work today. Oh, I am all sorts of freaked out about this. I just don’t want to screw it up and have to do it over again. Here’s hoping I will have a great update later about how smoothly things went.

Jealous Again

It is common for women who are facing infertility to feel jealous, angry, or sad about others’ pregnancies. And I’m no exception. It isn’t that we don’t feel happy for them. Goodness knows I wish no one would have to go through infertility and miscarriage. It is a horrible experience. But at the same time it is hard to get past the envy. It isn’t fair to those women. They deserve children just as much as I do. Not to mention that these women could have gone through worse than me on their journey to pregnancy. Who knows? So lately I have been reminding myself to be less upset when I see someone with a big baby belly. But it took something more for me to finally start moving in the right direction.

Yesterday I was reminded how bad it is to make assumptions and how unfair it is to be negative about the pregnancy of someone else. There is a very pregnant woman at my husband’s work. I see her everytime I go to visit him and I admit it is hard for me to see her. My husband hasn’t talked to her much since she works in a different department, but yesterday they were talking and my husband admitted to her that he felt a little jealous of her. She asked why and he explained that we had been trying for a while now and we had no luck. Turns out she had been trying for 3 years before she got pregnant. She knew all to well what we were going through. I felt just horrible when I heard. I felt bad for her and all that she went through, I felt bad for all those times I felt jealous, I felt bad for being so negative towards others’ pregnancies. It was a nice reminder of why I need to let go of that negativity. There isn’t a finite number of babies that can be born and her having a child doesn’t take that opportunity away from me. In fact it gives me hope that our time will come.

Tests and Paperwork

The plan is that hubby will get his SA done on Wednesday, which means we will hopefully have results by Friday. I’m really anxious to get the results. We have dragged our feet for so long on this, but I’m finally not afraid of the test. Hubby and I are pretty set on getting treatment, so getting the results has become much less of a frightening and life-changing event and much more of a step in the right direction. My only hope is that if the results come back bad, that they are still good enough for IUI or IVF.

Anyhow, with that in the works I have started filling out all the new patient forms for the fertility clinic that I picked out. This clinic is one of about 4 clinics that are in my medical group, so I am hoping that my OB/Gyn respects my wishes and gives me a referral to the clinic I have chosen. They come very highly recommended and they have the best statistics out of all the clinics in the area, so I really want to go with them. The paperwork is pretty in-depth. Lots of questions about my cycles, family history of genetic disorders, treatments we have tried so far, how long we’ve been married, even how often we have sex! I’m filling them out as best as I can. Of course I’m oh so worried that they will find some reason to not accept us for treatment. One of the questions asks about a family history of mental illness. My husband’s aunt is mentally ill so I should definitely note that on the form, but I’m terrified that they will see that and decide we have bad genes and then deny us. Paranoid isn’t it? I guess I just want so badly for this all to work out.

Ah… The Weekend

Well, no IF news, and no pics of yummy food either. Although this weekend has been fun and relaxing, we did manage to lose the charger for our camera and our water heater broke. Oh the fun. We baked some delicious pumpkin pies and some pumpkin bread too, but unfortunately I have no pictures because our camera is dead, and of course you already know about the charger. But suffice to say they are yummy. You will have to take my word for it. As for the water heater, we are hoping it will get repaired tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

22 Months In: What We Know and Where We Are Going

What we know so far: an ultrasound shows that my uterus is normal, my hormone levels are fine, I ovulate on my own, and 4 rounds of Clomid did nothing for us. And after our miscarriage (~ 5 weeks) after 15 months of trying to conceive, we now know that we can theoretically get pregnant.

Where we are going: Next step is a semen analysis for hubby. If that comes back bad, then we will look into IUI or IVF. If it comes back fine, then we might need to take another look at my fertility. Either way, I’m hoping to move from our OB/Gyn to a fertility specialist. I have one in mind and I look at their website far too much just thinking about taking that next step. The scary part is the money. We have decided to go ahead with treatment if that is what we need, but it is pretty intimidating to look at the cost of some of these procedures and say… “yeah, sure, let’s do that.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. We still have to have that darn SA done. I could say that hubby has been dragging his feet about it, but honestly I have too. I want to badly to know what is wrong, but at the same time I hate to know the truth. The tentative plan is for hubby to get the SA done this week. So assuming that we get our ass in gear, I will have some results to report by next week.

Well enough about IF for now. I think I will try to put up a non-IF post soon with some vegan baked goods. Because they are pretty, and it gives me a good excuse to make and eat some yummy sweets. 😉

Writting it All Down

I suppose I always put off blogging because I hoped that this would all be over soon. I kept telling myself “next month will be our lucky month.” Surely I’m not the only one who had that delusion. Well, it hasn’t happened yet and there are few things lonelier than infertility, so here I am finally baring my soul. It is terrifying to be facing IUI/IVF, but it is worse to sit and let time pass us by. I remember back when we first decided to start trying I thought I would never try IUI or IVF. That seemed so extreme to me. It is funny how almost 2 years later I am looking at infertility clinics for just that. I’m actually excited about the prospects of finally doing something about our infertility. Bring on the dildo ultrasound, the tests, the injections, all of it. I’m ready for it. Now it is just a matter of getting the ball rolling, which has been the hardest part. Although IUI/IVF brings me a lot of hope, it also means giving up hope of conceiving on our own. It means conceding defeat and confronting the fact that we are in fact infertile. That is a lot to swallow and some days it is easier to just ignore it. Here’s hoping that this blog encourages me to get the testing and referrals so we can move forward!