Our last blog left us preparing to do the big egg count for our first IUI with RMG. Since we were on a new protocol and new meds, we had no idea of how little V's egg makers would react. Would they create even one follicle? Would they create too many follicles? We didn't know. Thank goodness for ultrasounds that give us the ability to actually count them before we inseminate. That way, we would know how many potential kiddies there are in there. I mean, that's the idea. The only thing that would throw a wrench into the works would be if Heidi ovulated early. But that's never happened before so nothing to worry about this time either. I mean, she's nothing if not consistent.
Day 12 started with Heidi thinking she was ovulating. Because we've been trying to get pregnant for, oh, I don't know, about two years, we happen to have quite the stash of ovulation predictor kits, pregnancy kits, pregnancy meds, etc., etc., etc. Short story...we had an ovulation test so we decided to take it to see if she was ovulating. Why is this important, you ask? Well, first of all, if you're asking you need to take yourself back to health class and learn how this works. Geez. If you're just being fertility lazy, here's why...if she's ovulating BEFORE we do the ultrasound, we can't count her follicles. Why does this matter? Because we haven't ever used the regimen of meds we are on now so we don't know how they work on her. Remember full strength Clomid put her in egg-making overdrive? We had no idea if these would create one or ten. We do not want ten. Why else would this matter? Well, if she ovulates now and our IUI is scheduled too late, we miss this cycle. There is only a 24-36 hour window to knock her up. Worse, we inseminate and there's no eggie there for the spermie to try to find. So, yea, ovulation a few days early can be a bit of a problem. Good thing we have a doctor's office we can call and get guidance from, huh?
Yea, about that...so Heidi calls the doctor's office that morning because she is in fact ovulating. The nurse or sonographer gal, whoever, whatever she was, is giving Heidi a little attitude about taking an ovulation test because Heidi was specifically instructed not to LH track. Heidi informs her was wasn't tracking; she advises that she felt like she was ovulating, didn't want to miss our window and so she took the test. She says this several times because the sonographer is apparently upset that we were tracking. We were not tracking. Heidi kind of knows what it feels like to ovulate. She's been slightly attuned to her cycle for, oh, about two frigging years now. So, yea, she's pretty attuned. The appointment for the ultrasound was cancelled and the appointment for the IUI was scheduled for the next day...day 13. Well, hells bells, that was a whole unexpected, chaotic mess. Geez oh pete! Thank goodness that's over. Huh?
Day 13, inspermination day. We are required to arrive an hour and a half early so our spermcicle has time to defrost. We check in and hang out at the office waiting for Heidi's turn to get knocked up. Thank goodness for smart phones...waiting rooms are much less frustrating when you have the power of the world wide web at your fingertips! Finally our turn! Our inspermination technician (the title I officially bestow upon her) arrives in the room. Her name? Good question. We don't actually know. Pause here...does it make Heidi slightly slutty if she gets knocked up by a person whose name she doesn't even know? Kind of makes Teen Mom look chaste, huh? I digress...
Before we do the deed, we bring up the LH surge and communicate to unknown knocker-upper that we were actually a little offended at the tone taken by the unnamed sonogram tech about tracking. I told unknown baby-maker that this wasn't our first rodeo, we had been through this for two years so we know how it works. She apologizes and we let it go. Why? Because that's how we roll. We got some baby making to focus on, not being pissy about the lecture we got about tracking our surge. Much like the first time with a high school jock, the "injection" only took about five minutes. Very fast. Mostly painless except the unexpected jolt at the top of Heidi's uterus when the catheter made its way a little too far up. Yowza! A little jump on the table, the more G-force to suck the sperm into the uterus and knock her up. Maybe this was their secret recipe for success!!! Tricky, ingenious even! The whole experience was exhausting so, well, we went home to take a nap. Sidebar: Heidi and I have found that most of life's really ponderable challenges are made less intriguing with a little nap. We have solved most of the mysteries of the world, simply by napping. So, yes, this little pregnancy challenge was going to be overtaken and defeated with a nap.
Day 15 welcomes a new player into the fertility game: progesterone suppositories. What are these, you query? Well, shaped much like a bullet and a larger than a 9mm bullet (that's my only frame of reference...I'm not a huge gun expert. Pft.), the progesterone suppository is designed for vaginal insertion and absorption in the body part located most convenient to the uterus. The vagina. Hence "vaginal" progesterone suppository. Let me take some creative, descriptive liberties here and paint a clear picture for you...I'd hate for any of you to not benefit from every detail available in our fertility journey. The vagina bullet must be inserted twice a day for seventeen days. They must also be refrigerated. Therefore, the COLD vagina bullet is inserted twice a day. In her vagina. Digitally (meaning, no instrument to help...just the little pointer finger). So, the cold vaginal bullet is refrigerated for a reason. They melt with heat. Take a moment to think about where in this scenario heat might come into play...think about it, think about it. Ding, ding, ding. So, think a little deeper (no pun intended, dirty minded freaks!) about what happens when something meant to be kept cold so it doesn't melt is inserted into a warm body cavity where science, or common sense, would dictate that it might melt. What impact does that have? I'll give you a multiple choice guess:
A. The vaginal bullet melts, drains from its "cavity" and leaves an oily mess in ones panties.
B. A sudden "flow" happens upon standing, wherein an immediate appearance of a urinal accident appears to have happened, usually at work and other inconvenient locations.
C. Several pairs of panties and work pants have more oil slicks than the Gulf of Mexico after BP uprooted and left.
D. All of the above.
To say the least, Heidi hated the vaginal bullet. However, the doctor told her she preferred these to the shot because they were closer to the intended target. Heidi would prefer the shot.
I considered drawing out this results of all of this new effort, but, well, it's been awhile since I have blogged and I have a good feeling that this is already going to be a little novella so I'll just blurt it out. Negative pregnancy test. There. I said it. All this and a big fat negative. I have to say that I am usually prepared for dealing with these tests and the potential for a negative result. I have to be honest, for whatever reason, this one was devastating to me. I don't know why this one hit me so hard. I cried. A lot. I couldn't talk to Heidi, not because I held her accountable for this, not at all. I couldn't talk to her because for the first time, I couldn't find anything positive to say. I have no glass-half-full mumbo jumbo to throw out there to deflect the sting of this pain. I had nothing. I felt emotionally and physically spent. I stayed in bed the whole evening and when Heidi finally came to bed, I still had nothing. I held her and cried but I had nothing to say except that I didn't think I could do this anymore. Not exactly the fairy tale ending we were hoping for.
So, fast forward a couple of days. After accepting what was our fifth sucky reality with IUI, we had a talk. It was a hard talk but we did it anyway. We talked about how far we would travel down this path. We talked about what it would take to make us call it quits. Despite thinking this would work two years ago with the first IUI and spending, oh my gosh, like $2500 (so much money!), here we were. Five IUI's, one IVF and one FET later. And $2500? Puh-leaze. Such a small amount compared to what we've spent on this endeavor. I would love to say that money is no object in our quest to make a baby, but unfortunately that whole lottery thing hasn't panned out for us and our jobs won't give us a "fertility cost of living" salary increase. We have limited means. So we had "the talk". I won't bore you with all of the sordid details of a somber and difficult conversation, but I will share with you the ultimate resolution we made. We would try one more IUI and one more IVF. If we didn't get pregnant with either of these, our journey would end.
This brings us to cycle #2 of IUI with the Reproductive Medical Group. So much of our hopes sit with what is literally one-half of our remaining tries to make a baby. Last IUI.
Heidi's cycle starts. Here goes...we start the same protocol again. This time, we are scheduled to do our egg-counting ultrasound on day 11. Don't want to miss our window, now do we?
Day 10 brings an unexpected phone call from our new friends at the Reproductive Medical Group. We were advised that the blood tests Heidi had to do for the first IVF would expire soon. Apparently, they are only good for one year. Nothing for us to worry about right now because we aren't doing IVF this cycle. Well, actually, wrong. RMG has a policy...they want those blood tests done every year for IUI. They require them twice per year if we are doing IVF. And at their lab. Huh. Need I remind you, dear friends, that our insurance covers nada with this group? Not even blood tests? Need I also show you my bank statement demonstrating that these tests run around twelve hundred pesos? Huh. Oh yea, forgot to tell you one more thing. I'm also going to need to do all of these tests. At their lab. No insurance coverage. And if you are just tuning into this blog, let me remind my dear audience that I am not a boy. I am not donating sperm to this endeavor. I am not donating eggs to this endeavor. I am donating cold, hard cash...said cash was not being blood tested. Why would I need to take the same blood tests (at their lab) that Heidi had to take, even though I wasn't a physical participant in this process? Response: It's their policy. Huh. I wonder, as a layman, how testing for communicable blood issues impacts fertility more than twice the rate that the FDA requires? I wonder about this little policy, I wonder. You don't think it's a policy created merely to generate revenue, do you? Nah...I'm getting paranoid. Pft.
Day 11, back at RMG, follicle counting day. Woot-woot! We are hoping for 3 or 4 follicles. This is our day. Yea baby...glass half full is back! Can't wait...gettin' ready to knock up my wife again. Again we have a different sonographer, no-name #3. Heidi's uterine lining looks good (so she says). I have to say I've always admired the measurements associated with her uterine lining. She makes a wife proud.
After our appointment, we converse and both agree that we are extremely disappointed with the Reproductive Medical Group and their stream of no-name, uninvested techs and sonographers, spewing their ridiculous "no tracking" lectures. We seriously consider Dr. Welden again. At a frigging minimum, Dr. Welden actually knows who we are. He cared if we got pregnant. He cared about whether we would inseminate with one follicle. He wasn't just trying to make a buck off of us.
Aside here: Outside of our regularly scheduled program, we previously communicated with Pam, our nurse at Dr. Welden's, about our frustration with her lack of response. It was worked out. Over, done with, gone. We would have considered going back to them, except we had already committed to ourselves that we would give RMG an honest-to-goodness try.
We place a call to Dr. Welden's office to seek his advice on whether or not we should to do this insemination. We want to increase our chance…that’s definitely not going to happen with 1 follicle. Dr. Welden's office advice was that with only one insemination per cycle, it wasn't really worth it to try. Of course, there was a chance, just not the statistical chance we wanted to take, especially not with one-half of our remaining tries.
Heidi and I talk some more. Do we want to keep going back to RMG? We have an IUI appointment on Thursday for our sixth inspermination try. Do we want to continue with one follicle? What happens after that? If it doesn't work, we would have to spend a couple thousand dollars on blood tests to do an IVF through their office. They've already left such a bad taste in our mouth that we both feel like we just don't want to go back. What does that mean?
Welcome back Dr. Weldon. We let their office know that we are done with the RMG and want to come back. We ask the nurse to ask Dr. Welden what he thinks we should do: another IUI after 5 failed ones or IVF. Dr. Welden's opinion: IVF. Huh. A slight change of plans.
So this is it, my friends. Our final attempt. We had to get a loan to pay for this cycle (thank goodness we don't pay Jessica's rent anymore!) This is it. All cards are on the table. We have and are putting everything we have on the table - all emotion, all hopes, all finances. Here we go. Powers that be...this is your chance. Bless us, my friend, bless us this time.
And for those of you that believe in the power of prayer or positive thinking or both, we need you something fierce. You've always been in our corner and have helped us through this journey. One last favor we have to ask...on your knees. Give it all you got...we need your prayers.
We are at the beginning of the end.
Last time...come on, Heidi. Let's go make a baby.
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