Welcome!

It took me a while to decide whether or not to start a blog. I was unsure if I wanted everyone to know my business and fairly sure no one cared to know. But I knew my family would like to see it and that I would have fun writing it. I began this blog in hopes of getting some therapeutic release and to update friends and family about our life. I don’t want this to be a “fertility blog” per se, but of course it will be a large part of it because it is a huge part of my life right now. And I do want to start with a recap of the last 3 years. Please be patient with me as it is hard to remember the dates of everything. This has been a long, difficult process and there are many details I know I will forget. And if I may add, I am currently nursing a botched root canal with the beautiful and wonderous memory and pain erasing Loratab. When Josh and I met 3 years prior we knew from the beginning that we had the same goals and desires in life. Maybe that’s why I moved in with him after only 6 months of knowing him. (This is very out of character for me. Seriously I can’t make decisions well. I have to research buying a dress, try it on several times, buy it and then return it a day later.) But this was a decision that was easy for me, I had finally met a man who told me what he wanted and didn’t play any games. I knew he wanted to get married and have children and that he wanted to do it all with me. No nerves, just happiness and excitement. And hope. We have been married 3 and half years now 🙂

So first comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes the baby in the baby carriage…right……right?

We decided June 10th, 2011 that I would go off of birth control and hope for the best. We fixed up our old house as good as we could so we could sell it and move to a different part of town into a bigger home that could fit a threesome. Everything worked out pretty perfectly on that, we got a full price offer and we got the house we wanted. Life was amazing, we knew we were blessed.

But all the while July came, August, September, October and before you know it it’s January 2012 and still I have had no menstrual cycle. Side note: I hate the fertility terminology and that I have to say things like “trying to conceive” nor do I enjoy discussing with others whether or not Aunt Flo is making an appearance.

So I made a visit to my OBGYN, I tried a couple of rounds of Clomid to induce a cycle and when it didn’t work I was referred to a fertility clinic. And so we were poked and prodded with tons of diagnostic tests to find out why we weren’t getting pregnant. My husband didn’t have any fertility issues, in fact he had millions of lil’ Michael Phelps swimming around in there. So we knew it was me that had the issue, but no one knew what was wrong with me. Throughout this whole first year of treatment I never got any answers. Just “take this medicine, come in for ultrasounds, yadda yadda yadda”. They were the experts, so I did what I was told.

I can’t remember every single medicine we tried but I do remember Follistim, which is a follicle stimulating hormone. Josh gave me a shot in the thigh every day for seven days and then I’d have an ultrasound to see if I had any viable follicles that could be fertilized. The first time I over-stimulated on the medicine, which meant we could have had octuplets so that round was cancelled. So on to another month, I had 4-5 days of shots instead and an ultrasound and nothing had happened to my follicles. It was like I hadn’t even taken the medicine. This was very disappointing and confusing. This medicine was not cheap folks. Not cheap at all.

I think I took Femara after the shots, this was a pill but I would rather have a thousand shots into my eyeballs than experience the side effects I got from Femara. I was exhausted, bloated, felt crappy and gained a lot of weight. All I could do after work was lie down, I was so tired but I couldn’t sleep. I had hot flashes in the middle of summer where we had 100 degree+ temps. I think at this point I was 10 lbs over my normal weight. I hated life and myself but I did it because I had hope that I would ovulate and maybe achieve pregnancy, and nothing happened. The only answer I got from my doctor was that I had some symptoms of a person who had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome or PCOS. This was hard to swallow since my only symptom of it that I had was infertility. And after the Follistim and Femara failed we were told we would have to do IVF. We got the pricing for a week later and it was $12,000 (gulp). Time to get a second opinion.

I started researching IVF success rates online because if we had to do it I wanted the best chances possible. That’s how I came across our current doctor, Dr. Bundren. I got more answers from him in our first consultation than I did for the whole duration of our treatment at the previous place. He asked me something like “so you have this family history of endometriosis and no one has even suspected that you may have it also?” And my answer was well yes, I have asked my OBGYN and my previous fertility doctor and they all pretty much ignored me. With a pelvic exam he had decided I showed enough symptoms to have a laparoscopy. I had my surgery February 15th and he found some stage one endometriosis on my bladder, uterus and in my tubes. He was able to remove the lesions from my bladder and uterus but endometriosis can’t be removed surgically from inside the tubes. So we began 6 months of Lupron, every month I would have a shot that would put my body into a menopausal like state so that my tubes could heal. But yes, my body was in a menopausal like state! I am so blessed and thankful that I didn’t get hot flashes but I had plenty of other symptoms that I care not to discuss at this time. He also put me on a medication called Metformin to help with the insulin resistance that comes from my PCOS, which he determined I also have. This medicine also helped me to lose the 10 pounds I had gained plus more! Woohoo! Well I finished the 6 months successfully (yay!) and I was told to do two months of birth control pills to get my reproductive system going again. So here I am. I just finished my 2 months of birth control and I am waiting to see what will happen next. I will keep you updated.