What happened two months ago

Ok, I've alluded to this a few times now, so I'm finally taking the time to open up and share what happened in September.

My first cycle after my trip to Finland & Russia in August was totally normal.  Before that, in Finland, I was about 12 hours or so late, but that's actually about right because it was a 9 hour time difference.  My period also lasted a day or two longer, but that's pretty normal too since I'd been travelling.

Anyway, the next cycle all seemed normal through the rest of August and into September... except my period didn't come when it was supposed to in September.  When I was just a day or two late, I didn't think much of it since I had been travelling during the previous month and that might have messed up my internal clock a little.

When I was 3 days late I took an early pregnancy test, just to see if I should be going to the beer garden that night after work or not.  It was negative, but was started raining later that afternoon so I didn't go out anyway.  Probably for the best I figured, just in case.

Two days later I was five days late and was really starting to wonder.  I tested again and was still negative, so I started googling about when those tests were supposed to be most accurate.  Everything said that while they can detect on the first day of your missed period, they are more accurate about a week later.

So I decided to make an appointment with my gyno for a blood test.  The next morning, day 6 of being late, I went in for a blood draw.  B & I were both so convinced at this point that this must finally be "our time" that I didn't even bother calling the RE doctors.  I didn't want to go in to work that day after the appointment, as I wanted to be home where I had cell reception when I got the call with the news.

When they called late that afternoon, I was shocked to hear the test was negative.  They had done a quantitative test, not qualitative like I'd asked for though, so I was frustrated and asked for some answers.  The nurse who'd called me said that sometimes women can just have an "off" cycle.  That's when I thought I should schedule a check up with the gyno since it had been a couple years.  Time to make sure nothing has changed on my end of things while we've been working on B this whole time.  She couldn't fit me in for weeks though, which is why I didn't go until the morning I flew out for India.

I was still pretty frustrated though, and called Robbie to get a blood draw from them too.  He agreed that we should do a qualitative one to see if we could get any answers.  The next day, day 7 of being late, I went in.  Later that day, those results came back as 0, completely negative.  I was not pregnant.

I wanted to make an appointment to have another consultation with Robbie and start completely over on all my testing, in case something had happened in the last two years since I'd first had all my stuff done.  Maybe I've developed PCOS, maybe I have endo now, maybe I'm not ovulating anymore & need clomid, maybe my tube is blocked again and they needed to open it up again.  SOMETHING!

He couldn't get me in for a week, but I was going to be out of town presenting at a conference, so I had to schedule the appointment for two weeks out.  This was so ridiculous, how could they learn anything about what was going on with my body that would cause me to be a week late if they didn't look at me for two weeks?!?!? I was beyond frustrated.  I was devastated and crushed and angry.  I wanted some answers about what was going on.

I didn't believe it could be true that I was not pregnant and nothing abnormal was going on with me.  I did a ton of googling.  There are women who don't produce the HSG hormone & never get a positive pregnancy test result.  Also, if it was a chemical pregnancy, that might not produce the hormone either but would cause me to be late.  Also, if I was pregnant but about to miscarry, it's possible that I hadn't been far enough along to detect the hormone and then lost it before I could get the positive result.  Clearly, I was in denial and couldn't believe that I wasn't pregnant.  I was grasping for anything to hold on to that could help me make sense of everything going on around me.

But honestly, I've never been anything but like clockwork.  I always get my period right on target, maybe a day or two off, but never a week!  I always ovulated between days 14-16, like clockwork!  I'm so regular it's almost laughable in the face of our infertility, and here I was A WEEK LATE and the doctors were all just trying to tell me that sometimes women have an "off month" and I shouldn't be concerned unless this becomes a pattern?!?!?!?  I was so mad!  I want to be on the fast track to fertility, so if something major like this occurs, I want my team of doctors to start running tests and getting to the bottom of what caused this change!  Grrrrrr.....

The next day I started spotting and then got my period.  I fell into such dispair.  I finally started believing that it was true that I was either never pregnant at all, or had been and was miscarrying, or had had a chemical pregnancy.  Either way, it felt like a huge loss.  

Do you see the hidden baby in this image?
This was totally B & I making plans for our future with our baby when we thought we were pregnant.

Even B seemed to be affected by it.  We'd started making plans, even discussing whether I should cancel this trip to India that was coming up, and debating whether we'd be trying to do his big 4-0 birthday trip next summer, since I'd probably be on maternity leave.  We were making plans about decorating the spare bedrooms in our new house and buying a bigger car when we could afford it.  We were blissfully happy hoping that our time had finally come, and we'd gotten there naturally, without having to spend $20k + to get there.

Then on Day 8 I got my period and it all came crashing down around us.  B was sensitive the first day and then seemed to move on.  Not me.  I was sad and angry.  I tried to focus on figuring out what had happened.  I wanted answers.  Oh, and get this, my period only lasted 2 days!  WTF?!?

When I finally got to go in to see Robbie, he seemed to think that trying on our own is futile now and we should move on to IUI's. I told him that we want to skip that or maybe just do one, before moving on to IVF in early 2014.  He seemed to kind of write me off then.  If I wasn't going to do ART now, he didn't seem interested in exploring other less invasive ways to help us in the meantime.  He told me work on losing weight, and if my next few cycles were like this, then maybe we could talk about clomid, but if I get right back on track again, then he said no way to the clomid.

Then we argued about math which really pissed me off.  I came home and told B about how Robbie was trying to tell me that each IUI has a cumulative effect, which is such bullsh*t.  Dr. J had previously explained it to us the exact opposite way.  Yeah sure, each IUI has a 20% chance of working, but that doesn't add up to getting 100% odds after five IUI's.  No, the fifth one still just has a 20% chance of working, just like the first one!  

God Robbie pissed me off!  He tried to make the analogy that if I flipped a coin twenty times, my odds of getting heads at least once would be much higher than if I just flipped it once.  Yes, fine.  But I'm not doing 20 IUI's!  And besides, every individual time you flip that coin, it's always going to have a 50/50 chance of being heads.  

Gawwwwwwd he pissed me off!  And flipping a coing doesn't cost you $1300 out of pocket each time like an IUI does.  We'd rather put that toward the $13-20K + that we'll need for IVF soon anyway.  Which by the way, only has a 50% percent chance of working.  Geesh, with Robbie's reasoning, we should just spend all our money playing the lottery, and then then when we win after playing for a while (which according to him we'd have good chances of doing after playing more often), we could just pay for IVF right away!

Seriously, what kind of a doctor argues this way?  This is why I talked afterward with my gyno about how I don't "click" with Robbie.  I'm so glad she encouraged me to feel comfortable switching to Dr. Strawn.  I really feel like that guy respects me as an individual, not just another patient with the same old textbook problems & routine solutions.  Strawn's the one who said B & I have been infertile for over 4 years, since we went off contraception, not just the 2.5 years that we think we've been "actively trying."  I really respect this guy & feel validated by him, not belittled.

So that's the story.  For the first time in my life I actually felt the thrill that I always imagined I would once I finally got pregnant.  And then it was ripped away.  I'm kind of in the place where I was after we decided not to do the IVF in January 2012 again.  It's not a good place and I'm just trying to process everything.

Blogging is helping of couse.  Sometimes blogging too much kind of keeps me stuck in this world where it's all I think about so I stop for a while for my mental well being & balance.  Then something happens and it helps me to process it by writing it down again, and if I get positive feedback from those who love me or have been there too then it helps me a little more.  And if I can help someone else going through this too, then that helps even more still.

Travelling has been helping as well.  It keeps me busy so I don't have time to think about our struggle so much.  And it puts things in perspective by reminding me of all the wonderful opportunities that I'm able to take advantage of right now, which I probably couldn't do if I was pregnant or had kids.  India in particular has also reminded me that things could be a lot worse for us.  Many other people in the world don't have clean drinking water, a sanitary place to go to the bathroom, or have access to proper food or shelter.

On the other hand, travelling also gives me something positive to focus on like having new experiences and making new memories, especially as a couple with B this time!  Of course, like I've said in the last several posts, it's always in the back of my mind and I have guilty-little-pleasure thoughts about making a baby with B in India and naming it Asha or Indie or something.  But seriously, without some kind of hope, where would we all be?

I was watching a movie on the way to India and one quote really stood out to me. In the movie, the character was explaining that they have a quote here in India that goes something like this, 

"Everything works out in the end, and if it's not working out, then it must not be the end."

I love this.  Whenever I start to get sad about our baby woes, I need to remember this quote.  It really gives me renewed hope for our future and this crazy journey we are on.  It also stands as a testament to my stubborn personality and perseverance.   I will never give up on the dream of my child.  I just can't do it.  Motherhood is something I was born for.  It's all I've ever envisioned for myself.  It's all I've every truly wanted.  

And B is going to make such a good daddy.  His capacity for love, nurturing, and protection has always been one of my favorite traits of his.  He's going to be an amazing father and I just want to finally give him the opportunity to realize that potential.  I just want to have that man's babies.

Well anyway, he's joining me here in India for some touring after I finished my work here, so either way we'll have some amazing experiences and take with us some amazing memories to share for a lifetime together!

So you're saying there's a chance...

I'm sitting in the Hyderabad Airport, reading yet another book on infertility. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother anymore. I've read so many books by so many different kinds of authors (doctors, patients, nutritionists, homeopathic experts, former infertiles, etc), that by this point, I feel like I've heard it all and there is nothing new for me to learn. Yet each new book does present information in a new way and every now and then I do get inspired by new ideas.

The book I'm reading now on my iPad has a few words on varicoceles. As we know, B had varicocele repair surgery back in April. He had very large varicoceles on one side, and fairly large on the other. Dr. J had said that with most patients, a significant number see improvement in sperm counts and achieve pregnancy after 3 months post-surgery. Then another large percentage will see improvement and pregnancy success after 6 months. A few more after a year.

This book claims that men with large varicoceles may see improvement within 6-12 months after the repair.



This gives me some renewed hope because we are exactly at the 6 month mark as of RIGHT NOW!

I'd actually already given up faith in us seeing any improvement from the surgery, and just figured we were going to have to wait more than a year until we could afford IVF. But if the stats in this book are accurate, then we may now just be entering into our prime time for TTC!

Best part of all, after my ordeal two months ago, I was relieved to get my period on time (like clockwork) while I was here in India. It did last an extra day or two longer than normal, but that is common when traveling, especially with a nearly 12 hour time change, so I'm not worried about that at all. Anyway, my point is, I'll be in my fertile period next week and should ovulate once B joins me for our vacation in Northern India! Maybe the stars will finally align for us and we'll be able to make our own little Indian baby here together ;)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Vitamin D and Infertility

So you know how I said in my last post that my gyno had me get some blood tests done?  Just about everything checked out normally.  

Geez, between this and the infertility testing, you'd think I'm the perfect female human specimen!  Sure, I had a deviated septum in my early twenties but that was easily fixed with a simple surgery at 23 & I've rarely had a sinus infection since.

Yeah, there was the back surgery for a herniated disk at 26 too, but that could really happen to anyone...

And of course there's always the pink elephant in the room, my weight.  The clinical charts say I'm obese, but the IVF specialist I saw down in IL said I wasn't so overweight that it should be effecting my infertility, and she warned me that a crash diet would be worse for my infertility than the amount of extra lbs I'm carrying.  Robbie said he's convinced I'm ovulating like clockwork like I say I am.  He does want me to work on losing weight though, just in case it might help.  A book I read said losing just 10% of your body weight can improve your fertility, sometimes for unknown reasons.  Sounds like the varicocele repair surgery improvement rate.  Anyway, maybe I'll talk to B about me getting a personal trainer again after we finishing paying off this trip to India (he's joining me TOMORROW for a week of vacation here!).  I had a personal trainer before our wedding and lost 20 lbs in 5-6 months.

Anyway, I digress.  My point was that my test results always come back perfectly healthy.  Which of course is a relief, but also sometimes frustrating and even maddening, since what I want most besides pregnancy and a baby is some answers as to why I'm not getting either of them.

Ok, so blood pressure, cholesterol  pre-diabetes screening, thyroid levels, etc all checked out great.  There was one huge red flag though this time.  Turns out I have a vitamin D deficiency!  I don't mean that explanation point to indicate I'm excited or anything, just surprised.

I guess a vitamin D level of 30-100 is normal, and 20-30 is considered insufficient   My level is 13.  That is considered a deficiency.  So I did some quick googling, and get this, overweight vegetarian women living in northern climates often have this problem... and frequently suffer from infertility as well!  There have been some studies of other infertility research done which correlates vitamin D supplements with increased fertility.  

I'll have to look into all this with better a more critical analysis of the research of course, but I called B right away and told him to bring me some vitamin D pills so I can start taking them right away when he joins me here in India!  

In the meantime I'm trying harder than usual to remember taking my pre-natal vitamins (I often feel defeated after so many years of taking them and not ever getting pregnant, which makes me ask, "what's the point?").  But they of course have some vitamin D in them and anything I can do to help at this point is worth trying!  

Also, when the smog clears in Delhi, I'll have to step out without sunscreen for 15 minutes or so.  Maybe we'll make an India baby when he gets here.  Or at least I'll get a tan.  Either way, it's a win-win I guess :)

Gyno Appointment

So get this, I'm in India.  Yep, I pretty much have the best job in the world.  In August they sent me to Finland for an international library conference, and now here we are, only in November, and they've sent me to India to recruit international students.  The pay isn't great, but the travel perks are AMAZING and my co-workers really make it a place I look forward to going every day.  I'm having the best time of life.  I'm creatively filled by my career, and they let me travel.  Life is good.

The morning before I flew out (late October), I voted.  Had to make sure I exercised my civil right/duty.  By the way, it worked.  My guy totally won :)

I did one other weird thing before flying out that morning.... I went to the gyno for my first annual exam & pap in two years.  After the pregnancy hopes two months ago, I realized I better get back in to see her for a regular check up.  I have had my vagina probed and blood drawn so many times in the last two years by my RE that I kind of forgot about my regular health maintenance.

It was kind of an interesting appointment actually.  I mean, don't get me wrong, it was all the usual stuff, the speculum, the breast exam, yadda yadda.  She decided to do some blood work on me since I don't have a general practitioner right now and had forgotten to get my "30-year" check up last year (like I said, I go to the clinic enough right now, I'm not looking for any extra trips to the doctor at the moment!).  She just wanted to check my cholesterol  thyroid, pre-diabetes screening, etc., since I'm in relatively good health otherwise, this was all she wanted to double-check on.

Before she sent me to the lab for the blood draw, we talked about the infertility.  She thought it had only been a year and a half, and I reminded her that it had been two years since I'd seen her last & she'd recommended us to Dr. J, but before that we'd been trying for 6 months.  Also, Dr.s Strawn & Robb (let's call him Robbie, makes him seem more human and fallible to me), told me that since B & I haven't used contraceptives since Sept. 2008, they consider us to have suffered from infertility for over 4 years.  That really got my gyno thinking.

Two things she told me really stuck out in my mind.  She told me to make sure both B & I have someone to talk to outside of our relationship about all this, since it can be really hard on a couple and men & women process it differently, especially since I want kids badly & B could honestly take them or leave them.  Anyway, she said the divorce rate for couples suffering from infertility is 70%!  That's right, you didn't misread it, SEVENTY PERCENT!

What does that say about B & I?  I think it says that so far, we must have a pretty incredible relationship, considering we've come this far through all this, especially the last 2.5 years since we started "trying."  It also makes me feel better about the tension it's caused between us too.  Makes me feel more normal.  Makes me want to hold on tighter to him though.  Makes me want to be more reasonable and understanding about his perspective on things when we're in the midst of a disagreement about all this.

The last thing the gyno said to me before I left for the lab was this, "Since you're taking a break for a while, watch your mood.... and watch your marriage."  Then she gave me some information about  a local support group for couples going through all stages of infertility.

God, that really makes me stop in my tracks and think.  To have a gyno warning me to watch my marriage, it must be something not to take too lightly.  Makes me think I better take that divorce rate seriously and literally watch my marriage!  Yikes!  

That's what I'm determined to do though. He's the love of my life.  Babies get older and grow up, but your life partner is the one you want to wake up next to every morning.  That's the one you're CHOOSING to spend every day with.  That's the one you want to go to bed with every night.  That's the one you want to call when something bad, funny, good, interesting, fantastic, horrible, or inspirational happens to you.  That's the person who matters most, and if you have a good one, you better hold on tight and not let them go.

On a completely different note, I find it funny that my gyno took, "we're trying naturally since B had varicocele repair surgery 6 months ago, and if that doesn't pan out, we're saving up for IVF in early 2014" to mean that we are "taking a break for a while."  Actually, it's not funny, it just validates the way I feel most of the time.

On a final note, my gyno asked how I was liking working with Dr.'s Strawn, Robbie, and J.  I told her J was a genius, and I really appreciated Dr. Strawn... but that Robbie, who was my primary RE over there, well, I wasn't really "clicking" with.  She told me that most of her patients love everyone over there, but the few who have issues, always say the issues is with Robbie!  She told me I shouldn't feel weird about requesting to switch to Dr. Strawn if I felt more comfortable.  I really like this gyno.  She seems to get me.  That, and she has never failed to provide me with instant gratification for anything I've requested from her... you know, except the whole pregnancy/baby thing.  Oh well, I guess I shouldn't be so greedy.

Think I'll look into that support group when I get home.