Hi there - welcome to my little corner of the internet. I'm glad to have you here.
This blog is about living my life with infertility. Sometimes infertility is my life, sometimes it's just a part of it, but as most infertile women can attest, it always plays a huge role in everything you do. Not every post will be about infertility, but if it's not, I assure you it's because I'm trying to distract myself. My story is my own - everyone has their own infertility story. That's what makes this journey so lonely sometimes. But sometimes having camaraderie on this journey helps, so that's why I'm sharing.
And with that, here is my infertility story.
June 2008 - Married
December 2012 - prenatal review with my OB, began prenatal vitamins
July 5, 2013 - beginning of the first cycle that we decided to try (all cycles leading up to this point were 27 days)
August 2013 - moved states
September 2013 - finally the end of the cycle that started in July - my body freaked out for over 80 days, and the cycle had to be ended with progesterone from a new OB that I had to quickly find after we moved
October 2013 through February 2014 - trying via timed intercourse and temping/charting - cycles still fairly irregular but ranging 31-35 days
March 2014 - CD3 and 7DPO bloodwork, all normal
April 2014 - Husband's first SA - normal count and motility, 5% morphology - OB makes it sound bad (we later learn that's not so terrible). Begin him on supplements: CoQ10, Zinc, Vitamin C, Vitamin A, L-Carnitine
Continued cyclical trying...
July 2014 - 1 year since we began to try. Husband's second SA - increased count, similar motility, 3% morphology. I had an HSG done, tubes all clear.
August 2014 - Met with an RE to discuss our situation. He was ok, but we didn't really click.
September 2014 - Met with a second RE, loved her. Energized and ready to tackle this. We agreed that once I got my period at the end of this cycle, we would begin Femara, monitoring, and trigger with timed intercourse in October. We have a theory that I naturally surge too late when the follicle has grown too big and over-matured. This makes sense to us.
October 2, 2014 - 12DPO, I pee on a stick that morning because my husband's parents are arriving that afternoon to visit for the weekend, and I want to drink wine with them. To my complete shock, it is positive. Very, undeniably, positive. I call my RE's nurse, she orders a beta. It comes back at 41. I'm pregnant.
October 4, 2014 - Beta #2, 79. Doubling, awesome. RE wants to check one more time.
October 6, 2014 - Beta #3, 114. Eeesh. Definitely not doubling. In fact, that's only a 44% increase. Absolutely terrified that I am going to lose it.
October 8, 2014 - Beta #4 - 296!! Way more than doubling! In fact, it looks like the previous beta was a fluke. This is it! My due date is June 12, 2015!
October 14, 2014 - 5w3d, first ultrasound to make sure everything is in the right place. See a beautiful big gestational sac right where it should be, measuring on track. Feeling wonderful!
October 22, 2014 - 6w4d, second ultrasound. I knew going into it that at a minimum we needed to see a fetal pole, and potentially (and ideally) wanted to see a little fluttering heartbeat. When the image appeared on the screen, it was black. A big, black, empty gestational sac. It was measuring nearly 7 weeks, but it was completely empty. The ultrasound tech said the yolk might be along the side of the wall, but I wasn't feeling hopeful. I knew what a blighted ovum was, and I knew that's what we were probably facing. They took my progesterone and HCG, which were both stellar and strong, but blighted ovums are tricky little fuckers like that.
October 27, 2014 - After the longest weekend of my life, we went in that morning for the final diagnosis. Yet again, the screen popped up, and a completely empty gestational sac appeared. It was official, blighted ovum.
November 7, 2014 - Still no miscarriage, so we decided to take cytotec to force it. It worked incredibly quickly and after the worst night of my life, it was over.
November 13, 2014 - Ultrasound shows a large blood clot sitting on my cervix, but we expect it to pass. I have to pretend to be ok and go for my husband's sister's bachelorette weekend and hope the clot passes at a time when it's not in the middle of the festivities. Luckily it does on Sunday morning while I'm by myself in my hotel room.
November 20, 2014 - Ultrasound looks clear to me, but apparently there is still a lot of blood flow activity to the lining. Enough that my RE wants me to take another round of cytotec. I'm angry but ready to just get it done with. I put it in that afternoon, and nothing happens. Literally, nothing.
November 21, 2014 - I call the RE to let her know it didn't do anything, fully expecting to be told to do another round. What I wasn't prepared for was her telling me that I would need a D&C. In a very emotional day, we talk about needing to get this done quickly, but we were supposed to leave in two days to go home for Thanksgiving week. She was incredibly kind and instead of having me change my flight plans, she booked me for a 6am surgery at their surgical center the next morning, Saturday morning. She wasn't even on the surgery schedule that day, but she came in just for me. As much as I hate all of this, having an amazing doctor does make it a little better.
November 22, 2014 - D&C.
December 16, 2014 - Finally my HCG has dropped below 5. Now even my blood is officially no longer pregnant.
December 30, 2014 - Began my first true period since the miscarriage nightmare began.
January 2015 - First Femara+trigger+timed intercourse+progesterone cycle. Femara 5mg, 2 mature follicles. No pregnancy.
February 2015 - Skip treatment this cycle, take a trip to Vegas and just enjoy ourselves. It was scheduled before we even got pregnant. I get a beautiful memorial tattoo for my lost pregnancy - a photo-realistic black & grey rose on my side, since the rose is the birth flower of June, my due date.
March 2015 - Intend to do a second Femara cycle, but an ultrasound on CD3 find a cyst. I get cyst-benched. We still do monitoring and trigger at CD12 with an 18.4mm follicle. No pregnancy.
April 2015 - Decide to move on to IUI's. Femara 5mg, only have one 17mm follicle at 12DPO. By 14DPO, it has only grown to 18.1mm. We are told to trigger on 15DPO, and do our first IUI 36 hours later. The IUI sperm wash numbers were great, but I wasn't enthused by my one mediocre follicle. No pregnancy.
May 2015 - Up my dose of Femara to 7.5mg. However, we start the cycle with a 14mm follicle on CD3 (odd...) so the Femara makes a gigantor 29mm follicle by CD10. My body isn't naturally surging (again, in line with our theory), but it's too big. We abandon plans for our second IUI, and just trigger right away and have timed intercourse. Not feeling hopeful. No pregnancy. Started estrace at 8DPO in prep for next cycle to make sure I don't begin the cycle with another large cycle.
June 12, 2015 - My original due date. Today. This is the day I begin this blog.
June 2015 - Stupid over-response to Femara 7.5mg, created 10 medium-sized follicles that refused to grow above 14mm. Did an entire second round of Femara, and the day after the largest one measured 16.2mm, I began naturally surging. We did the IUI just in case, but not surprisingly, the cycle failed. No pregnancy.
This blog is about living my life with infertility. Sometimes infertility is my life, sometimes it's just a part of it, but as most infertile women can attest, it always plays a huge role in everything you do. Not every post will be about infertility, but if it's not, I assure you it's because I'm trying to distract myself. My story is my own - everyone has their own infertility story. That's what makes this journey so lonely sometimes. But sometimes having camaraderie on this journey helps, so that's why I'm sharing.
And with that, here is my infertility story.
June 2008 - Married
December 2012 - prenatal review with my OB, began prenatal vitamins
July 5, 2013 - beginning of the first cycle that we decided to try (all cycles leading up to this point were 27 days)
August 2013 - moved states
September 2013 - finally the end of the cycle that started in July - my body freaked out for over 80 days, and the cycle had to be ended with progesterone from a new OB that I had to quickly find after we moved
October 2013 through February 2014 - trying via timed intercourse and temping/charting - cycles still fairly irregular but ranging 31-35 days
March 2014 - CD3 and 7DPO bloodwork, all normal
April 2014 - Husband's first SA - normal count and motility, 5% morphology - OB makes it sound bad (we later learn that's not so terrible). Begin him on supplements: CoQ10, Zinc, Vitamin C, Vitamin A, L-Carnitine
Continued cyclical trying...
July 2014 - 1 year since we began to try. Husband's second SA - increased count, similar motility, 3% morphology. I had an HSG done, tubes all clear.
August 2014 - Met with an RE to discuss our situation. He was ok, but we didn't really click.
September 2014 - Met with a second RE, loved her. Energized and ready to tackle this. We agreed that once I got my period at the end of this cycle, we would begin Femara, monitoring, and trigger with timed intercourse in October. We have a theory that I naturally surge too late when the follicle has grown too big and over-matured. This makes sense to us.
October 2, 2014 - 12DPO, I pee on a stick that morning because my husband's parents are arriving that afternoon to visit for the weekend, and I want to drink wine with them. To my complete shock, it is positive. Very, undeniably, positive. I call my RE's nurse, she orders a beta. It comes back at 41. I'm pregnant.
October 4, 2014 - Beta #2, 79. Doubling, awesome. RE wants to check one more time.
October 6, 2014 - Beta #3, 114. Eeesh. Definitely not doubling. In fact, that's only a 44% increase. Absolutely terrified that I am going to lose it.
October 8, 2014 - Beta #4 - 296!! Way more than doubling! In fact, it looks like the previous beta was a fluke. This is it! My due date is June 12, 2015!
October 14, 2014 - 5w3d, first ultrasound to make sure everything is in the right place. See a beautiful big gestational sac right where it should be, measuring on track. Feeling wonderful!
October 22, 2014 - 6w4d, second ultrasound. I knew going into it that at a minimum we needed to see a fetal pole, and potentially (and ideally) wanted to see a little fluttering heartbeat. When the image appeared on the screen, it was black. A big, black, empty gestational sac. It was measuring nearly 7 weeks, but it was completely empty. The ultrasound tech said the yolk might be along the side of the wall, but I wasn't feeling hopeful. I knew what a blighted ovum was, and I knew that's what we were probably facing. They took my progesterone and HCG, which were both stellar and strong, but blighted ovums are tricky little fuckers like that.
October 27, 2014 - After the longest weekend of my life, we went in that morning for the final diagnosis. Yet again, the screen popped up, and a completely empty gestational sac appeared. It was official, blighted ovum.
November 7, 2014 - Still no miscarriage, so we decided to take cytotec to force it. It worked incredibly quickly and after the worst night of my life, it was over.
November 13, 2014 - Ultrasound shows a large blood clot sitting on my cervix, but we expect it to pass. I have to pretend to be ok and go for my husband's sister's bachelorette weekend and hope the clot passes at a time when it's not in the middle of the festivities. Luckily it does on Sunday morning while I'm by myself in my hotel room.
November 20, 2014 - Ultrasound looks clear to me, but apparently there is still a lot of blood flow activity to the lining. Enough that my RE wants me to take another round of cytotec. I'm angry but ready to just get it done with. I put it in that afternoon, and nothing happens. Literally, nothing.
November 21, 2014 - I call the RE to let her know it didn't do anything, fully expecting to be told to do another round. What I wasn't prepared for was her telling me that I would need a D&C. In a very emotional day, we talk about needing to get this done quickly, but we were supposed to leave in two days to go home for Thanksgiving week. She was incredibly kind and instead of having me change my flight plans, she booked me for a 6am surgery at their surgical center the next morning, Saturday morning. She wasn't even on the surgery schedule that day, but she came in just for me. As much as I hate all of this, having an amazing doctor does make it a little better.
November 22, 2014 - D&C.
December 16, 2014 - Finally my HCG has dropped below 5. Now even my blood is officially no longer pregnant.
December 30, 2014 - Began my first true period since the miscarriage nightmare began.
January 2015 - First Femara+trigger+timed intercourse+progesterone cycle. Femara 5mg, 2 mature follicles. No pregnancy.
February 2015 - Skip treatment this cycle, take a trip to Vegas and just enjoy ourselves. It was scheduled before we even got pregnant. I get a beautiful memorial tattoo for my lost pregnancy - a photo-realistic black & grey rose on my side, since the rose is the birth flower of June, my due date.
March 2015 - Intend to do a second Femara cycle, but an ultrasound on CD3 find a cyst. I get cyst-benched. We still do monitoring and trigger at CD12 with an 18.4mm follicle. No pregnancy.
April 2015 - Decide to move on to IUI's. Femara 5mg, only have one 17mm follicle at 12DPO. By 14DPO, it has only grown to 18.1mm. We are told to trigger on 15DPO, and do our first IUI 36 hours later. The IUI sperm wash numbers were great, but I wasn't enthused by my one mediocre follicle. No pregnancy.
May 2015 - Up my dose of Femara to 7.5mg. However, we start the cycle with a 14mm follicle on CD3 (odd...) so the Femara makes a gigantor 29mm follicle by CD10. My body isn't naturally surging (again, in line with our theory), but it's too big. We abandon plans for our second IUI, and just trigger right away and have timed intercourse. Not feeling hopeful. No pregnancy. Started estrace at 8DPO in prep for next cycle to make sure I don't begin the cycle with another large cycle.
June 12, 2015 - My original due date. Today. This is the day I begin this blog.
June 2015 - Stupid over-response to Femara 7.5mg, created 10 medium-sized follicles that refused to grow above 14mm. Did an entire second round of Femara, and the day after the largest one measured 16.2mm, I began naturally surging. We did the IUI just in case, but not surprisingly, the cycle failed. No pregnancy.