Our Infertility Journey (Part 2)

Here we go again.  Yesterday I left on telling you that we were going to start IUI since medication alone wasn’t working. 

I was still on Femara to help with ovulation; to ensure we went in at the right time for our IUI procedure I was doing daily over the counter ovulation predictor kits, by this time I was buying them in bulk.  We got the little digital smiley face letting us that ovulation was coming.  I called the doctor’s office and set up an appointment for our first IUI.  Our IUI was scheduled for Saturday, May 26^th 2012.  

Saturday, May 26^th 2012: Luckily we live close enough to the doctor’s office Dan was able to collect the sample at home and we headed in at about 9 am. The nurse took the cup and began to spin it down while we sat in the waiting room. She came back to the waiting room about 20 minutes later and asked Daniel if he had ever had a semen analysis done.  We told her yes and the results were in my medical charts.  That test was done about 8 months prior to this IUI; the results were excellent.   So we were shocked when the nurse could not find a single sperm in Daniel’s sample.  Not even one!  We thought for a brief minute and then had an “ah-ha” moment.  The reason there was no sperm was probably because we had sex (sorry if this is a little graphic) the night before and his body didn’t have enough time to replenish his supply. So we decided we would try again the next cycle. Everything should be back to normal by then, right?

We were wrong.  Our 2^nd IUI was a little over 1 month later.  We took in the sample early in the morning; I believe it was a Tuesday this time.  Since it was a week day we had the privilege of waiting in the waiting room with several pregnant ladies complaining about their morning sickness, swelling, talking about their other 4 children at home, and that informing others that this pregnancy was an accident. I think there should be a separate waiting room for infertiles.  Oh boy, I’m getting of track.  Where were we… the nurse took the sample from us and began to spin it down once again.   They took us back to the examination room and informed us once again that no sperm were in the sample.  I started bawling on the spot.  How could this be happening to us?  Our doctor does not deal with male infertility so she suggested we go to the University in Iowa City. 

We were not quite ready to shell out that kind of cash quite yet.  So we racked our brains and attempted to find out what had changed since we got pregnant the first time.  We figured it out; it was medication Dan was on. His internal med doctor knew we were having trouble conceiving so she checked his testosterone level and it was low. He started medication right after we got pregnant the first time to raise his testosterone level which started killing all of his sperm. Lesson learned! Don’t take advice from an internal med doctor about infertility treatments.  Once he stopped those meds, took about 3 months for his levels to get up to a point where we could try IUI again.

The first month we were going to try IUI again, my Femera stopped working and I didn’t ovulate.  I had to take some medication to induce a period and they doubled my dose of Femera for the following cycle to get me ovulating again.  We were FINALLY going to get to go through with an IUI.

It was on another week day, so we had the joy of the waiting room once again.  They called us back after they finished spinning down the sample and had me assume the position.  Two nurses tried to artificially inseminate with several different speculums before they called in the doctor.  (Can you say AWKWARD? There were 3 women attempting to get my pregnant.)  The doctor was able to get the job done, and it was time to play the waiting game.  A few weeks later we found out that it did not work.  That means it was time for round two.

IUI Round Two, November 14^th 2012.  This procedure was a lot like the first one except a student was thrown into the mix and also tried to artificially inseminate me before the two nurses and the doctor still had to come in to get the job done.  At the end of this waiting game we got some great news right before Daniel's birthday, we were PREGNANT again!  It worked on the 2nd try.

Since we have a history of miscarriage the doctor planned for an early ultrasound at the first prenatal visit. It was scheduled for  Friday, December 21^st at seven weeks pregnant.  We went back to that all too familiar waiting room; except this time I was one of the pregnant ladies. Nervous as all get out, we were called back to the ultrasound room with the same ultrasound tech that delivered the bad news with our first child. She had more unsettling news for us with this pregnancy. At 7 weeks our baby had a heartbeat of 58 BPM (should be well over 100 BPM by that point).   They scheduled a follow up ultrasound for Friday, December 28^th.  This couldn’t be happening to us again, right?  And four days before Christmas, wait it out and pray that a miracle was all we could do.

Friday, December 28^th 2012:  Our ultrasound was scheduled for 8:30 with a doctor’s appointment to follow.  We had to have the ultrasound in the hospital’s radiology department that day.  The ultrasound tech began and I asked him, “Can you see the heartbeat?”  He did not respond with a yes or no but rather, “This early on it can be hard to detect a heartbeat.”  I knew this was a bunch of crap; the tech was able to find it last week.  So if it was still ticking away, he should be able to find it.  He never did give us a definite answer but took tons of pictures of the baby and my uterus, and sent us back upstairs to the doctor’s office.

We were in the waiting room; I was trying my hardest to hold back the tears.  The report took at least an hour to arrive.  Finally we were called back to the examination room where the doctor deliver the devastating news we were expecting. We lost our 2^nd child to miscarriage.

We had another D&C and they sent the baby to MAYO Clinic in Minnesota. In the mean time another round of lab work was done on me.  They ordered blood work to check my thyroid, A1C, Factor V, and many more.  All of my blood work came back normal.  We did get some information from the baby’s examination.  We found out our 2^nd child was a BOY and he had an extra chromosome on #14. Baby’s with an extra on 21 have downs and an extra on 13 or 18 can result in a healthy baby, all others will typically result in a miscarriage. There is nothing they can do for treatment to prevent it from happening again according to our doctor. We are at a higher risk for another miscarriage now but it is still possible to have a healthy baby.

So where are we now you ask….we have agreed to try 2 more rounds of IUI before pursuing adoption.

That is it for tonight folks.