It's Go Time!

I had my last sono for this cycle yesterday, and I have responded really well to the combination of metformin with only 50 mg of chlomid. I have NEVER responded to 50 mg of chlomid before. I am turning into a huge fan of metformin. I have responded so amazingly to it, and as a bonus, have even lost weight in the couple months I've been on it.

Cycle stats as of yesterday morning:

• 2 follicles at 16 and 16.5mm
• 2 follicles at 14mm
• 1 follicle at 13mm

Hubs just gave me the hgc trigger, which is the first one we've ever done on our own. So in 36-48 hours, we'll have at least two good sized follies with mature eggs all ready to go.

I am scared, nervous, excited, and trying so hard to be hopeful. It is hard to overcome all of the negative thoughts and emotions brought on by 2 years of cycles, but I think this is the best chance we have had in a long time thanks to wonderful Dr H.

Keep your fingers crossed and say a few prayers. Maybe do a couple of good luck dances for us, kind of like praying to the rain gods, but to the baby gods instead.

As for me, relax. Breathe. Breathe some more. And read a good book. ;)

Okay, Never Mind

Man, I don't even know how to start this post any other way but abruptly. No gentle lead in. No sweet introduction. Let's just get to it.

We're not doing IUI this cycle and I'm NOT happy about it.

We knew our insurance didn't cover IUI or fertility treatments, but so far they have been covering all of our doctor visits, sonograms, surgeries, all of our labs, and all of our medications (with the exception of hCG). So when we knew insurance didn't cover IUI, we naturally assumed that meant just the procedure itself, which is only a few hundred dollars.

Monday morning the lady who schedules all of Dr H's surgeries and verifies benefits called to tell me our insurance would not cover fertility treatments. I told her I knew that already, and then she proceeded to tell me how much the cycle would cost, and that the full amount would be due at my sono this Friday.

My jaw hit the floor at the amount. After I had collected myself I told her that our insurance had always covered the sonos and labs before with our old RE and asked why they wouldn't now. Apparently they will cover it if the cycle doesn't end in an IUI. But when they find out we did IUI, they will send us a bill for 100% of everything.

Let me just mention here that we did an IUI in 2007 and only had to pay a few hundred dollars that time when our insurance supposedly didn't cover fertility treatments. That insurance had covered the cost of everything except the actual procedure.

For those of you not in the infertile world, let me just tell you that one sonogram can range from $450-500+. You have to have anywhere from 3 or more of them in one cycle. Full price for labs is approximately $100 per lab, and you have around 2 of those per cycle. Medications range from $4 if your lucky and can get generic to over $500 for one cycle. The actual IUI costs around $350+.

I am a spender by nature, so when they gave me the price tag, combined with everything I have put my body through in the last 2 years trying to get pregnant, I was willing to pay the fiddler. Hubs, however, is a skin flint (aka tight wad [aka penny pincher]), so when I told him how much it cost, he kind of freaked out and told me he didn't want to talk about it while he was at work. It isn't a matter of us not being able to afford it as much as it is about my husband not being able to just plunk down money like that without thinking about it for a very, very, very long time. And possibly researching all of the alternatives on the internet for a couple of months before giving his seal of approval.

Just a little back info, my husband can't won't even buy shoes unless he has thought about it for months, gone in and tried on a few pair, gone home and slept over it for a couple of weeks, and researched it first. I really wish I was kidding. He has had his primary pair of shoes since we got engaged 7 years ago and they look like they've been around since the dinosaurs, complete with holes. If he can't bring himself to buy new shoes "on a whim" he sure as heck can't say yes to the full cost of an IUI with less than a few months' notice.

All of that being said, I know this is how my husband works, and while it is mildly irritating, it is also endearing. I love this man more than life itself, and if he wants to put the brakes on the IUI to do his rumination and research thing, then I will go along with it. But in addition to that, he makes very valid points as to why he doesn't think we need to jump straight to IUI in the first place. The biggest one being that we think Dr H fixed a lot of my issues, if not all of them with this last surgery, so he thinks we should do medicated cycles and try on our own for a couple of months.

I am disappointed, and I honestly don't feel as much hope as I did when we thought we were going to do an IUI, but I know that in this game our plans so very rarely work out the way I want. In fact, I can't recall the last time we had a cycle that went the way I thought it should or wanted it to go.

I realize this post sounds a little down and negative, but its just that, a little down. I am ever hopeful that eventually, no matter how it happens, that we will have another baby.

Tomorrow is our first sono for follicle count this cycle, so cross your fingers that we have a few. The more, the better!

Life with a 3-Year-Old

One night last week, I went up to bed, completely exhausted and so excited I was actually heading to bed early and would actually get to sleep early. Before I go to bed, I always go in and check on Little Bean to make sure she is covered up because she almost always gets out of bed after I kiss her goodnight. Little Bean was almost asleep, so I gave her a kiss and told her I loved her. "I love you too mama." BEST FIVE WORDS EVER!

I reached out to stroke her cheek and noticed that it felt kind of gummy. I thought it was because she sucks her thumb and had drooled, so I stroked her forehead too. It was also gummy. "What is on your face baby?" I can't remember what she said, but the truth was she had covered herself in triple antibiotic ointment.

Over the weekend we had gone to the local theme park and one of the game attendants had distracted Little Bean, causing her to trip and skin her knee. (The stupid girl even had the audacity to ask again if we wanted to play her game as we walked off, my daughter's knee bleeding, to find a bandaid. I almost jumped over the counter and smacked her.) 

Anyway, this night her dad had put triple antibiotic ointment on Little Bean's knee and covered it in two bandaids. After I had tucked her in, read to her, and given her a goodnight kiss, I went downstairs to snuggle with Hubs. We heard Little Bean get out of bed, but we just figured it was to go potty. Nope. She went to get the ointment and covered her face, arms, and legs in it. She told me she had done it so she wouldn't get a sunburn.

I got her out of bed, cleaned her off with a warm washcloth, changed her bedding, and tucked her back in. I patted her head as I kissed her goodnight again, and found gobs of ointment in her hair.

No early bed for me!

I got Little Bean out of bed again and took her down to the bathtub for her second bath of the night. She was NOT happy and cried like it was the end of the world. For the most part, I thought the whole thing was funny, although I did get really tired of her crying by the end of it all.

It took me a few days and multiple shampoos with dish soap to get all of the ointment out of her hair. It also took me a few days to discover the extent of the damage. She covered the back of one of her books, a dresser top, the top of her crayon bin, and the top of an intricately carved wooden jewelry box I had bought her in San Jose.


Last weekend we finally added an algae eater and colorful snail to our fish tank. The guy at the pet store told me to get algae tablets for the algae eater (Algernon) because I wouldn't have enough algae for him and the snail to eat (WRONG!), so I did. Now it has been hard keeping Little Bean from not only not feeding the fish when I'm not around, but also not overfeeding them. I knew this would be case when I bought the aquarium, so I was prepared. Well on Sunday I came downstairs to see Little Bean had poured in half of bag of algae tablets (you're only supposed to put in one at a time), as well as scads of fish food. I spent the next half hour performing a water change and trying to get all of the excess food out of the tank so our fish wouldn't die.

If that wasn't enough, Little Bean also decided that the dogs needed some of her popcorn. So she gave them a bunch... in their circulating water bowl... that I had just cleaned that morning.

Life is NEVER dull with a 3-year-old. But you know what? I wouldn't trade one moment of this for anything in the world. She definitely keeps life interesting, and she certainly makes it fun. I sure love my Little Bean.

Back Into the IF Fold

I had my post-op appointment with Dr H last week, and I honesty cried when I told him how glad I was I had found him and that I knew I was finally in competent hands. He took lots of video during surgery of what he found before he started fixing things. He found a lot of scar tissue, which surprised me. I asked him if all of that could have come back in just 4 months, and he said unfortunately, some scar tissue can redevelop within 24 hours. However, he said that the kind of scarring I had, which was thin and looked like cellophane usually did not come back once removed.

Now I don't know if Dr D (my old RE, whom we can now call Dr Dumb) was just incompetent, lazy, or trying to make a buck by forcing us into treatments, but he sure did miss a lot of stuff. At the very least, he was straight up negligent. Dr H (new doc) said there was scarring around both of my ovaries, so even if I was ovulating, the eggs couldn't go anywhere. Dr H also thinks that Dr Dumb was confused as to which side he found all of the scarring on. Dr Dumb said he found lots of scarring on the right side holding down the fallopian tube and ovary, but Dr H said everything he saw was concurrent with the scarring having been on the left side. *facetious thumbs up*

But my favorite part was when I saw the staple Dr Dumb left in my abdomen. Dr H thinks it was from my rupture repair. And as if that wasn't enough, there is a diaphram-like area in the lower abdomen, and Dr Dumb perforated that during one of his procedures.

Like I said, I don't know if Dr Dumb is incompetent, or if he thinks I'M dumb so he could get away with things. I do know that he started pushing awfully hard for us to get into medicated cycles starting last October, and the first thing he said when he saw Hubs' semen analysis is that our only hope was IVF. I often felt like he didn't treat me well because I was not willing to go through IVF, especially at my last appointment with him.

But all of that aside, I am now in very good hands, and Dr H says he feels confident that we stand a really good chance at getting pregnant soon. I can tell you I was looking for certain CM signs after my surgery in January that I didn't see, which told me Dr Dumb had not fixed anything. In the few days following this last surgery, I saw what I had expected to see. I know Dr H fixed my issues.

After going over the surgery findings and discussing the results, Dr H asked how I would like to proceed. True to form, we were on the same page. He and I have completely agreed on everything so far, and funny enough, for different reasons.

Dr H and I both agreed that the best thing we can do is jump straight into artificial insemination.

CRAZY, right?!

I wanted to because while we know everything inside me is fixed for noq, we don't know how long it will last. Obviously the scarring formed over the last couple of years, and it can come back again. I don't know big our window is, but I don't intend to waste one month.

Dr H wanted to because while Hubs has seriously awesome counts, his morphology is low. Now, his counts could totally make up for the low morphology, except that the ones that are normal swim slow. That being said, Hubs has been doing a lot the last 6 months to get his numbers up and improve his quality overall. He hasn't had an analysis since he started making such an effort, so it will be interesting to see how things look on IUI day. We're hoping that all of his hard work really pays off.

Add to all of the above, neither of us is getting any younger. Plus I just want to have one more baby and be done with all of this. I don't want to have to care or think about any of this anymore because I finally have a sibling for Little Bean.

So once AF rears, we are on our way to a cycle with chlomid (I will get into why we chose chlomid for this cycle later), an HCG trigger, and IUI while on 2,000 mg of metformin.

For the first time in a very long time, I actually think this can happen! We're finally hopefully we will be adding to our family soon.