Flip a Coin?

Went back to the Dr again Thursday for my post-op and to discuss what we're going to do. Here's the recap:

- TPO (thyroid antibodies)- still significantly elevated in latest blood work, so we will treat with synthroid starting now so I can get used to the medication
- anticardiolipids- borderline elevated. Will definitely treat with at least baby aspirin, and he will make a call about using the other meds once I get pregnant

So here's our choice:

- do IVF, where we could also do genetic screening and get as close as possible to "ensuring" that things will go ok, considering that we can never make anything absolutely 100%

- do a less invasive version of controlled egg release, where we would essentially try to play a numbers game and have 2 or 3 embryos develop in one cycle, assuming that if 1-2 of them have genetic issues that we would get 1 that comes out ok

We are seriously leaning towards the IVF for this round. We are very fortunate that my employer will pay a large portion of the costs for it for a round so figure we don't have too much to lose in trying.

We do have a debate underway though and I asked Jacob what he thought about just flipping a coin to decide :)

Coexistence

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I can have different emotions about a particular subject coexist, even if they are seemingly in complete conflict with each other. For instance, I recently learned that a good friend is newly pregnant. One part of me wants to feel so happy for her, while another part is jealous and wishes that I could just get pregnant and have things be easy. But this morning I thought, why not just be both? I feel like I put pressure on myself to feel just one way or consistent, when in reality, who says I can't be both? In an ideal world, sure, I'd just be happy for her and that would be it. But it's not how things are, so why not just accept that and go on. I feel like mentally I have a hard time thinking that that is "ok" but hopefully it will get easier over time.

On the update front, my repeat blood work came back with essentially the same thing as before, elevated TPO and borderline elevated anticardiolipids, so we'll discuss treating both with the doc next week when we go in. I'm feeling a bit more settled in our decision about IVF but am still hoping that once we really start it I will feel more at peace with deciding to do it.

Procedure updates

Went in yesterday for my hysteroscopy, which was a relatively short procedure. But I hope I don't have to sit around a hospital again for a while!! For someone who was never seriously ill before, 4 surgeries in just over a year feels like a lot. And maybe I'm a wuss, but getting the IV is about the worst part. This time it took 5 tries for them to get mine started....ouch.

Anyways, yesterday the doc found that there was some tissue left from my last pregnancy, which he then cleaned up so hopefully I have a clean slate going forward.

We will go back in 2 weeks for a post-op and also to plan moving forward- I think we are mostly decided on doing IVF. Unlike people who use it because they have trouble getting pregnant we would do it primarily for the genetic embryo screening. I have struggled a lot with whether or not to do it; do we go the very invasive route, or just try again naturally and see what happens?

The only thing I keep coming back to is that going into the third pregnancy I decided that the third time was going to be it- after that I wanted to do anything we possibly could to test, fix, and take every chance to have a healthy pregnancy and baby.

More tests and more tests- Update 9.5.14

So I am starting to feel a bit like a human pincushion. We went back to our specialist yesterday and have a few new results to report:

- genetics- Jacob and I both have normal karyotypes (which does not mean that we act normal!) but is good news. Means that we *should* be able to combine our genes to form a good embryo
- saline sonogram- had this done in office yesterday, looked mostly normal but did have a polyp which is going to require a hysteroscopy to remove. Oh good, another surgery! Kidding. It is relatively minor but certainly kind of annoying that we have to do yet another procedure. I am scheduled to go next week and at least this time we can go to Jacob's hospital to have it done.

We also got blood drawn for a prep screen testing for other rare diseases we might be carriers for. That one will take a few weeks to come back.

In the meantime, I'll go Monday to have blood drawn to re-test my antibody levels from the testing in August. Talk about maxing out the insurance this year.....

Also, before we left we did talk a bit with him about next steps, where Jacob and I always like to ask for the doc's real opinion, what they would do, as long as it seems like we trust them. So when asked, he said that if it was his wife in this situation, and if they had the money, they would do IVF. The only real thing that it does for us is eliminate the question of the genetics of the embryo being ok, but given that there really doesn't seem to be too much else we can do and that I REALLY don't want to have another miscarriage, it may be the route we end up going.

In short- we're lucky that all the tests have come back fairly normal and have not revealed any additional serious problems. On the downside, it hasn't pointed to any definite reason for all the miscarriages. So....wish us luck with the next round of tests!