3 years

It's been nearly 3 years since I was pregnant for the first time. Crazy. It has probably been the most difficult period of my life so far. I know on the scale of bad things that can happen it is far from the worst, but there has been a lot of heartbreak in the past few years.

At this point I feel that most of the time I have a decent perspective on things, thanks in large part to both supportive family and friends and a good therapist. But there are still plenty of times that I am really down on things, and just try to remember that at some point in the future it won't seem as bad. I had one of those patches recently when I learned that another one of our friends in Richmond was pregnant. I think it would take me at least both hands to count up the number of friends who have not been thinking about having kids, then gotten pregnant and had a baby, all in the time that Jacob and I have been trying to just get and stay pregnant. It makes me feel like everyone is just passing us by while we're stuck in the same shitty spot. 

But. I try to just get on with things and hope that in a few days I wake up and don't feel like my world has a black cloud over it. 

To write or not to write?

I haven't posted in a while. I've had a lot going on (more about that in a second) but also was feeling kind of burned out on all things infertility related. 

So, in the past few months I got a new job across the country, we sold our house, husband got a new job, packed up house, moved into new place, and now are almost settled- but it's been crazy. The good news of it on the fertility front is that I'm now seeing a world-class expert at UCSF, in a center that is worlds better than the office I had been going to- they actually answer their phone! And respond to questions!

But, on the not so good front I feel like I'm in Groundhog Day as far as treatment goes- once again my lining didn't look good, had a hysteroscopy that hopefully took care of some scarring and other damage, and am now on a "mock cycle" to see if I respond to the drugs for an embryo implantation cycle. When we did this last summer I didn't respond, so here's hoping this time is better but I'm not going to hold my breath. 

Heal already!

Went to Dr earlier in the week. Have more scarring (?!) after all the efforts to prevent, but he thought he was able to break it up (which did NOT feel good) but now I wait 4-5 weeks and go in to do the same thing. 

It was so nice to not go in for any tests or poking or prodding for a while and I just can't help but feel like we're still in the 1 step forward and 3 steps back mode. I'm pretty sure that things with my lining were fine when we first started going to see him about a year ago, so not sure if it's been just the cumulative effects or procedures he has done that have had such a negative effect.

Oh well. Wait and see some more, trying to keep busy in the meantime!

Better

Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me since my last post. The support is really invaluable.

The past couple of weeks has been a really nice break from doctors, taking lots of meds, and feeling so focused on getting more results in a few days or a few weeks. I'm not going to say that things are 100% great, but they are better. Maybe it's just my hormones getting back into a "normal" balance, but I am feeling better than I have in a while.

We still don't really know what's going to happen or exactly what we're going to choose to do next, but for the meantime we've got a lot of activities with family and friends set up for the fall to look forward to.

Where to go from here?

I feel more uncertain about our journey to try and have a baby now than I have in a long time, at least the past year. In my last surgery the Dr found one possible adhesion and cut it, but more importantly said that my uterine lining is just inflamed and very patchy looking, which is not optimal, and it needs some time to heal from all the procedures over the past two years.

I've been thinking a lot about how it's been two years this month since my first miscarriage. It's so hard to believe and has gotten me pretty down, I think mainly because it doesn't feel like we're much closer to having a baby.We're not really decided on where we go from here. We know we're going to take at least 2 months without any treatments to hopefully get my lining to heal up. But we're also out of my insurance coverage for IVF. Meaning that anything we do going forward with the specialist that is related to infertility is ALL out of pocket.So- IF my lining starts looking better do we try and do a transfer? Do we look for a surrogate for our embryos? Do we just try on our own so that we can go to my regular Dr, but run a higher risk of more miscarriages and therefore more procedures? Do we start the adoption process? I don't know any more. It just feels like almost every option is committing a lot of money and/or time, with no guarantee of success. 

If anyone has advice on what they think we should do I would love to hear it!

last procedure?

Hysteroscopy tomorrow. Let's hope this is my last surgery/ procedure for a LONG time. Dr is checking for scarring/ adhesions/ low level infection, and although he thinks there is only a small chance of finding any of those I am almost hoping that he finds something so that we can fix it!

Not sure what the game plan will be after that or how long we will wait to try the whole estrogen/ transfer protocol again.

In the meantime we are getting somewhat more serious with adoption research, at the very least to feel like we are doing something. I will admit that I am pretty frustrated at this point that it's been about a year since we started seeing the specialist and although I know having 2 embryos on ice is a good thing and progress, in some ways it feels like we haven't really gotten any closer to having a good sense of what is going on or any closer to actually having a baby through all of the tests, appointments, and treatment this year.

July Update

So, we may have jumped the gun in thinking our decision would be about whether to transfer 1 or 2 embryos, as we are now waiting to see if we will be able to transfer any. My uterine lining didn't cooperate with thickening up with estrogen pills, estrogen patches, viagra suppositories, blood thinners, and acupuncture, so we're taking a step back to try and figure out what's going on.

The plan is currently to wait a few weeks then do a hysteroscopy to make sure I don't have any scarring that's affecting things or any low-level infection. Dr said that he thinks it's unlikely that I have either but still worth ruling them out. Then we see if taking a few months to re-set my estrogen and other levels makes a difference. The thing that makes me worry is that looking back over my chart with Dr last week I have pretty consistently had thin uterine lining during cycles in the fall and in both IVFs....the guidelines say you need lining above 8 mm to have a good shot at sustaining a pregnancy and I have pretty consistently been at only 5-6.

So we're trying to decide where we go from here, it will be at least several months before we would think about doing a transfer again (and that's if my lining cooperates) and then its about 50/50 that I would get or keep a pregnancy. So time to start really looking into adoption and decide if we want to pursue that route. Wish I had better news but that doesn't seem to be how this goes for us!