* since may of this year, 2012, my OB has been aware that i may have the symptoms of PCOS {if you don't know what that is, i've provided a link, it's really special... not}. since then they've been paying a little more attention to us, with my insistence of course. but since then I've had a clear HSG, hubs' has had 2 semen analysis{plural, not sure how you spell that?}, i've had a boat load of blood work done, and now the hubs' is having some done too.
* my fertility concerns *
being that i have some of the PCOS symptoms: crazy hormonal cystic acne all times of the month, seem to not ovulate on my own anymore since March 2012, and have put on tummy weight that won't seem to go away despite improving my diet and getting back into my regular exercise routine since getting off the pill... all signs point to PCOS. so if i don't ovulate, there's no egg, and no egg means no baby, without of course divine conception, but i don't think that'll be happening! =)
* hubs' fertility concerns *
well both semen analysis tests concluded he has a high volume, great motility {which is their ability to swim}, however the first test showed 7% morphology + the most recent showed 1% {dang it, it went down}... and in plain english that means that only 7% the first time + 1% this last time were regularly shaped, the rest were misshaped, therefore making it very unlikely that there are enough good guys to make it to my egg {if i actually released one}. and of all the funky morphed ones, even if they did make it to the egg, they would have two left feet when they got there and most likely wouldn't make it through the egg. and in the miraculous event a morphed one did make it and fertilize, the odds of that embryo would end in a miscarriage is pretty much a for sure thing.
:: so that pretty much brings things up to late August 2012 ::
Clomid round #1 - 50mg - my OB said we could try Clomid before moving onto a RE {reproductive endocrinologist or fertility doc}, so they scanned my uterus, wrote me a script for 50mg of Clomid and off i went. the hubs and i weren't getting our hopes up at this point, we also hadn't found out the results of hub's second semen analysis {SA} so we proceeded with Clomid and prayed for the best.... as i made it to day 17 of my cycle my doc thought there was a possibility i ovulated over a weekend and that we missed the window to induce ovulation, but after a progesterone blood test it was confirmed i hadn't. at that point they told me we could try one more higher dose of Clomid, but after that we would need to see a RE for help.
Reproductive Endo consult - once we got the results back of hubby's second SA we decided it was time to book a consult with a RE, so yesterday we met with Dr. Mo. she's a sweet yet "tell it like it is" 40 something RE who runs a women's fertility office, which really made things more comfortable for me seeing how i'm a pretty modest person and feel a lot more at ease working with a woman doctor from a physical and emotional standpoint. she ran through our labs, test, etc. and said since we are young {we're both 29}, that we have options... we can either try a higher dose of Clomid for me, possibly combined with metformin for my high testosterone levels + intrauterine insemination {IUI}. or the other option is IVF, which would involved lots of med, injections, surgery to harvest eggs, fertilizing them, having any left overs frozen, and then insemination of the fertilized embryos. another big difference is IUI run about $1000 per round versus IVF which is between $13-15k per round. while there is a drastic difference in price, IVF does have better pregnancy success rates but only like 10-20% greater than IUI....
the way we left it with Dr. Mo is that we would start with a round of IUI and see how it goes with the upped dose of Clomid and see if my body responds to it this time. she ordered some blood work from both of us, a genetic test {which the hubs was all to interested to have done on himself, so i happily let him}, and she did a scan to see if maybe i possibly ovulated really late after the Clomid i took at the end of August and that turned out to be a big negative.... she did however say i had a ton of eggs, to which she also said would not make me a good candidate for injectables if the Clomid didn't work, since i have so many eggs the chances of multiples would be crazy high and even if they watched me closely it could be very difficult to control the amount of eggs i could produce. at this point the hubs asked "like we could have multiples?" and Dr. Mo said no, you could end up with like 60 eggs... um, excuse me?? so basically i wouldn't be allowed to do injectables unless we were doing IVF and harvesting eggs for the future since i have so many and they're so healthy... so i guess that news is the silver lining of our first appointment. we have a ton of healthy eggs to work with!
since i hate posts that are sans photos, i'll leave you with a shot of our his + her's blood work war wounds... and i swear his arm really isn't smaller than mine in real life!!! =) till next time...
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