Bad Infertility Humor

How do you know you've been dealing with infertility for waaaaayy too long? When a joke like this is funny to you:

R and I were talking a few mornings ago about the idea that since he has sperm again, and since we've gotten pregnant the natural way twice, maybe it will happen for us next month. He actually kind of gets upset at the idea, because he feels like I don't produce great eggs/lining on my own and we might be likely to repeat the miscarriage pattern. (Never mind the fact that our pregnancy conceived through treatment led to the exact same outcome!)

I assured him that I'd do my best to exercise a lot and eat low-carb, because that helps reduce the PCOS symptoms and improve egg quality.

"So, you never know - maybe one of my ovaries will cough up a relatively good egg next time around," I said.

He replied, "Ok, but can you tell it to please make sure it coughs up one with a yoke this time?"

Get it? Yoke - yoke sac? Which is what is consistently missing from the picture during our ob ultrasounds.

I told you it was bad...

The Results Are In

Not a big surprise - today's beta was negative. I had begun to suspect as much, because my symptoms abated during the weekend.

We're fine with it. Chances are, egg quality wasn't high and my lining wasn't great coming off the miscarriage, so we wouldn't have had high hopes even with a positive beta. That, and I need to lose some major pounds before we give this another serious go, because after the last two cycles I am now overweight to the point that my blood pressure is a bit high.

On a happier note, this is my last full-time week at work, so hopefully I will actually drag my overly plump, sorry little (well, actually not-so-little) bottom to the gym very soon. I bought a new swimsuit last week for just that purpose. You know it's bad when you've outgrown even the stretchy things in your wardrobe. Like your old swimsuit...

Sometimes, You've Just Gotta Laugh

Because really, what else can you do? Especially when you find out three weeks after you've miscarried twins that there's a chance you might be pregnant again.

Yep, welcome to my life, which at this point makes a three-ring circus seem dull and ordinary.

I showed signs of ovulating last week. I thought, "Okay, good, maybe my body is working like it's supposed to. I'll see if CD 1 shows up in a couple of weeks." I usually bloat during ovulation, then it goes away for about 10 days, then it comes back a few days before CD 1. This time, the bloating hasn't gone away. So I thought, "Okay, this is a bit unusual, but my body's been through a lot, so it's probably just confused."

This morning, as I was driving to work, I felt a little bit of unusual pelvic cramping. It wasn't menstrual cramping, and it wasn't the typical pinch I get around ovulation - that already happened last week. So I thought, "Hmm, this is kind of weird. It's almost like implantation cramping. And the timing would be right for that, because today is CD 22, and I typically ovulate around CD 16. But nah, it can't be...because R hasn't been on Arimidex for seven months, and he doesn't produce sperm unless he's on it."

I didn't give it any more thought as the morning progressed. Until Dr. Crass's nurse called to give me the report of the semen analysis R did on Monday: "Normal, normal, normal, normal, normal!" She was in shock. So much so that she double-checked the cup to make sure it had his name on it, even though he was the only patient she did an analysis for on Monday. She said she almost fell to the floor in disbelief.

So R has sperm. 78 million/ml's worth, with 53 percent motility, and the vast majority of them swimming in the right direction. And one of my ovaries may have coughed up an egg. I've been instructed to resume the baby aspirin, Lovenox, mega doses of folic acid and progesterone supps.

We'll see what next week's betas bring.

A Leap of Faith

Big changes are afoot over here.

I gave my two weeks' notice today at work. It's something I've been thinking about and R and I have been talking about for a while, but still, the timing was a surprise even to me. R had been hesitant for us to take this step right now, but yesterday he did an about face and said, "Why don't you quit?"

So today I did. I won't be staying home full time, but I'll go into more detail in another post. For now, let's just say that at least I'll have more time to blog and to catch up with all of you.

Between this and the sudden house-buying of last fall, I seem to be living my life on the impulsive lately, don't I? Let's hope this works out as well as the house has!

Not much to report on the fertility front. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough tissue from Baby B to do any chromosomal testing. We had hoped there would be, and that that would provide us with some answers.

Basically, our next steps are:

1) I have to have blood drawn for a genetic karotype to see if I have some sort of chromosomal issue that might be causing genetic abnormalities in the embryos. (R had his done a few years ago when he was first diagnosed with male factor, and it was normal.)

2.) We have to get an answer from our clinic about whether we can do PGD since we are in their shared-risk plan. They generally don't allow patients to do the shared risk plan if they need PGD, but usually they know before patients enter the plan if PGD is necessary or not. It sounds like Doc is willing to consider it, but he has to get the other partners in his practice to sign off on it. Doc wants to do PGD if my karotype comes back abnormal. I want to do it even if the karotype comes back normal, in the hopes that it might provide some more clues to why I keep miscarrying.

3.) R had to have another date with a cup. Since his surgery, for the past 18 months his counts have ranged from barely within normal to practically non-existent when he's not on Arimidex, even though his testosterone level now seems to be holding steady in the normal range. (It was very abnormally low before the surgery.) Because of the fluctuations, Dr. Crass (the urologist) wants to recheck his hormone levels and counts before agreeing to restart the Arimidex.

4.) Unless something unforeseen happens, we're planning fresh IVF #2 for late spring. Retrieval should be sometime the first week of May, and I will probably be spending Mother's Day on bedrest. At least that would be a nice change from the recent years' routine of spending it miscarrying.

Since I'm going to have much more flexibliity in my schedule soon, I have big plans to exercise like crazy and acquaint myself with our kitchen in an attempt to lose the weight these past two cycles have piled on. Forget outgrowing jeans or shirts - I've outgrown my SHOES! Eeeeekkkk!