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Since this blog is about infertility, I decided to tell you my WHOLE story—not just things prevalent to our current endeavors, but why we are here in the first place.  So I’ll start from the beginning.

September/October 2011-  I went off of birth control after my husband and I decided to start a family.  Knowing that I have been diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and mild endometriosis (the lining of your uterus, doesn’t just stay in the uterus) we knew we didn’t want to wait too long to start a family.

January 2012- Went to my OB/GYN to discuss our options.  Now I hadn’t been off of birth control for a very long (3 months), but I didn’t want to stay off for a long period of time (the longer I’m off birth control, the  more problems I have with ovarian cysts).  My doctor prescribed me metformin and letrozole—she also suggested a semen analysis.  I started on my medication and held out on doing the semen analysis until we had been trying a bit longer.

February 2012- SURPRISE, I’M PREGNANT.  It took just one round of medication to get pregnant!  Of course, I was over the moon with excitement.  I went to my doctor’s office to get an HCG quant (measures the actual number of HCG in your blood, not just a yes or no like a urine pregnancy test) and was told my number was a 17.  This number is considered a positive pregnancy, but the number is also low.  I should have been 4 ½ weeks pregnant at that point.  Me being me, I didn’t think too much of it and figured the number would go up when I had it checked a week later.  

March 2012-When I went back a week later my numbers should have been in the 100 range (your HCG levels should double every 24-48 hours), but my number was only a 47.  I was told that I would probably start bleeding in the next few days, but I decided to go back in the following day due to some cramping on one side and we wanted to make sure I didn’t have an ectopic pregnancy (where your embryo grows outside of the uterus).  My doctor ordered another HCG quant to check my numbers, my numbers had dropped to 26 (any numbers that are falling are usually considered a sign that you are miscarrying and my numbers had dropped significantly over night).  My ultrasound didn’t show anything except a thickened uterine lining, but it didn’t show a gestational sac.  My doctor told me that I wouldn’t start bleeding within the next few days and she informed me what I would expect with a miscarriage.

If you’ve ever had a miscarriage before, you know the amount of blood and carnage you can have, but seeing how I had never had one, I didn’t truly know what to expect.  Friday was the day of my doctor’s appointment where they informed that I was indeed miscarrying—Saturday I didn’t see and blood, but Sunday morning I started spotting & I thought to myself “this isn’t bad, what a breeze this will be”, boy, was I wrong.  Sunday night I placed a tampon in and went to bed.  I woke up about an hour later because my inner thigh was itching.  When I went to scratch it, I realized my leg felt wet—when I got up to go the restroom I was shocked by the amount of blood there was.  I had blood everywhere.  If you’re easily grossed out, don’t read on.  I then pulled out my tampon and that’s when it truly hit me that I was miscarrying—I had massive clots, like the size of my fist, and they just kept coming out.  Truly horrible.  That had to be the worst experience of my life.

April 2012-November2013- During this time we tried to get pregnant and we were obviously unsuccessful.  Remember that semen analysis my doctor suggested?  Well we never had one, because we figured he was okay because I had gotten pregnant the first time.  Well, it was suggested that we have it done, since it’s much easier to check a male for problems than a woman.

December 2013- My husband did the semen analysis and it came back as azospermia.  Azospermia is a diagnosis of not having a measurable amount sperm in your semen.  His count came back as less than 2 million (a normal sperm count is 40-100 million) with only 19% of it having a normal morphology (morphology checks for shape, how many tails, and how many heads).  To say we were shocked, was an understatement.  It was a time of utter disbelief, sadness, and frustration.  How had we gone two years not knowing there was that big of a problem?

January 2014- We met with Dr. M to discuss our options along with repeating my husband semen analysis.  The repeat analysis was much better, with a count of 10 million.  Dr. M said we could try IUI!

February 2014- I had an HSG done to check for uterine abnormalities and we found a slight problem.  At the top of my uterus there is a pocket, this pocket can make it harder to get pregnant, cause miscarriages and preterm labor.  We were told that if I have another miscarriage, that I would need surgery to correct the problem.  And of course, we did our first IUI this month and we are currently waiting for those results.  We hope and pray for a pregnancy this go around, if not, we will try again!

 

THE TWO WEEK WAIT IS HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!