HISTORY

Treatments
BABY #1- 6 Clomid cycles, 2 IUIs with Femara, 1 IVF with 3 embryos transferred, 2 more IUIs with Femara & Follistim, and finally 1 IUI with Follistim.
BABY #2 - 2 Follistim cycles and natural conception
BABY #3 - natural conception, miscarried at 10 weeks
BABY #4 - natural conception

Timing
Decided to start a family May 2005. After testing & un-related delays, began first treatment cycle Oct 2005. First pregnancy confirmed Sept 2007. Second pregnancy confirmed Mar 2011. Third & fourth pregnancies - 2015.

For other IF couples
If you want to skip back to our infertility adventures, please see the history on the right hand margin. There you can find our journey from 2005 through 2007.

Monday, March 19, 2007

IVF consult

DH & I showed up at the dr for our 4PM appt. 45 mins later we finally got to see the RE. Then he rushed me with all my questions. He kept checking his cell phone & once said 'you about done with all those questions?'. UGH... what a jerk. We were only in there maybe 10-15 minutes tops.

Most of my questions were shrugged off, indicating that there is nothing we could have done different & there are no other tests we should do to look for any other problems. Just try again. He said that I stimulated like their 21-yr old egg donors (I guess that was supposed to make me feel better?). Of course stimming that way did us no good since my levels went too high (as you know already if you've been following along on this blog). The only explanation he would give as to the failure of this cycle was the possibility that 'coasting' (no ovulation induction meds) for so long prior to retrieval and/or that I had not been taking my full dose of glucophage could have reduced the quality of the eggs. I have several issues with this statement. First, we had no idea until today that there had been anything wrong with the eggs. All he could tell us was that we had 'slow embryonic development' (though even that confuses me since 2 got to blastocyst stage on day 5 which is typical.. did they start slow & then catch up?). Second & third, I had informed the nurses of my difficulty in taking the glucophage as it made me sick & he never tested me for insulin resistance (not all PCOS patients are insulin resistant & only need glucophage if insulin resistant).

For the next try, he had only a few changes to make. Take birth control longer (20-25 days instead of the 15 or so I did last time). He is also going to start me off with FSH of 100 (started at 150 last time) and Lupron of 5 (10 b4) and just try again. He also said to make sure to take the full dose, at least during the stim phase if I can't manage it the rest of the time. (Glucophage gives me GI issues at full dose, or even at smaller doses sometimes).

So, just try again. Now that he's seen how my body reacts, he says he knows what doses to use next time. What if these doses are not enough? Plus, the problem with that mentality is that we only have one more try that our insurance will cover. And we don't have $10-15k to pay for another try ourselves. So I'm very interested in doing all we can to increase our chance of success at this try. I'm not in a hurry to do it right away.. if time is what we need to be better prepared then fine by us.

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