Pregnancy after Infertility

It's been quite awhile since I posted here but I've had a few comments as well as a hike in visitors.  I thought that those visiting here would be interested to hear that even though I continue to have PCOS and its symptoms, that I was able to have a second child on my own.

We tried a couple rounds of IUI at Carolina Conceptions with Dr. Meyer back in 2010 with the last one being in November.  After the last failure, we decided to take a break for the holidays.  I'd been very stressed through the IUI and holidays and had laser eye surgery scheduled for January 2011.  In early March I struggled with shingles and later was just not feeling better.  I got the crazy idea in my head that I might be pregnant so I took a test.  And then hubby had me take another test!  Sure enough, baby girl was on the way!

Sweet Inara was born in December last year and just turned a year old!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year!

For those of you following Jaxon's blog, this is a repeat post. I thought I'd include it here as well.

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Jaxon & I went to two reunions this weekend which kept us pretty busy. I'd already planned to attend my mothers family reunion when I found out that the fertility clinic was holding the first baby reunion. Luckily, Mom & I were able to work it out to attend both.

Saturday morning we headed over to the fertility clinic and thought we were in the wrong place at first. It looked deserted as we rounded the corner to the clinic, but they had blocked off the whole parking lot for the event. I heard they had around 300 people show up! I've never seen so many strollers in one place. We were welcomed by staff and stopped by several vendor tables. Then we registered for the door prizes before going under the deck to chat & get food. I got a chance to quickly speak to both of the doctors that helped us and walk around looking at all the lovely little babies! There were mostly singleton babes like Jax but there were plenty of twins and pregnant women plus a couple sets of triplets! There were some fun things for the older kids like a moonbounce and a train. The event was catered so we had burgers and hotdogs. Best of all, I won one of the door prizes! A $100 Visa giftcard!! More pics here

my new doc

Carolina Conceptions is a new clinic in our area that I mentioned in an earlier post. Before I even left my apppointment, I'd pretty much made up my mind that Dr. Meyer was my new doctor and that I was not going back to see Dr. Toma! It is in Raleigh so it's a slightly longer drive but well worth it. The facility is brand new (still have all sorts of construction in the building and the parking lots not even finished) but the drs have plenty of experience.

After just a short wait, the nurse ushered me back into Dr. Meyers office (brownie points for him already being in the room instead of sending me to a empty room to wait more). Dr. Meyer is a very pleasant person and is happy to work with you on a treatment plan. Since I didn't have my medical records from NCCRM (see previous post for that rant), I had typed up all my IUI & IVF results (thankfully I had all that info here on my blog). That info plus the treatment chart (that was my 'treatment bible' through IVF) was enough information for him to determine what steps to take next.

I was thrilled when he said that he thought I could get pregnant without doing IVF. There's about a zillion reasons why that made me happy, but primarily money, time & pain in that order. So he wanted to try something he called sequential therapy IUI. Basically it's just a combo of the type of IUI that I did before, plus the same injectable fertility drug I took during IVF.

He also said I do not have to take metformin (glucophage) anymore! This was the best news I could have gotten. I had been complaining since Sept. about the awful side effects of this drug but my old RE basically said 'get used to it'. Dr. Meyer said we could try Avandia instead and that it had little side effects.

So the waiting game begins... wait for a period to start. He actually said I could take prometrium (that I have left over from IVF.. thats one really great thing about this doc, he's trying to maximize the leftover drugs that I've already paid for!). The prometrium will start my cycle but I'm waiting until I get back from an upcoming business trip (to Minnesota) to make sure that we have no conflicts with the travel.

it shouldnt be so hard

Get a copy of your medical records before your appointment.

Sounds easy right? Wrong! Now I'm not a novice at medical run-around, but this is just ridiculous.

After our less than thrilling appointment with our RE on Monday, DH & I debated various options. Since I'm the one enduring the daily hardships during treatment, DH is pretty much leaving the final say to me. So, I decided that we needed a second opinion. I already had an RE in mind since I've done plenty of research on the topic since our initial IVF education back in December. Dr. Meyer is in Raleigh at a new clinic that just opened last year (yea I know, it's new.. are they good enough, can we trust them... I'm not going into all that right now, maybe another post, you can read all about their clinic & make that call for yourselves. I will say the co-founders used to be directors of both the Duke & UNC IVF programs). I was thrilled to find that Carolina Conceptions could get me in to see Dr. Meyer in less than a week!

Okay so that all seems good so far. Here's where it got frustrating. I need to take my medical records to CC in order for the RE to give a second opinion. So I call NCCRM yesterday trying to get the process started (only 3 days after the appt that led to our decision to try another clinic). Finally today I get instructions on how to get my records. First I need to fill out a release form. Done. Then, NCCRM contracts out their copy service to a company that comes only once a week (Wednesdays of course, so the day before I called). So I have to wait until next Wed. Oh and by the way, then you call the contracted company on Friday to find out when you can get the copies. So that would put us at 7 business days later & still no copies. Then, you finally get the copies the next week around Wednesday. So I called the contract company hoping I could get some sort of expedited service (and expecting an extra fee, thats okay). Nope, they don't have anything like that and they wouldn't even commit to the Wed date that the dr office gave me. So I made the initial request on 3/22, and by sometime around maybe possibly 4/4, I might have my records for a doctor appt that is on 3/30.

And what really gets me - my file is sitting in a filing cabinet right now. No one is using it. And they have a copier.. I've seen it. I'd even make the copies myself & still pay the copy fee.. I just want the information they are holding hostage.