Fertility Evaluation

My toes in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania

For anyone that missed it, for my first ICLW week I decided to recap the course of my journey before I started this blog.  A couple of days ago I posted about deciding to become a Choice Mom.  Today, I'm blogging about my first visits with my RE; I think my next blog will be about choosing my donor, and then in the next day or so I'll write about my first 3 IUIs, and how crazy they made me.  It's been fun writing these; time really does have a way of putting things in a different perspective!

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By the time I had an appointment with my RE, the summer after I turned 37, I knew all about IUIs, OPKs and BFPs, thanks to my hours spent on SMC discussion boards. My choice of an RE was easy; one of my best friends is an OB, and she said her patients always had the best results with this particular doctor, and so that’s who I went with. At the start of our evaluation, he was optimistic that, based on my history of normal periods, all would be great. He even recommended we start with non-medicated cycles

He did want me to have a full fertility evaluation done first, though, and so I had my Day 3 labs done with an ultrasound, an AMH level and an HSG. My HSG looked great (aside from a wonky cervix that required a balloon catheter to get through – ouch!), but the rest of my labs were not so great. My AMH level was low at 0.49, with an FSH running just a tad high at 9 with a good estradiol level, and my antral follicle count was on the low side.

I got all these results over the phone from the nurse; because of a scheduling conflict I couldn’t get in to see the RE until a month after we’d finished all the tests. It embarrasses me a little now to admit how I felt then, but I had a major freak out. I guess because I look younger than I am, I expected my ovaries to act younger than they are, too. I was so sure my fertility evaluation was going to be perfect, and when I found out it wasn’t, I was terrified. I went from imagining a couple of IUIs, to anticipating multiple BFNs, IVF, huge bills and the potential for no baby at all. In retrospect, I overreacted, imagining problems and obstacles that might never materialize. As my RE had pointed out in our first visit, nothing shows what your fertility status is like actually TTC.

Which is what he reminded me of when we had our first post-evaluation visit. He told me that if I’d come to him after a year of TTC on my own, we would be talking about going straight to IVF. But since I’d never tried to conceive on my own, he thought that 3 IUI cycles with Clomid would be reasonable, and then reassessing after that, based on my response. “Your labs are only indicators of a potential problem. They don’t tell us the whole story.”

I was a little comforted by our appointment, but I still worried. One wonderful result of that worry was an appointment with an acupuncturist who specializes in fertility. I honestly think that my weekly appointments with her helped to restore my sanity. And they probably helped with my fertility as well. But even if it turns out that traditional Chinese medicine does nothing at all for fertility, I feel so much better, so much more like myself as a result of working with her, that I don’t really care.

I happily took all my herbs, did my fertility yoga, ate organic and lost 15 pounds over the course of the next six months, looking forward to my last vacation before starting the IUI process in January 2010. I was ready for the thought that it was going to take me a few tries to be successful. I was optimistic, with a healthy dose of pessimism mixed in, so I was sure I was going to sail through TTC with no major problems, no weight gain and just joyful anticipation.

I was wrong about that! I think that’s what I’ll cover in my one of my next posts.  :)

ETA:  I just realized that I have 99 days left until my due date....and this was my 99th blog entry.  This makes the third crazy number thing this pregnancy (after a conception date of 8/9/10 and 111 days left on 1/11/11) - I wonder if he's going to be a math genius?