Fertility Doc round-up

As I took a left out of the end of my road this morning, not two minutes from my house, I hit a detour. (They're repaving a piece of the street that been in ruins for the entire two years I've lived here. Two years.) I called my husband and said, "do you think that it's a bad omen that I'm only two minutes from home and I already hit a detour?"

Luckily, the rest of the ride was uneventful and the doctor's appointment wasn't all bad.

Two major things came out of the appointment today: I'm NOT taking Clomid after all, and I'm going to try to stop drinking during the months when I'm TTC. That goes completely against my rule of "I refuse to put my life completely on hold" but the doctor suggested that although occasional drinking while TTC doesn't increase the odds of miscarriage, there are some studies that show that drinking even while trying to conceive can adversely affect the baby.

Here's how it went down. The doctor never did get my medical record. It's probably going to show up in their mail today. Thanks a lot you useless-piece-of-crap medical records person who "put it in the mail" on Wednesday of last week. It could have made it there by pony by now.

I basically paid a whole lot of money out of pocket for the doctor to order the chromosomal testing for T and I that Dr. N probably should have ordered.

See, having a normal baby doesn't necessarily rule out chromosomal issues for T and I as I understood Dr. N to say. (Maybe I misunderstood him, but either way, he didn't order the tests.) Dr. G. ordered those labs, which I'm really happy about, and the results will be available in a few weeks.

Now for the Clomid. I'm sure that Dr. N has reasons / a good track record with the use of Clomid for people like me. However, when I told Dr. G that I was being prescribed Clomid (and I'm supposed to start taking it today if I'm going to take it) she couldn't understand why he was suggesting Clomid since I don't have trouble getting pregnant. In fact, she said that 20% of the time, Clomid causes the endometrial lining to be thinner, which I definitely don't need to add to my list of things to worry about. I explained that Dr. N wanted to help my body to produce progesterone on its own, and she didn't seem to agree, but she kept her opinion to herself.

My impression of Dr. G is a tough call. She absolutely knows her stuff. She's very, very smart, but she also talked fast and "above my head" for much of the time. In the end, I think I preferred that to the feeling that I get with Dr. N, that he (and his staff) are not paying enough attention. Dr. G is being proactive and ordering more tests. Dr. N's suggestion was to just "see what happens."

The plan: Chromosomal testing for T and me, try to get pregnant this month (yay!) and start taking progesterone three days after LH surge. Baby aspirin is up to me, and she said to go ahead and start taking it now if I want to. (It sounded like she didn't think it made a difference.)

Decisions, Decisions

One of my coping mechanisms is planning ahead to the next step.

I've already said that I want to start TTC again right away.

However.

Now I'm getting cold feet. There are so many factors. One is waiting for my period. There's no telling when it will show up. From experience, it's been just under 5 weeks and just under 6 weeks. Another (connected with when my period shows up) is the doctor's appointments I have scheduled.

My appointment with Dr. N is the last week of July, and Dr G (the new specialist) is the second full week of August. I almost definitely won't have gotten my period by the time I see Dr. N, but I may well get it before my appointment with Dr. G.

I'm planning to start Clomid during the next cycle when we TTC. The complicated part is that we need to decide by day 3 of my cycle if we're going to start the Clomid or not (as all of you Clomid veterans know.) The biggest problem with that is that I don't know if Dr. G is going to want to run any tests that require my body to be clean of all those awesome hormones.

I'm not good at waiting. Then again, I'd definitely prefer to have a baby one month later than lose another one because of something that turns out to be treatable if I had just waited one more month.

So I look to you, oh wise bloggers... What would you do? Any insight on tests they might run and whether I will have to be drug free for them to work?

Back from vacation

Well, it was a good week, all in all. We had rain on Tuesday and Wednesday, but other than that the weather was nice. I was able to relax in the sun, go to the beach one afternoon with D and do some reading. D also got a chance to play with his younger cousin all week, which he really enjoyed. (They both did.)

One of the books I was reading is called "Miscarriage, Medicine, and Miracles." It's a very informative book written by an OBGYN in New York. I've been taking extensive notes throughout it and will be asking my doctor some questions about what I have and have not yet been tested for. I like the fact that the author uses medical terms but also gives the definition of these terms in boxes within the text. Very helpful, especially for flipping back to look something up again.

My bleeding has basically stopped. (I'm writing this mostly as a note for myself.) It's been a fairly uneventful follow-up to the D & E. No fevers, no clotting (yet) and no major cramps or pain. I would say this is the best that my body has handled a D & E so far. There's a possibility that I may still have some bleeding left to do, but if I remember correctly from the last two times, the clotting was about a week after the D & E, and I'm already 10 days past.

In other random news, I was struck by something that Wifey said in a post a few days ago. She just had her sixth miscarriage, and as she put it: "this time around, nobody gets it." That's just how I feel... When you have your first or second miscarriage, the people who know about it send you flowers and cards or at least call or e-mail. They check on you once or twice just to see how you're doing. Have another one? It's like they don't know what to do or say. The first or second time they can try to be comforting. They can say things like, "I bet this was just a fluke" or "I know it will happen for you soon." Not anymore. No one is optimistic anymore. They don't send flowers. They don't send cards. They don't really say anything. I'm not angry about these things, and I don't mean to sound angry. I'm not expecting cards and flowers by any means, but I feel like people might be going by my apparent lack of emotion (no, I'm not bawling in public) and assuming that I'm "okay this time." It's no big deal because it's the third. *sigh*

(**Just to clarify, I'm talking about people in my real life, not in blog land. You guys have been great.**)

In more "I've been gone for a week so I have a lot to say" news, I'm finally going to start looking into other doctors. I'm not making any guarantees that I'll switch, but I'm tired of not feeling 100% confident that they're paying enough attention to my chart.

Lastly, I know it's stupid to do this and I'll probably just end up disappointed again, but I'm ready to put all of my eggs in the Clomid basket (pun intended.) I'm giving my complete confidence to Clomid-the-wonder-drug next time around and hoping that it will do its job and tell my body to make its own Progesterone and ovulate in the middle of my cycle when it's supposed to, without making me a breakthrough in multiple births.