Tag Archives: IUI

Go swimmers go!

10 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in IUI

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Had the IUI this morning.  Didn’t hurt a bit!  It’s rather like going to the gyno, only they warmed up the duck lips first.  The nurse inserted a catheter into my cervix and threaded it into my uterus where she released the proverbial hounds.  A tiny bit of weird twingy-ness as she filled my uterus and fallopian tubes but that may just have been the weirdness of actually being able to feel my uterus for the first time.  Then they left S and I in the darkened room with soft music playing and a pillow under my hips.  After our 20 minutes, we bounced.  No biggie!!

Now begins the 2WW (two week wait).  I take a pregnancy test on June 23, which coincidentally was the day I married my first husband.  It’s also 2 days before we leave on our honeymoon.  I feel like that is going to put Murphy (of Murphy’s Law fame) in a quandary.  Which is worse?  Being pregnant on your tropical island honeymoon, or not getting pregnant at all?  I know what I think…

Let’s talk about numbers

09 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Musings

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This whole game – IVF, IUI, mini-IVF etc. – is about numbers.  Going in to the IVF process we were told we had about a 35% chance of conceiving if everything goes swimmingly.  That sounded pretty good.  If I had a 35% chance of winning the lottery I’d play.  But slowly I begin to realize that everything was NOT going swimmingly.  Despite being on the maximum amount of follicle stimulating drugs I only produced 10 follicles, which reduced to 6, which reduced to 4 plus one gigantic monster follicle called a dominant follicle.  That makes me a “poor responder” to the meds which reduces my chances of having lots of eggs and/or of having healthy eggs.  Having a dominant follicle is also bad, since it kills off other follicles, further reducing my chances of conception.

Suddenly, I found myself looking at the numbers in a different way.  A 35% chance (if everything is perfect, which it’s not) is actually 65% chance of not conceiving.  Given my circumstances my odds are reduced to let’s say 15%.  That’s an 85% chance of NO BABY.

No one talks about this.  I’ve stalked around TTC boards for a long long time and they’re populated with success story after success story – and that’s wonderful.  I’m honestly happy for those folks and think that those boards are a fantastic resource.  BUT.  You begin to notice that many (if not most) of the people that posted often with updates, stories and experiences just….faded away.  BFN after BFN.  Cancelled cycle after cancelled cycle.  Heartbreak after heartbreak.

We all think we’re special.  That we’re gonna be the one to beat the odds.  Maybe that’s true, but as I sit here the night before my first IUI staring down the barrel of a 92% chance of failure I am all too aware that the odds are not in my favor.

The road to motherhood is expensive and paved with needles.

07 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in IVF, Stimming (Taking Ovarian Stimulation meds)

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Let’s jump right in (for background info please see the “About Me” tab)-

By my count (in the last 3 weeks) I have given myself ~45 shots in the gut, had blood drawn 14 times, had 6 veins collapse, been jabbed 12 times with the

My tummy a few days after I started stimming

dildocam, and peed on 14 sticks.  And I’ve only cried 4 times.  Once when they told me my follicles were growing too slowly and were likely to be duds, once when we decided to convert my IVF an IUI, later that same night after researching the odds of a successful IUI, and once when I accidentally injected the Follistim into an abdominal muscle.  (Burns like hell – never thought lack of abdominal fat would be something to complain about but there you go.)

After all of that I have one monster follicle that gobbles up all my expensive medicine and houses a hard-boiled, unusable egg, 2 sad small little follicles trying to beg scraps from the monster, and 2 “slow and steady wins the race” follicles on the other side.  None appear to be excellent recruits.  And in this game what you want is eggs – lots of eggs.

Let’s break the IVF game down.  We want a baby which comes from an egg which grows in a follicle.  HOWEVER.  Not every follicle has an egg.  Not every egg is mature when collected. Not every mature egg is of a good quality.  Not every good quality egg fertilizes.  Not every fertilized egg grows into an embryo. Not every embryo is viable.  Not every viable embryo will implant in the uterus.  And not every implantation “sticks”.  So with only 2 or three possible eggs (at best) it seemed best to skip the expensive, invasive IVF egg retrieval and embryo transfer (assuming we would even get that far) and go for an IUI – less expensive, no surgery required, no work missed.  Make me ovulate (with a shot, of course), take his sperm and wash it off to get rid of the deadbeats, and inject that directly into my uterus skipping the whole messy (apparently confusing to sperm) vaginal and cervix bit of the process. We said yes, let’s do that.

I just took what I hope are the last night of the shots (add 3 more to the tally) and will go back to the RE in the morning.  Add 2 more peed on sticks, 1 more blood draw and one more date with the dildocam…  And probably one more cry.