Diagnosis: Get it on

In September 2010, we finally went to see a fertility doctor.  I really, really did not want it to get to that point, but once we made the decision I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

We were going to get some answers.

They ran a battery of tests over the course of the month--blood tests, ultrasounds, etc.  The result?  Husband's sperm was absolute perfection.  (Reading the results was pretty funny--did you know sperm can have two heads, or two tails, or no heads or tails at all?  Ew!)  So that was good to know. 

But something was definitely wrong with me.

Because of a hormone issue, my body prepared an egg, but then didn't release it for a while.  By the time it was released, it was basically overripe.  (So we were wrong about the "luteal phase defect"... or were we?... but we correctly identified a problem about my body releasing eggs too late.)  The fertility doctor suggested that it could have caused both the ectopic and the miscarriage or it could be totally unrelated.

I asked the doctor if my hormone imbalance was a common problem.  He said no.  He told us that older women often have all kinds of hormone imbalances, but for someone my age (early 30s) to just have this one issue was unusual. 

He gave us several potential treatment options.  The least intrusive was for them to monitor my follicles, and then when they reached a mature size (18-22) trigger ovulation using a shot of ovidrel (human chorionic gonadoptropin) to make sure a mature egg was released on time.  Other options were more invasive, such as IVF, which I hoped never to have to do.

So we chose the "easy" option.  It just made me normal.  One egg.  Released on time.  Sperm still had to find it.  Etc.  But at least I had a chance of getting pregnant.

Over the next six months, we followed this "natural cycle" method.  (It always amused me when the nurses said, "oh, you're on a natural cycle" as they were monitoring my follicles with an ultrasound and telling me when to give myself a shot.  There's nothing natural about that!)  It involved several days of follicle monitoring each month and then an ovidrel shot from a small pre-filled syringe into my abdomen when the follicles reached a mature size.  (The shot did not hurt.)  Then we had "timed intercourse."  They actually wrote times and dates on a sheet of paper and gave it to me!  My husband and I both travel for work, so the timed intercourse involved several funny and desperate attempts to "meet up" at the right time.  I joked one month that if it worked we'd have to nickname the kid "booty call."

I also had to follow-up the shot with progesterone suppositories, which just make sure you don't get your period before the embryo has a chance to implant and develop.  I tried to convince the doctor's office to allow me to take an oral pill instead of being forced to deal with sticking leaky nasty pills in my who-haw, but they wouldn't budge, saying the oral pills were not as effective.

The ovidrel shot varied from day 10 of my cycle to day 16 of my cycle. 

We never got pregnant "naturally."

After I got my last failed pregnancy test in March of 2011, we decided it was time to get more aggressive.  We met with the fertility doctor to discuss more options.  After talking about the potential treatments (injectables, IUI, IVF), we decided that IVF was the best option for us.

We put an end to booty calls.  We decided to get serious.