Our Fertility Regroup..October 2021

Hello friends and family, thank you for joining us once again. I’ll start out by saying this, Infertility is not an easy road to go down. Infertility consumes you with grief, sadness, moments of happiness, hope, desperation at time, and so many more emotions I could list but that would take a long time. No matter if you are going through infertility now, later on in your life, or maybe even in the past… YOU ARE VALID. You will get those that you cross paths with that won’t understand what you are going through, or why you feel the emotions you do. You will get those that if you already have one they will condemn you and say.. Oh well be grateful you have been able to have one. That is one of the biggest stigmas that I hope we can break as a community. Just because you have a child does not make the road of infertility to other children any less hard or any less emotional. That also doesn’t mean you are not grateful for the children you have. That leads a little into my story. I have moments in the last year where I feel guilty for feeling so sad that I still can’t have children naturally, and I tell myself to be grateful that I have one. In our case it is painful because when Michael and I met 8 years ago and began to form a serious relationship we always talked about a big family, that is because we both came from big families and that is what we know and love. When we found out that I was infertile and we had to go down the path of doctors helping us it crushed us because we didn’t know what that meant, nor did we know if that big family we dreamed of would happen. So anyway we will talk more on that in another post, I will digress and get to my appointment which is what you are all yearning to hear about…

On October 14th 2021 I had my regroup appointment as I like to call it. That basically means that we were ready to start our journey again as the yearn for another little one grows stronger. So we had to make an appointment to basically know what we still needed to do, talk about our past lab results and testing, and also start discussing a little bit about our treatment options and what that would look like. I was excited for this appointment as it meant we were starting up again, and honestly my baby fever has been INSANE lol. I have to admit I was also nervous. As stated before I suffer from PCOS and over the last few years my Menstrual cycle has been non existent. My body has stopped having even random cycles, I need to take a medication called Proverra to kick start my cycles. So anyway I went into my appointment with a lot of emotions already at the surface, Again I am going through care and treatments at Conceptions in Lafayette, and I see Dr. Chaing and she is amazing. So I go in and of course there are others in the waiting room and sometimes the urge to hug people and tell them that they have support from this community is a strong urge lol, Don’t worry I didn’t randomly hug anyone. So Dr. Chaing calls me back to her office and we begin going over what all has happened the last 7 months since I saw here, we talk about how I haven’t had a cycle since the last time they had me take that medication. We talked about Michael’s testing with his analysis and blood work and he got the green check mark, Michael doesn’t need to do anymore testing. Then we began talking about my testing, so the first topic was the HSG ultrasound I did back in March 2021 and how it was abnormal. She explained that we really need to do the saline ultrasound.. for those just joining that is an ultrasound where they will fill up my uterus with saline to make sure there are no filling defects, but also in that same time she is making sure I have no cysts or fibroids pushing in on my uterus causing that dip. She did explain that sometimes anatomy wise that may be just how my uterus is shaped and knowing that information helps with knowing how they want to go about getting my pregnant. We will of course need me to have a period so that they can test my blood work again, but she did say my thyroid levels which were checked by my PCP on 10/13 were good and she was happy with them so YAY!!. From this point things get a bit emotional and there is a lot that is up in the air, but as Dr. Chaing explained to me in our appointment she is very close to 100% sure about some of these things. Our next topic of discussion was on my medications as well as our treatment options. So in Feb 2021 I was diagnosed with BiPolar as well as PTSD, and am currently going through a possible OCD diagnosis. At that time I was put on a medication called Lithium which is safe to take if I were to become pregnant, but as with all medications there is a catch. Lithium has studies that show in some cases of pregnancy it can cause a major heart defect in the fetus, now of course you hear that and go ummm nope no thank you. So that lead into the conversation that I need to have another meeting with my MFM (Maternal Fetal Medicine Doctor) basically someone who deals with High Risk pregnant women. I need to know from them if it is safe to take this medication and what there care plan would be for monitoring the heart, or is it safe for me to stop the medication because the risk is just unknown and why take that risk. So okay that is all totally understandable, but that won’t be the only thing I need to talk to them about. We began talking about treatment, I explained that the combo that worked to finally conceive the first time was Clomid and also Gonal ( injections.) The room fell silent at that moment and her face became even softer looking than before and I knew she was going to say something I didn’t like, so I braced myself. Basically Dr. Chaing explained to me that with the combo that worked the first time she is very hesitant to do this time, and that she is 99% sure that Michael and I will need to do IVF this time around. Now you may be thinking what why, that combination worked last time so can’t she just do the same thing. The answer to that is its a grey area, the combo that was used before the risk to that is it puts me at a high risk of having twins, triplets, or just multiple babies because it stimulates all my follicles that are ready and then they inject the sperm and well the rest is up to my body how many eggs implant. The risk to that is because of the severity of my illnesses in my first pregnancy it can be life threatening to me to be pregnant with multiples, and with my preeclampsia and how severe it was the first time, if I had multiple babies she said she could just about guarantee my preeclampsia would hit very hard very early and we would have to deliver very premature babies that may not survive. The reason IVF is the road she wants to pursue is because in that situation the doctors can control how many eggs are implanted, its a very controlled procedure, but as everyone in the fertility community knows is IVF comes with a hefty price tag. She said we would be looking at about $25,000 because my health insurance covers nothing when it comes to really any of the infertility treatments. They cover the diagnosis part but not treatment…. Gee thanks Aetna * Face Palm* After this conversation she could see the tears welling up in my eyes, she explained that we could talk to my High risk OB and see what they think, we can ask them is it okay to take the risk of doing the meds and then the IUI, or do they think its way to dangerous to take that chance. That brings us to the end of our appointment. I had my to do list of things, and I left that appointment feeling about a million emotions all at one time.

Going into this appointment I had all the expectations that we would do all the same medications because they worked, and that we would just follow the same treatment. After my appointment I realized that just because you may have done treatment one way to conceive one child, does not mean that will be the case the next time. My body has changed in 5 years since we took those medications. My body went through a really traumatic pregnancy to itself and needed a lot of care, and still to this day I have heart issues, and at time blood pressure spikes. I don’t think going into this I really factored all of that in. I am anxious to meet with my High Risk OB office, as I’m anxious to know what they will say. I have that appointment 10/26… so that will be the next update from us.. Remember if you ever have questions feel free to reach out, I am hear to listen even if it’s just too vent. We are a community and we are VALID. Sincerely, The Ohligers.