It has taken me a few days to type this update. I have needed time to process what we were told and ultimately Michael and I have some big decisions to make and each one has a lot to go with it. On December 2nd I went in to meet with our infertility doctor as our testing was done and it was time to go over that as well as find out our options for treatment. I was anxious and nervous going in as I wasn’t sure what would be said.
We began going over testing. My tubes were open, my uterus looks good other than my lining is super thick. Michael semen analysis was great. We went over my egg counts and levels. She explained that my infertility has gotten worse than compared to years ago. Basically my body is not ovulating at all. My egg count was very high.. which is great in that we have a lot of eggs, but bad because that doesn’t mean those eggs are healthy. It also shows that my body isn’t dropping any of the eggs its just holding onto them. When we went through fertility treatments before I was still ovulating they just weren’t maturing to be able to implant or even receive sperm. So that was a bit heartbreaking to hear. She also explained the importance that I take Proverra every 2 months to force a period. If I were to just go on naturally with my body and the lining continues to build it puts me at an extreme risk of getting cancer. After all of that we started to discuss treatment.
We have 3 treatment options…. IVF, IUI with combo drugs ( Injections and Oral meds), or IUI with just oral meds. You may look and say oh that’s great 3 options, but what goes with each one is difficult and filled with emotion. So we will start with IVF or In Vitro Fertilization. This option for us is the safest for me to do to have 1 healthy baby and its more controlled. This is the option that our Fertility doctor and our High Risk OB want and have determined the best route. Downside is we are looking at about $25,000 out of pocket as insurance for us doesn’t cover a single thing. That is a lot of money that most people don’t just have to throw down. We also talked about what goes with that treatment. Injections, Egg Retrieval, Freezing embryos, Implanting, more meds, and the list goes on. But the upside is our success rate would be 60 – 70%. So that was option 1 and of course we wanted to know about the others.
Next would be IUI with just Oral medications. When we spoke about this option it wasn’t a highly rated option. Based off my history of oral meds before, just having the one medication didn’t really work. We had done about 6 rounds with just Clomid trying to conceive Declan and my follicles just never responded correctly. My success rate with this option would be about 5% and we would be looking at about $2,000 out of pocket. Now yea this option is the cheapest but if we had multiple failed rounds then we might as well have saved it for IVF with the high success rate.
Then our final option.. this option is what we used to conceive Declan. We did IUI with combo drugs. We did Gonal F and Clomid, so that is injection and oral medications. When we first started this journey this is the route we thought we would do, because it worked last time. Well we didn’t consider the pregnancy that I went through which she explained makes this option dangerous. So when you do a combo IUI, what happens is you are meant to release a lot of follicles and the injections stimulate them to get ready to receive the sperm. That means that my percent of having Twins or more is about 45%. This is where it gets a bit emotional. Our doctor explained that due to the complications I went through with Declan it is not an option for me to have Twins or more.. it could take my life. She explained that if we went down this road and I became pregnant with Twins or more embryos.. I would have to terminate the embryos till left with only 1. The cost for this route is about $3,500. This then lead back to IVF because it is controlled and not so random that we are taking a chance. She gave me all the info I needed and now we are left with a decision and all 3 require the pros and cons.
Leaving this appointment I felt defeated and I felt sad. All the questions began racing through my head. How do we pay for IVF? How do we take a chance that we would have to terminate one of our embryos ? The list goes on. Our next step is to make a decision and then the process of that decision begins. Baby dust to all…. ❤
The Ohliger’s Journey to Baby #2 