The First Visit

Well,


I've got the baby fever now, and I have it bad. I'm slowly but surely coming out of the "funk", and the baby fever is almost full on. :-)


I decided that with the two crappy ObGYN visits I've had already this year, I would just take the advice a friend gave me several years ago, and just skip straight to a Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE). I kept seeing signs telling me to go there. Well, so maybe it was the actual sign on the side of the building that I pass going to and from work every single day, but it's still a sign, right?

I visited their website, and after digging through, wondering if I should do it or not, I used the little "contact us" link, and sent them an email. 2 hours later, I received a phone call. Not only did I get a phone call from the office, but the Doctor himself. Yes. That's right. THE ACTUAL DOCTOR CALLED ME. Huge plus in my book. When I called back, i got the lady he had mentioned in my voicemail, and it was like she knew me already. He had given her the information from my email, and she was expecting my phone call.

We set up the appointment. August 12. (ironic, seeing as how this would have been my 9th wedding anniversary with my first husband..) We entered the office, and immediately, i was relaxed. They were friendly, and they didn't treat me like I got treated at this OB visit.

I turned in my what seemed like 500 forms I had to fill out before coming in, and then they took mine and John's picture together to put in the records. They said "Y'all are in this together, so we treat you as one." again. i like this.

We got called back to this little open area that had sperm all over the floor, and I wondered to myself if the sperm were leading to the little dark rooms in the back for a reason. :-) I would later find out they were. hehe That's a part of the office I don't care to go into. Don't wanna know what all's back there!

Then the Doctor came out, and called us in his office. He had already read through my paperwork, so he began just asking me questions. He was very thorough. He even asked me if some of my family members were bald. He knew he was asking me strange questions, but he said this was to try and get as much of a hormone background as he could. He then gave us a power point presentation with some statistics, and other interesting information. Did you know that one in three infertile couples is due to the male? That seemed like a pretty high number to me. I had no idea! I also didn't know that in 100 pregnancies, only 30 will actually make it to live healthy birth. The percentage of people who are pregnant and miscarry without even knowing it is huge! Anyways - I asked him about PCOS, and he really didn't seem to be phased by it at all. He told me there was no cure for it, and (another statistic here) 90% .. 90% of women have PCOS. Most are just asymptomatic. I wish I was one of those!

After the visit, we went into another room where I had my vajayjay probed by the ultrasound mechanism. I hardly noticed though, because I was intrigued by the fact that they actually thought of putting a monitor on the ceiling so that when you're lying on your back with your legs spread open for the whole world to see, you can see what the doctor's looking at. Doesn't mean I could tell what I was looking at. Just a bunch of gray matter, and every-once-in-a-while, I could see one little round thing, and apparently one was a cyst, and one was an ovary. :-/

That was my exam. The doctor is working with me to make this as affordable as possible, since they don't take my primary insurance and I'm self pay. $$$$$ (they accept my secondary, but they won't file on it. I'll be switching over in January. Thank goodness. :-) ) - this means I'll be going to my regular Doctor to get my blood work drawn, and then just have the results sent over. John, however, got to have his blood drawn, because UH is his primary. Apparently, for some infertility treatments, it's required by law for both partners to be tested for HIV, Hepatitis, and other diseases.

So... Here's the plan. Summarized.

I started taking Provera, since I haven't had a period since April.
On CD1, I call the doctor, and we set up a schedule for the following:
- Days 5-9 take Clomid (bring on the hot flashes, baby!)
- somewhere in Days 9-11, have another ultrasound to see the status of my system.
- Around days 11-13, start an antibiotic, and have an x-ray procedure done to make sure my tubes aren't blocked.

Next week, John gets to bring a cup full of his "goodies" to the office for his Sperm Analysis. For the record - we chose to do this at home, rather than follow the sperm on the floor to one of the little back rooms. :-) We just have to get it to the office fairly quickly. It is precious cargo, you know! Thank goodness we live about 3 miles from the office!

Once all that's done, then we sit down, and talk about all the results, and what the next plan of action is.

I'm excited, and nervous all at the same time. I feel like we've officially started. I've read so many blogs with these same type stories on them, and now I are one of them blogs!

John and I have already had long discussions about how far into this we want to go, and already talked about the possibility of adoption if it comes to that. For now, we are going to take this one step at a time, and see what God's will for us is.

I ask that if you made it this far, reading this long blog, that you take a moment and pray for John and I as we prepare to take some pretty big steps to help make our family grow. We both want this really bad, and already many tears have been shed from the disappointments we've already had.

I will keep the blog updated as much as I can with updates.