I know, the title is awful. Forgive me.
We went to the RE's office today, for the first time since my post-D & C visit late last year. My 3-day walk is just over two weeks away (!), and I wanted to figure out our plan enough in advance so that I could start treatment as soon as possible after the walk.
A few minutes after arriving at the office, the nurse called us back. Instead of going left, in the direction of his office, she took us to the right, to one of the ultrasound rooms. I asked, hesitantly, if she was sure I was the right Jennifer (no one else jumped up when I did, but it's happened before). She held up my crazy thick chart, and read off my name correctly, then started painstakingly typing my name into the ultrasound machine.
I stopped her, and said, "What are we doing?"
"An ultrasound! For your IUI!"
Before she got any further, we realized that there had been a scheduling snafu, and we were sent out to wait for the doctor, pants still buttoned and ultrasound wand still firmly in its holster.
We finally got to talk to the doctor about our current situation--it has been a year, to the day, since I last conceived--and our fears about doing IVF, and succeeding, only to miscarry. He agreed that IUIs with injectible meds made some sense, although I always get the sense when talking to him that patients choosing to do anything short of IVF really stymies him. He's not a salesman by any means, but as a technician, he has a bit of a hard time understanding why anyone would choose anything but the best, most effective method of conception. There is a sense, when discussing IUIs, that we really are just delaying the inevitable.
He doesn't have any problem with me using my donated Menop*r, and we discussed injections, scheduling, the ultrasounds, and of course, the risk of multiples with such a cycle. That part, quite frankly, scares me tremendously, and makes me wonder if we're doing something really, really stupid. It would be hard, I think, to be more educated about the pitfalls and perils of using these drugs in this fashion, and yet, here I go, stumbling as blindly hopefully into it as a girl so new to treatment that she confuses Clomid with chlamydia.
I was scared to read that 25-35% of IUIs with injectibles result in multiple births, until I realized that my clinic has a whopping rate of 40% of live births resulting in multiples from IVF for women in my age group. Of course, I don't have a good sense of how many high-order multiples result from each, but at least the risks appear to be similar for either.
I'm on day 6 of this cycle, so it looks like hopefully we will get to do the first IUI next month; of course, we'll be traveling over Thanksgiving, what may be the beginning of my cycle, so it unfortunately may have to wait another month.
Amidst all the clinical discussions and ultrasound avoidance today at the doctor's office, there was a very hard moment. I was glad, so glad, when I realized that I had gotten away without knowing the sex of the baby we lost last year. But today, as my doctor scanned quickly through the paperwork, looking for the lab report, I felt my heart race a little, knowing that I couldn't find a way to stop him before he read it, a quiet mumble of letters and numbers that unfortunately, meant way too much to me.
It was a boy.
This afternoon when I went to pick Andrew up from the sitter's, she told me that he'd said earlier, "we don't have any babies at our house."
No, my love, we don't. Let's hope that changes soon.
