Approaching 275º

At the start of 2017 the preheat setting to my oven was starting to really warm up as we decided to finally branch out, admit defeat (or so how I felt) and see an infertility specialist.

After getting many referrals from friends and family we decided on Dr. Moffitt with Arizona Reproductive Medicine Specialists. We had our official new patient consult (which is free with his office, bonus) and felt a little bit more certain, yet very frustrated about our new plan of care.

We would be sticking with Clomid for me, but taking away the estrogen and progesterone, increasing and changing up the Metformin and adding a small dose steroid to the mix. We would also be doing monthly ultrasounds to see if I am even responding to the highest dose of Clomid a woman can take, as I hadn’t got pregnant from that dose yet…

Why are we changing so much? Why did my previous doctor have me taking all these meds that my new doctor questioned? Is that why we hadn’t become pregnant? Were the last six months all a waste? Will this new set of meds work for me finally? I honestly had so many questions and almost felt more in the dark and angry about it all!

Well after our first month of trying this new medication regimen, we were very excited to see how my body responded to the medications. We went in for our mid cycle ultrasound to look at my ovaries and see if I made any follicles and if any of them were big enough to release an egg/ovulate. “Guess what? You have three large ones and two medium follicles!” The nurse was seriously ecstatic which then made Brandon and I super excited and hopeful. She said that usually someone with a diagnosis of PCOS (oh yeah, along the way I guess I was semi diagnosed with this, but no one officially said so) is lucky if they even produce one large follicle, but here I was with three! The next step was for the nurse to go over the ultrasound with the doctor and then get back to me about which day I could take my trigger shot to make me ovulate (as we know I can’t ovulate on my own, hence the never having a single period in four years issue.)

As we well know with rollercoasters once you go up you must come down. I received a phone call that following day which I thought was going to be telling me which day I could trigger and it turned out to be the exact opposite. The nurse told me that my doctor reviewed the ultrasound many times and feels as though it would be unsafe to trigger, as the two medium follicles could actually be bigger than they show and that would leave me with five mature enough follicles to trigger. Well seeing how I don’t want to be the next octomom, we had to stop this cycle and move on to another month of trying.

This was the worst best news I could receive. My body responded TOO well to the meds. Honestly, thank goodness I can’t ovulate on my own because lord have mercy if I could, I would probably have had a litter growing inside me from the previous Clomid cycles with my OBGYN, as she didn’t do mid cycle ultrasounds.

So, next step was to cut my dose in half and try again! The following cycle my ultrasound showed two follicles of mature size and I got to trigger myself with HCG that next day. I tracked my ovulation and sure enough, I got POSITIVE ovulation tests! Now that was something I had never seen before and it brought me many happy tears! Now all we had to do was make sure we had intercourse and I would be pregnant!

Over the next two weeks I think I experienced every pre-pregnancy sign there could be. Tender breasts (sign of progesterone being made), sharp pain on the left side (sign of implantation), cramping (sign of uterus growing to prepare for baby), you name it, I felt it. Needless to say when I took my pregnancy test and it showed a very faint positive line, I couldn’t believe my eyes and ran out to my husband to make sure he saw it too! He was hesitant to agree with me, but he definitely saw the line as well.

We were pregnant! All that hard work paid off, we did it. We could start talking about names and whether we though it was a boy or girl and what the baby would look like. Could we have twins in there since there were two follicles? All these thoughts ran through my head. But there was still a shred of doubt in both of our minds since it just felt too good to be true.

So I called my nurse and asked for her to write me an order to get my blood drawn that next day. Unfortunately those pre-pregnancy signs/symptoms I had experienced were more than likely PMS symptoms because when I took another pregnancy test the following day, it was a big fat negative. I still went in for the blood test to make sure and the day after that I got a phone call telling me it was indeed negative.

Now whether or not I was having a miscarriage and I caught the tail end of it on the pregnancy test or it was still some of my HCG trigger shot coursing through my body, I will never know. But let me tell you, it was the most depressing experience to have to go through. I literally was the happiest I had every been in the last four years that day I got my false positive and then I was the saddest I’ve ever been when I saw the negative and got the results back from the blood test. I cried for hours. I felt so guilty for even showing my husband that first test. I should have known it was too good to be true. How could I put him through that too?! Ugh, that was some serious feelings to have to work through. And I and BEYOND lucky to have this man by my side, because if it wasn’t for him, I don’t know if I could have pulled myself out from the darkness that was starting to surround me.