Yesterday was CD 5 so I took my first Clomid pill.  It sounds like we’re going to be following the exact same path as the first round, 50mg of Clomid on cycle day 5 through 9.  Luckily for me, due to the timing of this cycle, I’m only scheduled for 1 follicle scan on Monday the 15th.  Hopefully we’ll see a nice large follicle and we’ll be able to trigger and do the IUI within the next couple of days.  (Please note I literally cannot keep track of any of these dates/timelines if I don’t write it all out here)  If that all works out as planned Christmas will fall right in the middle of the two week wait, which I think will help me to get through it a little easier so I’m feeling pretty good and optimistic so far.  I can’t say that I felt the same a mere 4 days ago…

So my doctor told me to call her if I got a positive result last time around and if not then wait until I got my period.  It seemed like it was taking weeks after the IUI for my period to finally show up so I was already anxious and anticipating another round of Provera.  I started spotting last Monday (December 1st) so I knew the flo was right around the corner so I mentally prepared myself for the struggle that is calling the office.  Now, I realize that they are a regular OBGYN and it has become BLATANTLY obvious that infertility treatment is NOT a core competency, but I’ve never felt so alone and misunderstood than the handful of times I’ve tried to get a hold of my Dr on the phone.

So I called my Dr’s office and I asked to speak to her and the very ‘nice’ lady at the receptionist station told me ‘Oh, she doesn’t talk to people over the phone.’

I was like what now?  So I said ‘Well, she told me to call her so I am just trying to get a hold of her.. is there someone else I should be talking to?’ and she replied with ‘I know that she is with patients right now so I don’t want to try and get a hold of her because I know that she’s busy.’

I then got the ‘Well are you pregnant?’

Me: ‘No.’

Then ‘Are you returning her call?’

I followed this up with a slight explanation of my dilemma by saying ‘Well, I just went through a round of Clomid with her and I need to know what the options are for next steps and I was supposed to get in touch with her when I got my period.’

I got back ‘A round of what? If you need to schedule an appointment then you need to call the appointment line.’

Me: ‘I realize that I need to make an appointment, but I can’t do that until I talk to my dr.  Is there no way for you to get word to her that I am trying to reach her?  I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do if I can’t get a hold of her.  Is there someone else I should be speaking to?’

Her: ‘Well I can try leaving a message with the triage nurse who can touch base with Dr X to see if there’s anything she needs to talk to you about DIRECTLY.’

Me: ‘Great, here’s my number for them to contact me.’

Her: Repeats back wrong phone number

Me: Corrects phone number

Her: Uh huh.

This was all at 9 AM on Monday morning.  Nobody called me back until Tuesday at noon.  Also, when I went in for my Clomid check on Friday, they helped TWO pregnant ladies ahead of me.  Even though I was there 30 MINUTES before EITHER of them.

After all of this I was understandably extremely upset and decided to look into my insurance a little further.  I found out that I can go to an RE without a referral so I’m thinking our next steps is to see one of the RE’s at the University of Minnesota.  At what point has anyone else moved to this step?  I know it’s still early for us in this whole journey but I only have up to $10,000 worth of infertility coverage on my insurance and I’d rather spend it on someone who actually knows what I’m talking about and will treat me with the same respect as a pregnant lady.

Saturday was the big day.  I was actually up extra early because I was catching an 8:00 movie with a group of my coworkers so I had basically the entire day to mull over the results.  It was negative, as I thought it would be, and I was immediately pissed about the fact that I spent 9 dollars to pee on something that only confirmed what I knew to be true.

So now I just wait for my cycle to start again.  I hope it happens naturally without the use of the Provera again.  I feel like I’ve heard somewhere that the second round tends to have a higher success rate than the first so here’s to hoping that’s actually true and not just something I made up in my head.

Tomorrow officially marks the end of the 2WW and I’ll have the joyous experience of peeing on a stick and seeing one lonely line.

While it might just be the pessimist in me, I have been having some mild cramps today which leads me to believe that my period is knocking on my door.  So I am not going to be surprised at all if I see a negative test tomorrow morning.  Luckily I have a full day of plans including brunch, a movie and shopping with family and friends so I won’t have much time to wallow.

Here’s to cycle #2 and the hopes that I don’t get my hopes up too much next time around 🙂

A lot has happened over the last few days, I will attempt to recap in chronological order…

Thursday

Thursday was cycle day 13 and I went in for my second scan.  The OBGYN that I see on a normal basis works out of two locations, this time I would be at the other location from my first scan.  The utrasound tech didn’t say a word the entire time so of course I assumed it was bad news.  She was also the same lady who made the tasteful pearl necklace joke when I was diagnosed.  I was then directed to the lab where I had to sit for 10 minutes because the DR I was randomly assigned that day didn’t have a room available yet.  I finally got to a room and waited another 20 minutes.  By this point I was freaking out and convinced that he would just come in and tell me all the follicles were lost and better luck next time.

He finally came in and I hated him immediately, there was just something about his face and how he refused to look me in the eyes when he spoke.

He told me that my scan looked good, things were still progressing and that he would have a nurse come in to go over the details of getting the Ovidrel and scheduling the IUI.  He then clacked away on his computer in silence for about 3 minutes and finally asked me if I had any questions.  I asked him how much they had progressed, if I even had more than one at this point based on my last appointment on Tuesday.  He clearly hadn’t read my chart and had no idea how much they had changed but was able to verify that I did have one large follicle on my right side and that it was ‘bigger’.  He then said to me “Now, I don’t want you to assume that you’re going to get pregnant this time because you probably won’t.  There’s only a 15 to maybe 20% percent chance that you’ll ever get pregnant doing the IUI.  This is more of a test the first time around.. Next time we’ll probably talk about upping your clomid levels to see if we can get you to produce multiple follicles.”  He then tole me have a nice day, wait for the nurse and called me YOUNG LADY.

I was furious.  Why am I even going through this if some doctor doesn’t even think it’ll work?  Why does this guy have to be such a condescending prick?  At that point I just wanted to get out of there but I had to verify all of the information with the nurse.  She talked me through how the Ovidrel would work, told me at least 6 times that I needed to call and page the on-call doctor at 9AM on Saturday (because of course my first time round would fall on a weekend so that the process would be infinitely more complicated) and sent me on my way to the pharmacy.

Friday

I had an all day offsite meeting for work on Friday so the day went by surprisingly fast.  I got home and opened up the Ovidrel.  For whatever reason, they print the instructions on a ginormous piece of paper and fold it up into a tiny little square.  By the time I got it open I was already sweating.  I read on to find that step one is clean the area with an alcohol wipe.  Of course I do not have this, nor did the pharmacy provide one in the bag they sent me home with, so I had to send my husband up to Walgreens.  HE IS GONE FOR 20 MINUTES.  Please keep in mind that the Walgreens is literally 1.2 miles from my house.  So I am a nervous angry wreck by the time he gets back.

I prep a small area on my tummy (I was going to record this whole process so that I could show it to and scar my future children but forgot) and stand there hoovering with the needle an inch away for at least 5 minutes.  I was freaking out.  My poor husband was behind me with his hands on my shoulders (I think he thought I might pass out) and I finally screamed at him to stop touching me.  I finally got up the courage to just *touch* the needle to my skin and low and behold it just sank right in there without me really feeling anything (I’d been pinching the little area for so long it probably had no feeling left).  I plunged away, pulled the needle out, threw it on the counter and commenced in a victory dance.  No idea why I was so scared.. but just the idea of having to do it again in a month here makes me feel nauseous.

No side effects at all from the Ovidrel that I could tell.  No bruising or anything, mostly just emotional trauma 🙂

Saturday

Saturday morning rolls around and I page my dr (who thank goodness happened to be the on-call dr on rotation this weekend) while my husband preps his sample at a clinic in the city.  We kill some time bumming around until the sample is ready and we are off for my first IUI.  I was pretty nervous, but felt a lot better knowing it was my trusted dr performing the procedure.  I’m not going to lie, it hurt like a mother f-er.  I had really intense cramping during the entire process which thankfully, only lasted about 2 minutes.  I immediately burst into tears the second she left the room and I could tell my husband was struggling to keep it together.  It just all felt so real at that moment, everything that we had been through up until that point came crashing down on me.  She wanted me to lay down for about 20 minutes before she sent us on our way (probably because she knows I’m a crier).

Monday

Fast forward to today.  Day 2 of the two week wait (which I finally know after not knowing what 2WW I kept seeing on people’s blogs!  woot, learning!) and I am really trying to think positively.  We’re trying to decide how many rounds of this we’re willing to do before we look into having the surgical procedure done on my husband to get rid of his varicoceles to raise his counts.

Here’s to hoping the first times the charm??