A Little Miracle Desperately Wanted

There were so many hard times that I had to go through in the year it took for my DH and I to conceive our first child. I never would have imagined that the second time around would be even harder. I figure that by keeping this journal and letting some of my feelings and emotions out, I may find some peace in my heart and the strength to continue trying for a new blessing for our family.

Toward the end of our first year ttc dd we learned that my DH had low count and low motility. We were told by a specialist that we had only a 10% chance of conceiving naturally within 2 years. We beat the odds and got pregnant with dd during our 12th month of trying. My pregnancy went very smoothly with no complications and my beautiful daughter, Odessa Alexandra, was born in perfect health on August 7th 2004.

I knew that we would likely have problems ttc #2, so we made the decision not to bother using birth control after Odessa's birth. We were very surprised when I found out that I was pregnant again when dd was just 6 months old... and I was still exclusively nursing her at the time! However, I started having some light spotting at 6 weeks. At 6 weeks 5 days I went in for an ultrasound. I was a little bean in there with it's heart beating... but it was not a strong heartbeat. It was about 108 bpm. It should have been closer to 120 at a minimum at that point. My doctor didn't seem very concerned, but I was worried. At nine weeks I had another ultrasound. The bean/baby was much bigger this time. It had arms and legs, but this time it's little heart was no longer beating. My baby was dead... I decided to wait for the baby to pass naturally instead of having a D&C. I am very happy I did. At 11 1/2 weeks I finally began to bleed and the baby passed 2 days later. I only had heavy bleeding for one week and then spotting the following week. My next af began 26 days after the start of my miscarriage. There was no complications with the miscarriage and we began ttc on that next cycle following the miscarriage.

The miscarriage was definetely upsetting, but I felt confident in that we had been able to get pregnant again so quickly. I figured it may take a few cycles, but surely we would be pregnant again soon.

After a few months passed and we still weren't pregnant I began to get a bit depressed. I had been using a FM the whole time and I knew that we had been timing things perfectly. I also began to get more depressed over the miscarriage. I do want our children to be close together in age. Of course, as the months pass that is going to be less and less a possibility for us. :(

After 8 months of trying we met with a RE. The RE did not seem to think that DH'a count and motility would be too much of a problem to overcome. He also noticed that I was Oing a bit late in my cycle (days 17-23) and said that clomid would help with that. He said that we should do three cycles of clomid, ultrasound monitoring, trigger shot, and IUI.

We are currently on our third cycle following doctors orders. Obviously the first two cycles didn't work. I am now 8 dpo and having very mixed feelings about this cycle. Some days I feel like maybe this could really be it for us, but other days I just know that it didn't work for us...

I am not sure what we will do if this cycle doesn't work. We don't really have enough money to continue with any treatments... when dd was born I made the decision to stay home with here, so without me bringing home any money we barely have enough to meet our basic needs as it is.

So, for the moment I guess I will leave it at that... I pray that this is the cycle for us...

Hummm, I just had a thought. Someone today posted on the infertility board saying that their husband has a varicocele. I almost forgot that that is possibly another treatment option for us!!! Initially when we were ttc for the first time the specialist that we went to said that DH had two varicoceles. He said that they could be corrected through surgery and that would most likely do the trick for us. Well, that specialist wasn't in our insurance network, so we went to our family doc to get a referal to someone local. The family doc did an exam on DH and to our shocking surprise said... "he doesn't have a varicocele, just two large normal veins." He refered us to the RE that we are currently seeing. The RE explained the techniclly if DH does have the two veins there that IS a varicocele, however, he said that we could do treatments that do not involve surgery. So, we have been doing the IUI for the last three cycles. I think that if this cycle doesn't result in a pregnancy then I will definetely look into the surgery though. We want to have at least four kids and if the surgery corrects this problem then we may not have to endure fertility treatments every time we want to conceive. Unforturately it takes three months for the effects of the surgery to start working and 6 months for full effects... that means that if we have the surgery done in 2 months we are looking at 5 months before we even have a CHANCE at getting pregnant. "sigh" Anyway, it may be a good option for us!!!

I am so sad!! :cry: I really thought that maybe this was our cycle! I took at test yesterday morning at 10dpo and I got a SUPER faint line... but I looked at the test after I got out of the shower (so like 10-15 minutes after I took it), so I knew that it might not be valid and just an evap line. So, I held my pee for the next 7 (yes that's right SEVEN!!) hours and then took another test. This time I made sure to look at the test at the 10 minute mark. Same thing as that morning, a faint line. Again I thought, MAYBE it was still an evap. Well, I took a test again this morning really expecting that the line would be darker and a for sure positive... NOPE. It was definetely negative. :cry: I'm pretty sure I'm out this cycle now. Maybe what I saw yesterday was just the last of the HCG from the trigger shot getting out of my system. It really did look like there was some color to the line... oh well, I guess that's that...

I am trying to stay positive about our future cycles, but it's getting hard. We have a meeting in a week to discuss our next steps. I am sure the doc will either want us to do IUI with injectables or proceed to IVF. He doesn't do the surgery to correct varicoceles, so there is no money in that for him, so he probably won't suggest it. Anyway, we really can't afford to do much more in the way of treatments. I figure we have just enough money that we could scrape together for either three more IUI/injectable cycles, one IVF cycle, OR the surgery for DH. We really have to pick the one that will give us the best chance of success. I feel pretty strongly that IUI is not the best option because I do not think DH has enough spermies to catch the egg. IVF would probably give us about a 50% chance of success... but also a 50% chance of failure. And with IVF if we want more kids in the future (which we do) then we will have to go back for treatment. SO... I really think our best option is the surgery for DH. I have heard many positive things about it from other people here on the boards.

I think I will ask our RE next week for a referal to a doc who can perform the surgery. Then, hopefully within the next month or two DH can get the surgery!! Of course I need to discuss all of this with DH!!! :)

It looks like we will be trying naturally for awhile now. The good news is that both times we have gotton pregnant it has happened naturally... so there is a chance (The doc told us we have about a 3-5% chance each cycle... most couples have about a 20-25% chance). I am also going to get us a little "help." I am going to drink Fertilitea which has vitex in it (helps me O a bit earlier and have a longer LP). Also, if I can talk DH into it I am going to order him a three month supply of proxeed. I have heard GREAT things about Proxeed improving count and motility quite a bit. It does cost a lot though, and tastes pretty bad. Hopefully he will be a sweety and do it for me anyway!! And one last thing, if it seems like I don't have a lot of EWCM then we will use preseed. That should cover it!

Well, today is officially CD1 of a new cycle. Af was here to greet me when I woke up this morning. At least I new she would be coming, so I had already had a good cry about last cycle not working out.

I am once again beginning to feel a bit more positive. I talked to DH about taking the proxeed and he has agreed to take it. So, I went ahead and ordered a three month supply of that. It should be here later this week. It takes a full three months for sperm to mature, so it will be three months before we start to see results from that, and another three months (6 months total) before the optimal results can be seen. It looks really promising though. The studies showed that motility and speed more than doubled after taking it for 6 months. Also, sperm concentration went up as well (although it didn't give a percentage for that one).

I talked to DH about maybe asking our current doctor for a referral to another doc who can do the surgery (or embolism is an option too) to correct DH's varicocele. He seemed kind of in denial about the problem and brought up the fact that our family doc said that he didn't have one... just a couple large veins. Of course I then brought up that or RE said that technically any notible vein IS a varicocele. MEN! :roll: Anyway, he has agreed to bring it up with our doc this week and go from there. I REALLY would like to go ahead and correct it. I think that the surgery in conjunction with him taking the proxeed may be all we need to get pregnant again!!

I am also doing my part to enhance my fertility as well. I plan on drinking fertilitea twice a day throughout my cycle. I also ordered preseed. I think we will start using the preseed on CD13 and BD everyother day with it through CD23. BOth cycles that I drank the fertilitea before I O'd on CD17, so we would definetely be covered then.

SO... if all goes well (and according to my plan) this is what will take place.

Starting this week:
- I will drink fertilitea twice a day
- DH will take Proxeed sample twice a day

Around O time:
- We will BD using preseed

Sometime in the next couple of months (maybe May):
- DH will get surgery to correct varicocele

Taking into account that it takes three months for sperm to fully develop I figure our chances of getting pregnant in the next 3 or 4 months are pretty slim, BUT starting in about august I think our chances will really pick up... IF DH gets the surgery!! I really want to be pregnant by the end of October... then our first two children will be three years (or less) apart in age. I really don't want them to be farther apart then that. Hopefully, it will all work out. Anway, I am feeling optomistic again! :)