Tuesday, March 13, 2007

IUI#4 coming right up.....

So, one good thing has come out of this early arrival of AF. We can definitely get another cycle in right away. And it shouldn't interfere with my mother-in-law's visit either. And, since the neighborhood kids are all on spring break right now, I might be able to let my daughter sleep normally while I go for my appointment Thursday morning. I'm going to ask the nice lady across the street from me if one of her very nice teenage boys (really, they are all SO nice!) would be willing to come over around 5am and either sleep on the couch or play xbox or watch tv while I go to my appointment and IF my daughter wakes up, either call their Mom or my good friend who also lives across the street to come over and get my daughter up, changed, and fed. I'm thinking $20 should do the trick, but I could be wrong. After all, I wouldn't want to get up at 5am during my spring break! But, they are good boys and I'm pretty sure they will help me out.
If not, I'm okay with taking my daughter with me this time, but I hate to mess her schedule up like that. She's only 2 1/2 and it is not fair to wake her up 4+/- hours early and take her to the clinic where she will have to be quiet and relatively contained for approximately 2 hours. Plus I really hate to subject her to watching me get blood drawn, though she has been there for it a couple times before and I've been able to distract her with a sucker. Not to mention seeing Mama strip from the waist down in some strange place and go into a dimly lit room where a strange man does strange things to her with his magic wand! Guess it would provide a perfect excuse to have the whole 'how special babies like her are made' and 'why mommy cries' discussions!

Talked to Dr L again this afternoon. You may remember him from last month in this post. Not proving himself to be the brightest bulb in the bunch at the clinic. I called asking for reasons why my period arrived so much earlier this cycle and expressing concern over a possible early miscarriage and possible progesterone/luteal phase problem and whether or not progesterone supplements might be a good idea after the next IUI. Dr L told me there is no way to know if it was an early miscarriage or not (I think a beta today might have told us) and that I should just assume my period just arrived early and nothing is wrong. He told me that they don't believe there's any benefit to progesterone use so they don't do it at the clinic. Now, I asked about the progesterone before because my RE/clinic in Nebraska had a standard practice of having everyone use the progesterone supplements after ovulation because if your progesterone level drops for some reason, you will miscarry. It can't hurt to add the supplements as a precaution. The docs originally told me that it is not standard practice at this clinic but if there is a luteal phase defect they will use it. Now Dr L makes it sound like they won't even check the progesterone or even consider there could be a problem and either way they won't give me the supplements. Argh! Even if I can talk them into doing a progesterone check, which I doubt, that is usually done at 7dpiui and by then it is too late to do anything. If your level is too low at that point, you're pretty much SOL.

Anyways, I'm just getting sick of always seeing and talking to different doctors and getting different information. It was so nice at my civilian clinic in Nebraska because there were only 2 RE's at the clinic and they had a certain number of patients at any given time so that they could be familiar with all aspects of your case and therefore make the proper decisions. And all the nurses there were just as knowledgable as the doctors so it was easy to get your questions answered.

I hope that one of the 'smart' doctors is there Thursday and that I can get my questions answered. I'm really concerned about this early period. I'd really like to know if it could be a miscarriage. I know that sounds kind of strange - it's not that I want it to be a miscarriage, just that if it is, I think I have the right to know and properly mourn it. Does that make any sense? Plus, if it is a very early miscarriage it could indicate a problem that we need to correct.

Oh, for those of you who have not had reason to research these kinds of things, a very early miscarriage is often called a chemical pregnancy and is actually not that uncommon. It's just that most people don't even know they are taking place, because the miscarriage occurs so early on that they don't even know they were pregnant in the first place. It seems like it is just a normal period arriving. Most chemical pregnancies end in miscarriage by the 6th week of pregnancy. Since most women don't even know they are having one, that tells me a lot of the miscarriages must take place at the same time as an expected period, which would be around cd28 for the 'average' woman, or around 2 weeks after ovulation. Today (Tuesday) would be cd26 for me, 13days after ovulation. Anyways, it just seems to me that it is possible this was a chemical pregnancy. But I guess I'll never know.

Sorry for the long post, I've just got a lot on my mind and am using this post to sort some stuff out in my head!

1 comment:

Roy said...

All I ever wanted when I was dealing with IF was to have the most information possible. And that's the one thing I never got. Dr's aren't always willing to do what you want just to make you feel better (although they should, you know your body better than they ever could with all their testing and wanding), and sometimes they don't even care to do something that makes a whole lot of sense to everybody but them.

You'll never know the truth behind this early AF, but you have every right to mourn it based on instict. Whether you really were pg for a couple days or not, you think you were, and that gives you the right. Take a moment to say goodbye to this baby that didn't get to be. Grieving over the last cycle is necessary for beginning the new.

Good luck with those teenage boys. My brothers never willingly got out of bed before noon during spring break. Then again, they would have done just about anything for $20, especially if you just wanted them to play video games and call somebody else to do the work.