Martha?? You out there?

I've been thinking about you.

Did you go to Le Baby Factory? I hope you had a good consult. I feel good about going back to them and I hope you do too.

Keep me posted!

:::tap, tap::: Is this thing on?

Anyone still reading? I'm here, I'm alive! Just until today, I've been boring. I started a new job with an amazeballs new schedule and without one biatch of a manager and that's about it. We've been doing a lot of waiting. I'm really good at the waiting.

Today we went back to our first RE at the largest group in town. We'll call it Le Baby Factory. It sounds better if you say it all French and stuff. Anyway- our RE there Dr. K- thinks we don't have a sperm problem. He thinks J has plenty of sperm for ICSI and that we most likely won't need to have the Uro do the biopsy as a back up, but that he likes the idea of the back up. I don't have to repeat any testing so we are good to go as soon as we want to.

So really the only thing in my way is the schedule. J and I are going away for a week in November- and that jacks up the program. Because the IVF lab at Le Baby Factory is closed for the holidays. Blah. In order to cycle before things shut down- I'll have to start stims no later than 12/6. Which means we'll have to try and mess with my cycle a bit in order to get that to happen. If not- we wait till next year. A whole other year gone with no baby. ::sigh::

So right now the plan is to start Birth Control with this period. I'll take it for two weeks, then stop for four days, then go back on for 19 days. And then- we start. All of this is contingent on me getting my period no later than the 15th of October. That bitch better come early.

Where do we go from here?

I love J's Urologist. He has always made things easy to understand. He explains the numbers of the SA in a way that the RE's don't. He's straight forward about what would be the best way for us to have children.  After our WTF appointment with the RE, we decided to go back to the Urologist. Maybe a final effort to figure out if there was anything anything anything we could do to improve the numbers, I guess? The whole thing about donor sperm kept coming up and we wanted to be totally certain there wasn't anything else that could help J's swimmers.

The urologist things we're nuts for thinking about donor sperm. And I'm so thankful for that because while I would have really considered it, it would have been a huge, huge issue for me and in the long run, I'm just not sure if I could have gotten to the point where I would be 1000% comfortable with it. But I digress. He thinks J has plenty of sperm. The problem doesn't really lie with count, but with motility. J doesn't have a lot of sperm, but he REALLY doesn't have a lot of motile sperm. And because of this, we are doing ourselves a disservice by having only one egg to work with. I knew all along that he wasn't really a fan of Natural Cycle IVF, but the idea of no drugs was so appealing and when we got that insurance coverage- we figured we would try it. He did give J Clomid, but said it will really only help with count, not so much motility. He suggested Conception Rx for Motility (the expensive one blahhh) and traditional IVF with ISCI.

He wants J to give a sample the day before retrieval and then again the day of. He said there is a way to "warm" the sperm (WTF that means I have no idea?) that will help them distinguish the good from the bad. If there are no good sperm, they will do an emergency biopsy and take sperm right from the testicle that day.

So where do we go from here. Well I cancelled our Natural Cycle IVF cycle. We are going back to the first RE that we went to. They have significantly better success rates with traditional IVF than the clinic we are going to now. And even though it's kind of like a factory- they are good at what they do. We have a consult set up for October 9th. They will likely make me repeat my HSG and then we're going on vacation for Thanksgiving so that puts us on BCP's for November and cycling in December/January. More freakin waiting. It's like a curse.

This is our original path. So I feel confident. And now with good insurance we have three cycles to deal with. I think if it doesn't work in three cycles, we'll be done. I don't know if I can take much more than that. So we'll see. For now, we wait. Again.

Urologist Update

Ahhhhhhhhh! Just when you think there is a plan- a road map of some sort through all this crap, something else happens and it all goes to shit.

J went to the urologist. He's going back on Clomid. And we're going back to our old RE for a consult. Too much is up in the air to blog about for the moment.

All I know is that this cycle is off. Blah.

Here we go again.

CD 1.

J goes to the Urologist on Tuesday. If he says no to the Clo- we're cycling again. If he says yes- we wait. Again. Either way I'll go for baseline just in case. Blahhhh. Stupid roller coaster is out of the station.

WTF Update

He said that he was really happy that we made it to fertilization. He said it looked good for three days and then it arrested.  He did say that there was even a chance for people who have good egg and good sperm that the same thing happens to the embryo. So that being said- there is always a chance that things will work the next time. He thinks that traditional IVF is kind of useless for us since he's almost positive that there would be extra eggs that wouldn't be able to be fertilized. He thinks we should try Natural Cycle two more times before moving on. We are going to talk to the Urologist again about using Clomid again to try to improve count. J has an appointment next week on the 18th. 

We did talk about Donor Sperm. Last night before the appointment, J basically told me that it's his brother or nothing and he's not sure what he thinks about adoption. I spent the whole night (not really even an exaggeration) crying- I feel like he's really limiting our options and it's just really sad. So we talked about using his brother's sperm- they will use a known donor, but there would have to be psychological testing, legal paperwork, and then a 6 month waiting period to use the sperm. He did say we could do a split cycle- and use the donor as a back up. If we did that- we would do traditional IVF. 

So no idea what we're going to do. I expect to get my period maybe this weekend? If John goes to the Uro and he says yes- try the Clo and see what happens- that will be at least 60 days. So puts us to December? We're traveling in November so the timing would be sketchy for that. If he says no to the Clo- then we'll cycle again this coming month. 

If we have to move to donor sperm- we may be at an impass. Here is where the question comes in. I just don't know if I can use his brother's sperm. I mean there is the ick factor and the general creepiness of it, but aside from that- there are SO many reasons I can think of why this isn't a good idea. So blogging friends in the universe- riddle me this- What if it were your only shot at being a parent? Would that change your opinion? Would you explain it to the child (when appropriate)? How would you explain it? Would you tell the rest of your family? 

I really like my doctor.

Dr. G called me personally today to tell me how sorry he was that things didn't turn out differently for us. He said he was glad we even made it to fertilization and he's really hoping we'll come talk about our options.

I told him that I had already scheduled an appointment with him for this coming week and we have lots of questions lined up for him. Out WTF appointment is scheduled for this Wednesday. I'm thankful that we could get in quickly and try to figure out what to do next.

But really I'm appreciative and thankful that the doctor took the time to call me personally. I never would have gotten a call like that from my previous clinic. So I'm happy we switched and I'm looking forward to our appointment. More on my questions for the doc to come.