Fertiltiy Drugs

I say in a lot of my personal posts that i post them not so much for me, but for the folks out there who may be going through similar issues. A friend maybe, an acquaintance, or a total stranger who happens upon this blog. I write these for them. If even one person can read this and know that they aren't alone in their struggle, then writing this all out for you is so worth it!! You aren't alone!! I'm right there with you. And if you want to chat, we can totally do that! Send me an email at: lovehappened33@gmail.com. Let's chat! I may not be able to give you useful information on how to help, but i am a good listener...er reader, and I'm happy to be a shoulder to you!! Even sharing with just one person can be really helpful!! No one should have to bear this kind of thing alone.

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In May i posted "Lack of a Bump" and talked about our fertility journey. I am choosing not to call it a struggle. Not yet. And at the end of that post i talked about the surgery i had just had in April to remove scar tissue and to "fix" the issue with miscarrying. Well that was almost 5 months ago, so lets go from there. Back to May...

We did get pregnant in May. And we were thrilled. Yet, i was still very uneasy. I think a very natural response after 2 miscarriages. We found out a few days before Brooks' birthday in June. By his birthday i was miscarrying. Again. #3. Not at all the birthday celebration we had intended. Instead of going out to dinner that Thursday night, we wound up at the Women's Hospital in Greensboro waiting for tests and sonograms to see what was going on. Since we were only 4.5 weeks, they couldn't see if the baby had a heartbeat. Which in retrospect was a good thing. Last time we saw the heartbeat and it gave us a false hope.

We left the hospital around 11pm that night, still had yet to eat dinner. I cried off and on all the way home. I kept asking Brooks if he was sure he wanted to be with me. I mean, i could take the ring off. Give it back. It's not that i didn't love him of course, but i just didn't want to go through this again and again, and never have kids together and we get to our old age and him have regrets about being with me. Regretting never having children is a difficult thing. I've seen it with some friends of mine. I'm not sure you ever get over that. So i guess i just wanted to be sure he was sure that I was what he wanted regardless of what happened with the kid front. He of course told me to shush and wouldn't really even talk about it with me as he said i was being ridiculous. Probably.

I called my doc the next day so she knew just what was going on and see if she needed to see me. She sent a message back through her nurse and told me, as devastating as it was to be going through this again, we DID get pregnant after the surgery and that was half the goal right there!! She didn't need to see me unless i needed or wanted to, but she did want to repeat the blood work. She also wanted to know if we wanted to be referred to a further specialist. Nope! Not yet!!

On Saturday we had a chill weekend. We didn't go anywhere or do anything. But i wanted to discuss this again with Brooks. I brought it up again...

Me: "Babe? I want you to be certain you're not going to have regrets if i can't give you any children. I mean that's a big thing!! What if it never happens for us? What if we get old and grey and that's it? I just don't want you to look back and wish you hadn't married or stayed with me..."

Brooks: "STOP!! I'm not having this conversation love!! I love you. Period! Not because you can or can't give me kids. I love YOU. And if we have kids, that's a bonus!! And if we don't...well we'll be the best Auntie and Uncle we can be!! We'll go get Dylan or Elijah for the weekend, get em' all sugared up and spoiled and send them home and those kids will adore us!!" It made me laugh to think of that image. Then he continued..."Plus...I'm not giving up!! No! And you're not either! We're gonna get pregnant! And we're gonna have an awesome kid because it's you and me together, and that kid is gonna be SO spoiled because we've lost 2 and we're gonna spoil that one for the others! ...Plus...you know what they say right?"

Me: "Third time's the charm?"
Brooks: "Well that too...but i was gonna say, There's a right way, a wrong wayyyy...annnnd....."
Me: "And the Roach way. Ugh! And our kid is a Roach. Damnit!"

*The Roach way is a joke within the family. See...there is the right way to do things, the wrong way and then the Roach way is where they figure it out themselves usually taking much longer or going around the planet for a simple matter. Friends who camped with us this year saw that one in all it's glory while trying to put together an A-frame canopy. 

We both started laughing. I have to admit it was nice to see such over the top positivity from Brooks. I mean, he's not a pessimistic person, but he's certainly not that outright positive about things usually.


The following Monday i had to go back into the doc's office to have repeat blood work done. I was actually ok when i was there. I didn't burst into tears at seeing adorable women rocking their bumps. I was fine. But when i got to the truck, i wasn't fine. So i called a friend and met her for a beer. But while i was sitting talking with her, i was even more not fine. In fact i was pissed!! My friend has never had or wanted kids, so she just doesn't get it. So i try very hard not to take anything she says on the matter overly personally, but you just NEVER say to a woman who's just miscarried "Well, maybe you partied too hard when you went camping last month!" W? T? F?! NO!!!! Though i did my best to remain cool and collected in front of her, and i did explain that's not at all how it works as well as explained how much i really didn't party while camping, i was devastated and so hurt. And if your curious about other things NOT to say, look at the post "Lack of a Bump". I've got a good list there, as well as what the hell to say instead!!

I left and headed home and sobbed all the way home. I was a mess!! I posted some vague message on facebook about driving while sobbing and a girlfriend commented. One who has also miscarried, so she gets it. I texted her and said, "We miscarried again". She didn't text back, but picked up the phone. We chatted for about 45 minutes. I could totally hear it in her voice how upset she was for me. Women who know what it's like usually are. And it was good to talk to her about it. She reassured me that i was being too controlling about it (which is super weird because i don't think I'm much of a controlling person with anything else) and that it certainly wasn't my fault. She also said that i needed to let it go with the 'Brooks is going to have regrets!' thing. She told me that's not why he's with me anyway, it would be a bonus. I felt better by the time we hung up.

The next day i went to see a diabetes educator to get my new insulin pump hooked up. After the appointment i went to see another friend of mine. A mutual guy friend of Brooks and mine. I hung out with him sitting on him and his girlfriends patio just chatting and catching up. He asked what was new at one point, and so i told him. He knew about the first miscarriage and knew what we had been through in trying again. He told me how sorry he was. Then i told him about the Brooks having regret. He looked at me and said, "OMG JULES!! NO!!! Brooks isn't with you because you're a baby making machine!! He loves you! No matter what happens in life, you know he'll be with you because he loves you! So stop that right now!!" Fair enough. He was right of course. Then he continued... "You're trying to control this you know. And you can't. Not that i know much about how fertility works, but I'm pretty certain it's out of your control." How bizarre. Ok...been told that twice now. Perhaps they know me better than i know me. At any rate, i was feeling a lot better about it. What a difference a day and the right people make to ones outlook!!

The next week i had to go to see my endocrinologist. I told him what had happened. I try to keep him up to date with the fertility stuff as much as possible. He asked how i was dealing with it compared to last time. I did say and felt that the first time was SO horribly devastating, not that this time wasn't, but we both were doing better than last time. I was actually out in the world being around my friends, and not locked in the house on the couch in my sweats. Then of course i asked him if he thought I miscarried because of x,y,z. He looked at me, relaxed in his chair a bit and said, "Juliana, you need to stop beating yourself up over this! Sometimes it happens and we just don't know why! I truly don't believe you did anything to cause it!! So no! I don't think it's due to anything you did or didn't do. You've got to stop trying to control this, because sadly hun it's totally out of your control. You need to relax." It was so weird to hear him say a lot of what my friends had told me the week before. I told him about that. He suggested that maybe i need to go to a yoga class or look into meditation or something then. Not bad advice.

I'm not going to go into specific details, as i don't want to gross anyone out and quite frankly it's VERY TMI!! But for the ladies...i am hoping you know what i mean when i say...there didn't seem to be an end in sight to that monthly "gift" afterwards. So i called the doc. She had me come in to do an ultrasound to see what was happening. That was in July. So that monthly "gift" had been happening for a month by then. UGH!! And I was dealing with an excruciating amount of painful cramping as well. The ultrasound showed i had a cyst. Lovely. So apparently even though the gift hadn't let up, i ovulated anyway....or tried and it turned into a cyst. WTF?! She gave me a prescription for an estrogen supplement for 10 days to reboot my system and hopefully stop the gift. What it actually was supposed to do was to stop the gift, then as soon as i stopped taking the meds, it would give me the gift again. UGH!! But then i should be back to normal. She also gave me a prescription for clomid to start the next cycle after the estrogen reboot, along with specific instructions. I had definite reservations about that!! I had heard all kinds of horror stories about it! But she said that it's like anything else with side effects...everyone deals with them differently. But she gave me some literature on what to expect and how to deal with it.

She then told me that she would give us another 6 months. If in 6 months we still weren't pregnant and holding onto a pregnancy she would have to send me to a further specialist as she has exceeded her expertise. I hoped it wouldn't come to that!!

Another 2 weeks went by and i still hadn't gotten rid of this damned gift and was loosing my mind!! What period lasts THAT long?! I mean really!! So i called the docs office. They said to do another round of estrogen and wait to see if that helped. Fine. I did that. Then waited a week. By that time it had been 73 days. YES! You read that correctly!! Aunt flow...73 freakin days!! Cramps and all!! Yes ladies and gents...i am a rock star! Not that i want to be...but damn! Give me some serious snaps for dealing with that!! Because it wasn't painless, that is for certain!!

So FINALLY 73 days later i was 'gift' free!! YAY!!!!! And what's funny...is that then we were waiting for it to show up so I could take the clomid! Hahaha!!! The break was nice though!! VERY nice!! Ahhh.....

So a couple weeks ago the gift did show up. And i took the clomid last week as instructed. Same time everyday for 5 days. I had my alarm set on my phone. Then i started researching the side effect that are typical. I mean i kinda knew them, but i wanted some more info. So far, and I'm certainly not complaining...the only thing I've had is hot flashes. I haven't been weepy, emotional, or a raging...you know what! I looked last night online to see if there was a "how to know if clomid is actually working" link. No, not really. Some ladies just don't have symptoms. I will count myself lucky!! Especially after a 73 day gift!! Perhaps that was my reward?! :) During the time i started the clomid, i got a "cold" that turned into Bronchitis. Awesome. Wednesday i had to take myself to Urgent Care as i couldn't breathe. The doc gave me 3 albuterol breathing treatments and gave me a shot in the ass of prednisone. Then gave me a script for prednisone pills as well as an albuterol inhaler and antibiotics. AND i was on cold meds. So I was on all the drugs. Talk about a lot!! Goodness me!!

So that's the latest since May. Now we wait. There is no definitive on clomid working. Sometimes it works in the first cycle you take it, sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't the dosage goes up. And you don't know if it is working until ovulation. There is just no way to actually know. I'm actually skipping the going into the docs office every other day for blood work, and scans and all that mess. A lot of docs do that. We may be skipping it because I've been pregnant before so my clomid use is a bit different in that respect. We know I'm fertile. That's not the issue. Holding onto it is the issue. But then there's that...they say in allllll the books that when a woman miscarries it's for a reason. Like your body and mother nature knows that isn't a viable pregnancy. They also say that after a miscarriage within the first 6 months of it, a woman is less likely to miscarry again. So we've got that going for us until December. Seriously crossing fingers now!!

Now we wait it out i guess. And used the OPK's (ovulation predictor kit) on a daily basis. Pee, dip, wait, repeat. Good times i tell ya!! 

The fear of course for a lot of women taking clomid is the chance of having multiples. Which actually isn't terribly high, but you never know. Plus I have twins that run in my family on both sides. Though my fathers side is what they count, not mom's side. My grandmother AND grandfather on his side were both twins and my grandmother had another set of twin sisters! And it skipped my aunt and dad and their kids so far. So who knows. We might get a double blessing. Either way, i don't care! Our goal is at least 1. Any more is just an added bonus!!

Through all of this it's been a bit of a struggle to remain positive about it. To stay upbeat and not get down or get too hard on myself. I go back and fourth at times about it. Which according to my therapist is a natural response and it's perfectly fine to do. But through it all we remain a united front. Brooks and i are closer than before. I truly didn't know that was even possible, but we are. And we're on the same page. This is our fight. We keep going no matter what happens because this is what we want. 10 fingers and 10 toes. And we're not giving up!!