New Regimen = New positive outcome (hopefully)

It’s difficult to not let infertility consume you when you feel like you are swimming in a sea of ultrasounds, blood work, pills and needles. How do you remain a woman, a wife, a daughter, and a friend without being the woman with infertility, the infertile wife, the daughter who hasn’t been able to produce a grandchild or the friend whose shoes you do not want to wear? To rise above the labels that infertility gives us and conquer the fears, heartache, and pain is not the ultimate goal in the struggle but it is the battle within the war. This is where I am finding myself on a daily basis – struggling to stay just “Me”.

Today is day 1 of my brand new cycle. I am almost completely finished mourning the last one – it’s amusing how much hope and emotional attachment you can project on a cycle as if the child was already there. Maybe the problem isn’t that I do this to myself each and every month but that I haven’t quite learned what is left to learn or for that matter what the lesson even is. I have faith and hope in God and that he has a plan and the past two years of trying were not in vain, but a part of the journey that will lead us to our baby and make us better parents at that.

I spoke to Dr. T by phone earlier this morning. My appointment with Dr. McNichol is on Monday but I feel better under the care of Dr. T, so I wanted to make sure that Tom and I are on the right track before Monday’s appointment. Dr. T went over my cycles with me and said that it might be time to stop doing IUI’s and begin saving for IVF. At this point I just do not feel comfortable with stopping treatment to save for a bigger treatment… although I unfortunately see that this might very well be in our future to do. He advised with four failed IUI’s under my belt the likely hood of an all injectable cycle making that much of a difference is slim but worth a shot. The injectables should help with my lining, which is a plus. I also asked him about a laparoscopy which he advised that although it might be covered by insurance it really would not benefit Tom or myself in our path to parenthood. I show no signs of endo, my tubes are clear, and my biopsy came back normal. He said that if I do have endo it would be so minimal and since there is not obstructions that it really wouldn’t be what he suggests to do because the scarring from any removal of endo could be worse then the endo itself. I am still on the fence about this, but am comfortable moving on with one to two injectable + IUI cycles first before doing a laparoscopy and then pursuing IVF.

So my plan this cycle is to do more low impact exercise on a regular basis, begin our first ever injectable + IUI cycle, keep praying and hoping for a different outcome and when life starts feeling gloomy I will continue distracting myself with two things (other then my hubby) yummy Peach Mango Passion sherbet from Publix and the Outlander book series (I highly recommend both).

Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe. ~ Gail Devers