Is no news good news? I think that is generally the rule but when you are in the land of IF no news just seems to equal anxiety. I had my hysteroscopy on Wednesday. I believe all went well. I vaguely remember Dr. H. coming in to talk to me as I was waking up from anesthesia. He said all went well. He did actually go out and talk to D in the waiting room. But D (being a man) didn't have a lot of information for me. Dr. H explained before the procedure that he would take 3 biopsies from the general area of implantation. If for some reason he found something unexpected he would take action and take several more biopsies. He communicated to D that he just took the three as planned. We won't get the results from those biopsies until Monday. I did send him an email yesterday afternoon asking for a recap of the procedure. He promises to get back to you within 24 hours so I should have some confirmation by this afternoon.
Providing he didn't find anything during the procedure I believe our plan is for a FET in early December. We do have a phone consult set up with Dr. Schoolcraft from CCRM on Oct. 14th. We've had our records sent over, completed all of the online surveys and forms and are all set. I'm anxious to see what he has to say about our case. Any of you CCRMer's I'd love to hear from you so I know what to expect during the initial phone consult.
So outside of that it's just normal life. I have started to write a couple posts and realized I just don't have much to say. Sadly the fight has become the norm for me. While I still struggle with all of the feelings that go along with infertility (guilt, sadness, pain, anger, etc. etc). I've basically gotten used to it. There's good days when I think of our two beautiful frozen embryos and I'm filled with hope. And there's bad days when I feel like I will NEVER be pregnant and this fight will never end. But I guess as I'm back in The Waiting Room it's one day at a time.
If you have a few seconds today hop on over and visit my girl Amanda and give her some love. It's one of those hard days for her and we've all been there.
Even though I haven't had much to say I'm still checking in with each of you everyday and following along. It brings me so much comfort to know I'm not alone and there's so many wonderful women I can turn to that truly understand what I'm going through and are always there for me. I'm so grateful for each and every one of you.
Showing posts with label hysteroscopy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hysteroscopy. Show all posts
Friday, October 3, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
Happy Friday Friends! I just wanted to thank everyone for the comments and emails regarding the hysteroscopy. After hearing from all of you I went ahead and booked the procedure. We are going to do it on Oct. 1st. Regardless of the outcome it will give us more information which is always useful.
Shockingly I have other non-IF related news. I think most of you know that D is an elementary school principal. The school district he works in is about 40 min. from our house and when he signed his contract they asked him to move into the school district. So our house has been on the market for a while but we really couldn't find anything in the district that we liked. The district is made up of several small communities out in the country and it seemed that the houses were either very small and rundown or ginormous and WAY out of our budget. We've also had trouble selling our house because our backyard is smaller and goes down into a ravine. This was something that we liked when we bought the house because of the privacy and less maintenance. But our home is a 4 bedroom two story and it's definitely designed for a family (sigh.). All of the families that were coming to look at it wanted a bigger backyard for a playground/swing set and the drop off to the ravine made people nervous. Well we FINALLY got an offer and it was a really good one. We countered slightly and they accepted! Our closing is set for Halloween. And we are officially homeless! As I mentioned earlier we have been watching the market in the school district really closely and there's just nothing for sale in our price range. However the day we signed the contract Derek found a house For Sale By Owner out in the country on the outskirts of town. It sits on a couple acres and it's a really cute ranch house that was built in 2000. It's over priced but if we like it I'm hoping the sellers are willing to negotiate. We are going to look at it on Sunday.
Honestly the timing for all of this is perfect. I won't be cycling until Dec. and hopefully we will be moved and settled by then. I'm thankful that I'm not going through the stress of selling our house, looking for a new one, and moving when we are in cycle. And it's a really good distraction that will hopefully help the time go quickly. I am dreading the packing/moving portion of this but we've been living in limbo for over a year with our house on the market and looking for a new one. I'm ready to move and get in a new house and start making it our own.
In OTHER exciting non-IF related news - WE ARE GOING TO SEE GARTH BROOKS TONIGHT! As you can tell I'm a little excited. This is a bucket list thing for me and I can not wait. Unless you've been living under a rock (or hate country music) you've probably heard about his tour and that he's doing 12 shows in Chicago. It's two weekends and he plays two shows Thurs. Fri, and Sat. night. Our best friends got tickets and invited us and we are super stoked!
I think that's all for now. Here's to the next few months flying by. Hope you all have a great weekend!
Shockingly I have other non-IF related news. I think most of you know that D is an elementary school principal. The school district he works in is about 40 min. from our house and when he signed his contract they asked him to move into the school district. So our house has been on the market for a while but we really couldn't find anything in the district that we liked. The district is made up of several small communities out in the country and it seemed that the houses were either very small and rundown or ginormous and WAY out of our budget. We've also had trouble selling our house because our backyard is smaller and goes down into a ravine. This was something that we liked when we bought the house because of the privacy and less maintenance. But our home is a 4 bedroom two story and it's definitely designed for a family (sigh.). All of the families that were coming to look at it wanted a bigger backyard for a playground/swing set and the drop off to the ravine made people nervous. Well we FINALLY got an offer and it was a really good one. We countered slightly and they accepted! Our closing is set for Halloween. And we are officially homeless! As I mentioned earlier we have been watching the market in the school district really closely and there's just nothing for sale in our price range. However the day we signed the contract Derek found a house For Sale By Owner out in the country on the outskirts of town. It sits on a couple acres and it's a really cute ranch house that was built in 2000. It's over priced but if we like it I'm hoping the sellers are willing to negotiate. We are going to look at it on Sunday.
Honestly the timing for all of this is perfect. I won't be cycling until Dec. and hopefully we will be moved and settled by then. I'm thankful that I'm not going through the stress of selling our house, looking for a new one, and moving when we are in cycle. And it's a really good distraction that will hopefully help the time go quickly. I am dreading the packing/moving portion of this but we've been living in limbo for over a year with our house on the market and looking for a new one. I'm ready to move and get in a new house and start making it our own.
In OTHER exciting non-IF related news - WE ARE GOING TO SEE GARTH BROOKS TONIGHT! As you can tell I'm a little excited. This is a bucket list thing for me and I can not wait. Unless you've been living under a rock (or hate country music) you've probably heard about his tour and that he's doing 12 shows in Chicago. It's two weekends and he plays two shows Thurs. Fri, and Sat. night. Our best friends got tickets and invited us and we are super stoked!
I think that's all for now. Here's to the next few months flying by. Hope you all have a great weekend!
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Looking for Advice
Hope everyone had a great weekend. Ours was pretty relaxing which was a nice change. We spent a lot of time over the weekend cuddled up on the couch and I can say the TLC did both of us good. We found things to laugh about, other subjects to talk about (outside of infertility) and I feel like some of the sadness is starting to lift from D's eye. Which in turns makes my heart a little lighter. I. Love. That. Man. His happiness is everything to me.
We did have our meeting with Dr. H. on Friday. As expected he didn't have any miracle answers or suggestions for us. We talked about how there's still a lot that the field doesn't understand about embryo development which is why the success rate for genetically normal embryos is *only* 70%. He feels hopeful that we still have 2 normal blasts to transfer and his recommended path is a FET. We talked about how at our clinic (and a lot of others) their success rates are higher with FET's. He explained that this is due to the fact that when we stim during a fresh cycle they elevate our estrogen levels way higher than they would ever be in a natural cycle. This can cause some disruption in the two types of tissue in your uterus. Basically the increased hormone levels affect them too. When we do a FET he said they monitor 2 things. 1. They want your estrogen level between 300-600. 2. They want your lining greater than 8mm. Obviously during stim your estrogen levels get way beyond the 600. So basically he is feeling that doing a FET that is more in line with a natural cycle is a great option for us.
I asked him about running a couple of tests on my uterus. I've picked the brains of several of my blogger friends and they recommended 2 types of tests. The first is called an e-tegrity test. My understanding is that this tests to see if your uterus has the "sticky" stuff needed for implantation. Dr. H says the results of this test are inconclusive and due to the fact that we've had at least 2 embryos implant he doesn't think that's the issue. The next is a hysteroscopy. For my fertile readers this is where they go up into your uterus with a camera to look at the lining for polyps, scar tissue or fibroids that could be disrupting implantation. Dr. H said he would perform this procedure if I felt strongly about it but he doesn't think it's necessary. He said he's never seen any signs in all of the ultrasounds we've done that my uterus is anything but perfect. So he basically left it up to me.
If we elect not to do the hysteroscopy we could transfer at the end of Oct. If we do it then it will be December before we can do our FET since we have to do the procedure and I have to have another period after and my clinic doesn't cycle in Nov. to give the staff a break.
In other news we've scheduled a phone consult with Dr. Schoolcraft at CCRM for Oct. 14th. I'll be sending him all of our records and we are completing all of the registration and history forms online. I know that CCRM does a hysteroscopy as part of their ODW (one day workup). I'm currently feeling like we should go ahead and have Dr. H do the hysteroscopy. If I transfer in Oct. and it doesn't work I'll still be wondering if it is my uterus. Of course I'm anxious to keep moving forward but I also don't want to waste the lives of 2 more embryos if my uterus is the problem. My gut tells me it isn't and Dr. H is supporting that theory, but until we do the procedure we don't know for sure.
That being said how many of you have had this done? What are your thoughts? If you were in my situation would you do it or just move forward with the FET?
We did have our meeting with Dr. H. on Friday. As expected he didn't have any miracle answers or suggestions for us. We talked about how there's still a lot that the field doesn't understand about embryo development which is why the success rate for genetically normal embryos is *only* 70%. He feels hopeful that we still have 2 normal blasts to transfer and his recommended path is a FET. We talked about how at our clinic (and a lot of others) their success rates are higher with FET's. He explained that this is due to the fact that when we stim during a fresh cycle they elevate our estrogen levels way higher than they would ever be in a natural cycle. This can cause some disruption in the two types of tissue in your uterus. Basically the increased hormone levels affect them too. When we do a FET he said they monitor 2 things. 1. They want your estrogen level between 300-600. 2. They want your lining greater than 8mm. Obviously during stim your estrogen levels get way beyond the 600. So basically he is feeling that doing a FET that is more in line with a natural cycle is a great option for us.
I asked him about running a couple of tests on my uterus. I've picked the brains of several of my blogger friends and they recommended 2 types of tests. The first is called an e-tegrity test. My understanding is that this tests to see if your uterus has the "sticky" stuff needed for implantation. Dr. H says the results of this test are inconclusive and due to the fact that we've had at least 2 embryos implant he doesn't think that's the issue. The next is a hysteroscopy. For my fertile readers this is where they go up into your uterus with a camera to look at the lining for polyps, scar tissue or fibroids that could be disrupting implantation. Dr. H said he would perform this procedure if I felt strongly about it but he doesn't think it's necessary. He said he's never seen any signs in all of the ultrasounds we've done that my uterus is anything but perfect. So he basically left it up to me.
If we elect not to do the hysteroscopy we could transfer at the end of Oct. If we do it then it will be December before we can do our FET since we have to do the procedure and I have to have another period after and my clinic doesn't cycle in Nov. to give the staff a break.
In other news we've scheduled a phone consult with Dr. Schoolcraft at CCRM for Oct. 14th. I'll be sending him all of our records and we are completing all of the registration and history forms online. I know that CCRM does a hysteroscopy as part of their ODW (one day workup). I'm currently feeling like we should go ahead and have Dr. H do the hysteroscopy. If I transfer in Oct. and it doesn't work I'll still be wondering if it is my uterus. Of course I'm anxious to keep moving forward but I also don't want to waste the lives of 2 more embryos if my uterus is the problem. My gut tells me it isn't and Dr. H is supporting that theory, but until we do the procedure we don't know for sure.
That being said how many of you have had this done? What are your thoughts? If you were in my situation would you do it or just move forward with the FET?
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