Fertility Doctor

While living in New York, the subject of visiting a fertility doctor came up a few times between us. Clearly I could get pregnant, even though both instances had ended badly. However, it had taken us a long time to conceive, and we didn't know if the miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy were both results of bad luck, or if there was something more serious going on. Each time we discussed it though, we never felt like consulting a fertility doctor was the right thing to do, or the right time to do it. As I explained in the last post, after the ectopic pregnancy I was really anxious for a long time about trying again. Combine that with our not so stellar experiences with NYC doctors, a very limited budget, and Brian's long work hours, and visiting a fertility doctor just never seemed feasible.

We decided to start trying to conceive again the summer of 2014, one and a half years after the ectopic pregnancy. One year passed, and no pregnancy. By then Brian had received an offer from TTR in Ogden Utah, and after prayer and planning we decided to accept the offer. We moved to Utah the end of August 2015. It was a happy time. Finally we were getting out of the crazy city and relocating back west...back home.

A lot of things changed during the move, one being that my anxiety about pregnancy disappeared completely. I had come a long way in the last two years, but something about a complete change of location and situation wiped out any lingering fears I had been harboring. We took the first few months in Utah to settle in and get re-accustomed to life as we'd known it before NYC.

Once the new year hit, we decided to pursue having a baby as our number one goal for the year. I called and made an appointment with a doctor at Reproductive Care Center as soon as the holidays were over. My sister and brother-in-law had met with them a few years before and gave us good reviews of the place. Our first appointment was scheduled for February 12th.

The month and a half wait went fairly fast, although we both experienced some nerves during that time.  As a natural worrier, my brain very easily jumps to the worst case scenarios first, and then spirals out of control from there. What if my one remaining fallopian tube was no good? What if we couldn't have our own kids at all, and it ended up being because something was wrong with me? What if our only option was IVF? We didn't know if that was going to be to something we could afford right away. These thoughts and many more plagued me. I had to continually remind myself that IVF was a ways off, and that starting out just meant checking to see if there were any problems with either myself or Brian. We'd start small and work up to the big stuff if needed. We'd just take it one step at a time.

Brian took the day of our first appointment off and we drove over to the office, nervous and not knowing what to expect. That day was our first consultation with the doctor and consisted of a lengthy visit with the doctor to go over our medical history and decide on a game plan. We really liked Dr. Swelstad, and soon felt ourselves relaxing. He explained that because I only had one fallopian tube, that conceiving would be more difficult, but not impossible. It was decided that we would start with some basic tests to ensure that everything was working properly, and then try to conceive naturally through tracking my cycle for the first two months. Then we'd move to more involved methods as needed. He printed out a step by step schedule detailing the tests and things we would need to do.

We left the office much more confident than when we'd gone in. We had a plan. We had a doctor that we felt was understanding and easy to communicate with. We could do this...we would do this. We felt assured and more hopeful than we'd been in a long while.

As soon as my next cycle started the tests began. They drew my blood to test my baseline hormone levels and I had an ultrasound to check that my ovaries, uterus and endometrial lining all looked normal. Everything checked out fine with the blood test and ultrasound results. There were more blood tests, and the doctor had me start taking a few different supplements. All test results came back normal.

I went in for a hysterosalpingogram, a test where they inject dye into your uterus and through the fallopian tubes while you sit under an x-ray machine to ensure that the uterus is shaped correctly and the tubes are open and healthy. They prescribed me a valium to take before the procedure to ensure that I would be relaxed, and therefore all my muscles would be relaxed. Brian drove me to and from the appointment, as I was all drugged up. Haha! I'd never taken a valium before, and was worried how I'd react to it, but it was fine. I was pleasantly relaxed and sleepy. The test went well, and even though it was quite painful, it was a fairly quick procedure. The doctor was happy to report that my uterus was perfectly shaped and that my remaining fallopian tube was clear and healthy. Insert a deep sigh of relief here. That was one of the major things I was worried about. So far everything looked good. All of these tests and procedures occurred during the first ten days of my cycle. It was a busy time, and I got to know the staff very well.

I started taking Femara, a drug to help with ovulation. I was happy when I experienced no side effects, as I'd heard these types of drugs could make you very moody. I bough a pack of ovulation test kits and began testing daily for ovulation. I was relieved the day the test turned positive. I had ovulated normally. The schedule went as planned and everything so far was going smoothly.

Then I got back the results of my Ovarian Assessment Report (OAR). It is a blood test that measures your FSH, Estradiol, LH, AMH, and Inhibin B levels. With these numbers they can determine how good your egg supply and quality is. My results weren't that great. It reported I had a reduced egg supply and only fair egg quality. Overall my results were borderline low for my age. The results came in the mail, and as I read them it was like a punch in the gut. Everything had been going so well, all the tests so far were normal and we were fine. I cried that day, and all my worries of not being able to conceive came back. I felt all the hope and positivity that I'd been experiencing the last few weeks dim significantly. It was a hard day.

At our next appointment, the doctor went over the results with us. No, they weren't the best results, but they didn't mean that we were out of the game yet. He prescribed another supplement to add to my daily regimen. We left feeling better about things, and I was more confident than I'd been since I'd read the report. It was still possible, We couldn't give up yet. This was around the second week in March.

Infertility is such a hard, hard thing. It is both physical and emotional, and you experience ups and downs with both. And they both feed into one another. It's easy to feel happy when you are physically fine, and vice versa. It's no fun when your treatments cause you to feel crappy physically, but I think the emotional lows are even worse. It's so easy to find yourself in a dark place where there seems to be no light, hope, or escape. Even though it had only been a month since we started down this road, we'd already experienced both highs and lows. I can't even imagine what it is like to go through this for years at a time.

We'd reached the point in our schedule where we were just to wait and see what would come at the end of the month. I continued taking my daily supplements, and tried to keep busy. We were cautiously optimistic, even though really we didn't expect to be pregnant this time around. These things take time, at least that's what we'd come to expect.

Saturday, March 26th, the day before Easter, I woke up at 5:30 am. I couldn't sleep any longer. My period hadn't started yet, and it was the day I was going to take my first pregnancy test of the cycle. I quietly got out of bed, so as not to awake Brian. It was too early to be awake, but for some reason my body decided that I couldn't wait any longer to know. My hands were shaky as I opened the test. Would this be the day that changed our lives forever? I took a deep breath before looking at the results, not really expecting a positive, but in the back of my mind I knew there was always that chance. Maybe. Possibly. We could be pregnant.

I'd splurged and gotten the fancy digital tests. Easy to read. No confusion. Time stopped as I read the word pregnant on the test. There it was, spelled out clearly in the tiny grey digitalized text. Pregnant. I read that word probably fifty times as my mind tried to comprehend that there wasn't a "not" before it. Then all of the sudden time started again, and I felt a joy and excitement well up inside of me that I'd never experienced when I'd discovered I was pregnant the first two times. My first reaction each of the previous times had been fear and anxiety. There was none of that this time, just excitement and joy. And peace. This was it. I knew it. I was going to be a mom.

I sat quietly in our living room for a while, just savoring the knowledge, feeling happy and excited and a little bit in shock. It was probably about an hour before I climbed back into bed next to Brian. I couldn't wait anymore to tell him. I snuggled up next to him, waking him up slightly. As soon as he opened his eyes, I started to tell him. He wasn't quite awake at first, but that soon changed. I don't remember exactly what I said, something like, "So I took a pregnancy test this morning and it was positive. We're going to have a baby." All the while I was smiling so big. I don't even know how I got the words out through my goofy grin. His eyes immediately popped all the way open and he started smiling, saying something like, "Really? Are you serious?"  He was so happy. We both were.

We were also a bit in shock. Good shock this time. We had gone into the fertility doctor expecting it to take months if not years of tests and procedures, and here we were pregnant after only one month. It was such a blessing, a miracle really. In reality maybe it wasn't so miraculous, but it felt so to us. And to find out that we were expecting on Easter weekend, what appropriate timing.

We never felt fearful or anxious that weekend. We just felt happy and at peace. We had every reason in the world to worry and be cautious, but we weren't. We did experience a few nerves when we went in to Dr. Swelstad just over a week later for a sonogram. There was the possibility that it would end in another miscarriage or be another ectopic pregnancy...that we wouldn't see anything on the screen again. But when he started the sonogram, the screen filled with a picture of a tiny little sac and inside that a tiny little gray spec. It wasn't an ectopic pregnancy--the baby was in the right place! And there was a baby! It was such good news.

Although everything looked normal at that point, and there were no indicators that we would have a miscarriage, we wanted to be sure. Once a heartbeat is detected, the chance of having a miscarriage goes down significantly.

We scheduled another appointment for a couple weeks later to look for a heartbeat. After leaving the office, we sat in our car in the parking lot and called our parents to tell them the good news. Their reactions were great. They were so happy, we were so happy. We didn't tell anyone else that day, we wanted to wait until we had a heartbeat. Although we were anxious for the next couple of weeks to pass, we were content with the current state of things.