Three Months?!

Oh my! I cannot believe it's been nearly three months since I last updated. I've thought about updating often, but I guess there have been a few things holding me back. #1. Time. #2. What to write about. #3. I'm still trying to decide whether I want to be blogging about this. I first decided to start blogging just to kind of keep track of what we're going through not only for our own purposes, but also in case there was anyone out there who was going through something similar and could benefit from us sharing our experiences. But then I start to wonder if that's self-indulgent, thinking that someone would be interested in our experiences. I've also found a number of other blogs since starting this one so a little bit I think there's resources and networks and whatnot out there already... no one needs us to do this. I'm still not 100% decided. I guess I'll continue for now and if I decide to stop, I can always stop.

The other thing that's been holding me back a bit is trying to decide what degree of information about myself and my family to be "out there". Do I disclose what city we live in? Our names? I feel like in part I'm writing this because I want people to be able to relate, but at the same time I don't necessarily want my co-workers or neighbours to be reading it. Actually, I haven't even told my wife that I started a blog yet. Not that I think she'll mind. I'm just kind of hesitant about the whole thing still.

Anyway, with that said, I will update about what we've been going through the past few months.

As I mentioned before, we did our first insemination attempt in November. It was unsuccessful. The fertility clinic we go to was closed over the winter holidays, so we didn't go in that month. January my wife ovulated early, so we didn't do an insemination that month either. February we had another unsuccessful attempt. We are now about a week into waiting to find out whether our March attempt was successful or not. My wife is somewhat convinced she will be able to tell right away whether it has "worked" or not, so I think she is not so optimistic about this month's results. I, on the other hand, think that I will wait until we've at least done a home pregnancy test before giving up hope. (Not that she's given up hope completely.)

We did have an appointment with our fertility doctor today. She called us in a little unexpectedly. Since we've had three attepts, we wondered if she wanted to meet with us so she could push some drugs on us. We both have a suspicion that the clinic wants good stats so they will start pushing the drugs if things aren't happening naturally. Fortunately that was not the case. The doctor's concern is that there have been a few months where my wife has ovulated early and even though all the numbers come back looking great on, say, day 8 or 9, that the follicle (egg) might not be mature enough when she does ovulate. She explained that we could go the route of taking very low doses of drugs to delay ovulation another day or two, but that she wouldn't really recommend that right now. What she wanted us to consider was not doing insemination attempts before day 10 if my wife were to ovulate early again. We're trying to avoid using drugs to help in the process because we would like to decrease the chance of multiples, but were agreeable to putting off inseminations for any months she ovulates early. So we're good for now. Hopefully the early ovulations have just been sort of one-off things and we don't have to think about this again, but I guess if they become a pattern we will reevaluate.

Right now this is the monthly process we're going through:
Day 1 -call clinic to notify them that my wife has started her cycle
Day 3 -go in in morning for blood work and full-bladder ultrasound to measure her hormone levels and follicle size
Day 8 -go in in morning for blood work and empty bladder ultrasound
-continue this until follicle has reached appropriate size (1.8mm or larger) and hormone levels (estradiol and luteinizing hormone) have spiked signaling ovulation
-on day that this happens go in at noon for IUI
-start progestrone treatments (the first time we didn't use any, then we used a twice-daily supository, and now are using Crinone, a once-daily supository, which I think we will stick with on any future attempts)
-two weeks following IUI go in in morning for bloodwork/pregnancy test

I guess that's enough of an update for now. I will try to post again soon(er).